PropTech AI & Portfolio Management with Richard Belgrave and Kevin Mofid

Episode Transcript

Louisa

Hi, everyone, and welcome to The Propcast. My name is Louisa Dickins, co-founder of LMRE and board director of the UKPA, and I shall be a weekly host. Each week for 30 minutes we’ll be connecting the VC’s, PropTech start-ups and real estate professionals globally, and assist in bridging that famous communication gap we all love talking about. So sit back, relax and enjoy the show. Hi, everyone, and welcome to the Propcast. On today’s show, we will be looking at how artificial intelligence is transforming portfolio management and delivering great insights for corporate occupiers. And we’re joined by Richard Belgrave, Vice President Leverton, an MRI software company and Kevin Mofid, Director in the Savills research team, so thank you both for joining us today.

Richard

Thank you, thanks for having me.

Kevin

Likewise, happy to be here.

Louisa

Now guys, Richard started his career in corporate finance, where he worked on a wide range of strategic projects and performed analysis for FTSE350 clients. His strong interest in technology later drove him to join Leverton, now MRI software. MRI Software is the leading provider of innovative real estate software applications and hosted solutions. MRI’s comprehensive and flexible technology platform, coupled with an open and connected ecosystem meets a unique need for real estate businesses, from property level management and accounting. to investment modelling and analytics of the global commercial and residential markets. Now Richards role within MRI, he works together with customers and partners to revolutionize how individuals work of data and documents to help with AI, which has a sound understanding of AI including machine and deep learning technologies, and its potential to change the way we sell, manage and transact in real estate. He also holds a degree in economics from Warwick University, and Richard I’m looking forward to hearing from you later on in the podcast.

Now for Kevin’s introduction. Kevin is a Director in the Savills research team where he heads up research capability into industrial and logistics markets. For those who don’t know Savills are, and I’d be so surprised, Savills are one of the leading real estate advisors in the world and have over 600 offices and nearly 40,000 people globally. Kevin’s role, he coordinates market data collection across the UK and the periodical briefing report. He specialises in topic and trend-based research by applying real life issues to logistics and industrial property. Kevin regularly presents at industry events, and has appeared at the Estates Gazette European Distribution summit, the Retail Week Supply Chain summit and many more. And he’s also a member of such societies like Industrial Agent Society, IPF and the list goes on. But thank you both for coming on the show, I think let’s just start from the beginning. And Rich would love if you could tell us a little bit more how did the relationship first start between Savills and Leverton?

Richard

Okay, yes. So I was hired five years ago now to run the UK business and to be perfectly honest, I had no idea what I was doing. Day one, I was sat in a Wework, no employees, no real knowledge of the real estate space or technology, especially as it relates to AI and machine learning. I just thought the business was fantastic and from my prior background had seen how a lot of large enterprises were making use of innovative technologies and I guess just wanted a piece of it. So I kind of trotted around the standard industry conventions and actually one of the first ones I attended, I met the at the time the Global Head of occupier for Savills. We just got talking very informally, told him about my new role, he invited me in to see the product and the rest is history. Now, that’s not to say they brought and signed a contract on day one. But I think it was the first time that Savills had seen how this kind of that this mythical beast that is AI was actually adding value within the space. Our technology is geared towards helping our clients find, analyse, interrogate data buried within both complicated contracts. And obviously, if you look at some of the challenges that Savills customers have, a lot of them are relating to the complexities of leases, the data within, so there was a very nice fit from the beginning and over the course of the next 3/6/9 months we built the relationship and that turned into a commercial relationship not long after.

Louisa

That seems like a fairly quick timeframe to what I’ve heard with other businesses. Kevin on your side, whilst Richard just mentioned the importance of data, it relates specifically to the industrial and logistics sector which is obviously your niche, and a pretty massive and growing niche, what were the data questions that need answering? And how have you gone about answering them?

