March 2019 | Insights From the CEO – We all know that real estate investing is a knowledge-intensive business. And information — from lots of places, in lots of forms — is what keeps knowledge fresh, vibrant and valuable.
With surprising frequency, we find that information is an under-managed asset in large real estate enterprises. Perhaps because it (information) seems to be everywhere. Maybe because we assume that “It should just work … It should just be right … It should just be available … ” Or maybe the problem is the entanglement of ‘information’ with ‘technology’ — “its IT’s issue, not mine” — that makes it seem like a picture of technologies in an enterprise must somehow also be a model of the information in an enterprise?
You almost certainly have explicit models for other assets that are vital to your business: a fund model for managing capital and for scenario planning; a model for managing people (org charts and position descriptions); a liquidity model for managing cash; probably even process models for describing how you execute repeatable tasks.
Yet it’s quite possible that you don’t have an explicit information model to help you manage this vital asset. The below image describes the components that should encompass your information model.
Ask Yourself the Following Questions
-
Do we have a list of all the information topics that we need to gather and use — to see patterns, spot trends and make better decisions? Or do we assume that everybody just knows what they need to know?
-
If there is a list like that somewhere, does everyone know what and where it is?
-
If there is and everyone does, is that list also used to identify where that information comes from, where it is held, how it is processed, accessed and used?
Don’t be disheartened if the answers for your enterprise are … No! You have a lot of company. But leading real estate firms are now beginning to change that. They are treating ‘information’ with care and attention equal to the other vital resources of the enterprise.
Articulating an information model that answers the above questions is an essential first step in achieving better information, better knowledge and better decisions.