Kevin

Yeah, it’s a good question. I mean, I became aware of Savills partnership with Leverton I don’t know, two and a bit years ago, we’d done a lot of work in the offices sector to start with, and looking at improving our data collection and analysis and outputs. Logistics and industrial has always been a fundamentally under researched area of the property market. I’ve been on the research side for approaching 15 years now and frankly, when I first started my career nobody wanted to talk to me, because warehouses weren’t sexy. And that has changed dramatically, particularly over the last five years and the role of e-commerce, the demand for warehouse spaces has increased dramatically. And combined with that being the capital looking to invest in logistics warehouses across the world has increased as well. And investors are just becoming much more mature in their data analysis. Now, that’s not to say we didn’t have good data before, but there were gaps. So, working with the data insight team at Savills, we realised quite quickly that we could do something very clever to improve the transparency within the industrial and logistics sector. So that’s what we’ve started the process of doing. And it’s not been without its challenges along the way. But we are now seeing the benefit from that both internally, but also externally in the advice that we can give to our investor, developer and occupier clients,

Louisa

If we’re looking specifically at PropTech, how do the various aspects of PropTech assist in that process?

Kevin

Well, I mean there’s two main ways that this helps, one is purely a visualisation and time issue, the ability to quickly interrogate things, things that would have taken days beforehand can now take minutes. And so that’s a very clear example of some things. There’s a time gain and an efficiency gain. But the other thing as well, is just having this treasure trove of data. So for me, on the research side actually I’m more interested in the raw data, and how we can pull it out and analyse it and find trends. And I mentioned that logistics and industrial was an under researched area, that means you didn’t really have time series of data, time series information, and our work with Leverton has helped us supplement the data that we already had and create these time series. And that’s not to say that the past is a clear guide for what the future holds, but it certainly does help us inform our thoughts on how property markets are going to play out and what the trends are going to be.

Louisa

Yes and Rich, Kevin mentioned obviously there’s been moves in Savills office and now logistics and industrial sector, how was it? How has it been working in Savills, one of the largest and oldest real estate business globally. Have you seen this increase adoption? And obviously, as your product gets known, your product improves, surely people start to recognise the power of ito. How have you found it?

Richard

Yes. That’s a really good question, I mean, I’m not just saying this because Kevin’s on the line as well but actually at a similar time that I was building a relationship with Savills, I was also with peers and competitors of theirs. One thing struck a chord, which is just how innovative they are as thinkers. So it was never really much of a challenge getting people to buy into the concepts and premise of “we must be using artificial intelligence to streamline this process improve this process”, the challenge has always been “How do you go from department to department, asset class to asset class? How do you break down the conventional barriers that are there, no matter what you’re trying to sell, which is budgets concern on long term value etc” and they have been barriers for us. And we are by no means is fully mobilised and penetrated across the globe as Savills organisation. However, as I always say to my team if the attitude isn’t there, then you’re never going to be able to sell it to these guys, right, you’re never going to be able to partner up with them and work with them. And I think that isn’t an issue in this relationship, so I hope over the course of the next months, years etc, we continue to grow together, and the adoption improves and increases.

Louisa

It’s all about attitude, not only from the Leverton MRI side, it’s also about the attitude of the real estate people. Have you seen COVID pushing forward adoption and change in attitude? Everyone says it’s happening but I’m hearing differing opinions, attitudes can’t just change just over one pandemic in my opinion, but it can help.

Richard

Yes, in a weird way I think if I look back at March, and chatting to my team at MRI, I think there was a lot of concern that people were just going to pause spending, pause adoption, focus on the new norm, the new world and forget about actually the technologies and the vendors available to them in theory to make their lives easier. It didn’t really take long for us to actually find some real momentum during the pandemic, and I do think that when you look at we’re a cloud native platform, we have a clear return on investment, which we can often demonstrate through 30/60 day pilot. And I think, with those things, people become really interested, it’s not just “I’ll sink six figures into this product and hope for the best”, right, we’ve actually developed the process where we can identify and find value, bring that to the forefront of the conversation, and then from there look to kind of build on a particular relationship, department, whatever it might be. So in a very contrarian to what was expected, the pandemic has helped us somewhat, I think it’s given people time to reflect on operating models, top down strategy, uses products like ours, and I think we’re really benefiting. And that’s not to say that at the end of the year, perhaps we might kind of suffer somewhat as there’s a further correction and the furlough scheme ends, and companies actually make big structural shifts in their workforce and where their workforce are. But on balance, I think we’re relatively optimistic about what the pandemic has bought us from, from a business perspective, obviously outside of that it’s been a complete disaster. But we’ve definitely seen attitudes change in our favour.

Louisa

Yeah, some businesses I’ve spoken to, some clients are asking for the product to be changed slightly, they’re looking for a slightly different thing. If we’re looking specifically at your product, is there a certain success story of it, or part of the product which you’re most proud of, or which you see most demand for?

Richard

Yes, I think that kind of what Kevin was talking about, his focus is really on improving the availability and transparency of information, which can make a difference as it relates to decision making. And I think that when you think about AI and our products in particular, I always position the value proposition in two strands. You’ve got process optimisation, and you’ve got presentation and output. And what I mean by that is, the way that we structure data, put it in the hands of our clients, and help them make decisions, which are business impactful. And we’ve had some interesting, I can’t say too much because some is non-public, but we’ve had some interesting case studies with Savills in particular, where some of their clients have come to them and said, “Okay, we need to rationalise our portfolio right now. We’ve got 800 stores, we need to consolidate them into 500 and we need the best locations”. And that that really is if you think about the crux of that problem, that it’s really all about data, right? It’s all about what am I spending here, what can I earn there, is it more efficient to be in this site versus that site, what are the competitors doing, what does the research say? And actually we’ve done a lot of projects like that, both with Savills and outside of the Savills relationship, where it’s really about helping people make decisions quicker to adapt as a result of the pandemic. And that’s pleasing, because this is a tough and challenging time for everyone. And it gives me a lot of satisfaction when I leave the office or leave my home office, i.e. 2 metre walk to the kitchen, and I think actually really helped someone today really help someone kind of make a decision, which they otherwise would have struggled to make.

Louisa

So we’re seeing more of a collaboration between machines, technology, and people. Kevin from your point of view, what has really been this has been the business impact of working with Leverton, are there any examples of best practice? Or some really good adoption you’ve seen?

Kevin

I mean, I think there’s probably three ways to look at this, there’s informing own internal decisions, there’s what we put out publicly, and then there’s the bespoke analysis that we can do for our clients. On the internal side, we’re using the data to help our business development, targeting potential instructions or whatever it might be to improve our business and profitability, and so on. And that’s fantastic, because the data that was unstructured before is now structured. And that as I said before creates efficiencies just in terms of the way we work internally. Externally I mentioned that we now have this this treasure trove of data, and that goes into much more thought lead analysis, that helps inform the investment decisions that our clients are making. And then the last piece really comes down to what do we do publicly, because part of part of the research function in any kind of property agency businesses to produce content that gets people talking. So that third bit is a work in progress really, because how can we use the data that we now have to get people talking about what’s going on. You made the point about COVID and we believe there’s a lot of noise at the moment I think in the press, and the property press about what the future holds, and has this changed people’s attitudes to work, where they work, how they work, and what are the unintended consequences of that? What does it mean for retail leisure? What does it mean for logistics, where are people getting stuff delivered? So, the more data we have in a structured fashion that will allow us to answer those big questions that are troubling everyone at the moment

Louisa

Well, that answers my next question Kevin, what does the future hold for data visibility analysis? It’s pretty difficult to predict anything at the moment.

Kevin

Yes, and I think the only thing I will say is that our clients, big global investors, big global developers are just data hungry. The decisions that they make are data driven, and so the transparency is something to aspire to. We’re very lucky in the UK in terms of the transparent nature of the markets, you could say the same is true in the States, in Europe, in continental Europe less so. And so I think that’s a huge area of opportunity for Savills, and, and the pro tech industry as a whole, because actually, certain markets in Europe are not very transparent at all data is hard to come by. One of my colleagues in Eastern Europe on the research side within Savills, famously she described to me the quality of the data available, she described as lunch-based data. And what she meant by that was that the data comes to be because people meet up for lunch and share what’s going on, and then it’s really were transcribed in Excel afterwards. So I think there’s a huge geographical challenge to all of this as well and the best practice that we have in in certain markets is not necessarily transferable to other markets. And that’s going to be a massive challenge.

Louisa

Yes, and Rich MRI’s a global business, what’s your opinion on transparency of data?

Richard

I mean, incredibly important. When I joined Leverton, I came from a finance background. I’m sure the listeners are quite familiar with tools and platforms such as Bloomberg, and if you actually look at the history of the genesis of Bloomberg, it actually came about because one guy, one business decided that the way that data is presented in terms of financial analysis of companies is so disparate, and varied, and inaccessible and untrustworthy, that you need something to kind of bring everything to light. So retail investors can actually make sensible decisions based on data they can trust, data they can see, data they can interrogate. And I think now we take things like Bloomberg for granted, but actually really struck a chord with me, when I entered this space and started asking questions to an occupier to a landlord, “You’ve got 1000 leases, what’s your average late payment fee percentage, what’s your average tenant improvement obligation?” And I was amazed at how many respondees couldn’t come back with a sensible answer, and purely just because of the lack of transparency, availability of data, both on a micro level and a macro level. So I think for decision making, I think for running your business or staying ahead of the competition, and just doing what’s right by your investors, by your senior stakeholders, you need data. You need to be able to access it, you need to be able to trust it. And thematically I think the real estate industry is making a lot of progress. But you’re probably still it’s still a long way to go. I would say.

Louisa

And looking at the future insights, Rich there’s a big old question about what’s next AI? What do you think’s next for the product?

Richard

So right now the focus has really been on helping people turn and Kevin mentioned structured versus unstructured data, if you look at the real estate industry, it’s pretty much underpinned by a vast quantity of unstructured data right now. So that what I mean by that is contracts, legally binding documents etc, a landlord’s net operating income is pretty much determined by what it says in the lease. And a lot of that data is very unstructured, unless you use AI to structure it, make sense of it, be able to compare it etc, I think that’s been the predominant focus of ours, I think that’s where we’re really making a name for ourselves. But actually, the models that we deploy to process these contracts and turn unstructured content into structured data, that they can also be used to help drive really meaningful analysis. And actually, from that analysis recommendations. So before you are even you are thinking about what to do have the data drive a recommendation a suggestion for you. And that’s going to be a real focus of ours over the coming years.

So we work with our customers to phase one, you get all that data into one place, make it structured, make it accessible, trustworthy, but with that data set, actually start looking at trends, outliers, etc, and help them make decisions before they’re even aware that decision needs to be made. So that’s kind of what we’re doing and really exciting stuff coming down the pipeline. In general, I think AI is evolving immensely. I was chatting to our CTO the other day, who was actually one of the founders of Leverton and still sits within the MRI organisation and helps us from a research capacity. He said that the model now available that you deploy for machine learning purposes are five times more sophisticated than when even I joined the company, and he’s seeing a lot of development and evolution in the conversational AI, we all kind of sit on phones to our banks with this automated responses etc. And I think that’s really frustrating right now, and I think buyers reckoning in two to three year’s time, I think a lot of the conversations we’re having maybe even with a tenant rep, with our brokers etc, they could all be automated based on how much data these new machine learning models could consider plug away and drive conversational AI models going forward. So this is super fascinating stuff coming both within our world, but also within the realm of AI itself

Louisa

Talking about automation, now both of you feel free to say your opinion on it, there’s a big debate over whether AI is going be taking a lot jobs as obviously it will automate a lot of jobs. I think it will create jobs, obviously I’m a recruiter, I’m permanently rooting for people, that’s my job. I do think this will create jobs, but they’re going to be different jobs and people need to upskill. Rich or Kevin, what are your opinions on this?

Richard

Maybe I’ll just quickly so I think that there is a tendency, and I don’t know why it’s condemn ourselves to this Terminator i-robot style, that we are that we are victims of technological advances, right? We don’t need to be, I completely agree with you that I’ve seen jobs created and repurposed around technology, both in this industry and my previous line of work. And I think that you need people with the right attitude, willing to embrace and work with technology. And that in itself puts you in a very strong position, I think anyone who has the attitude of “Okay, this is going to take my job”, the maybe there is a threat and there is a risk. But that’s not to say that that individual doesn’t have an opportunity to upskill, to learn how to work with technology to improve their own value to an organisation, and then you almost kind of build a barrier around yourself, because you’ve kind of put your hand up and you’re willing to adapt and move with the times as opposed to as I say, just condemn yourself to the fact that your job is obsolete or going to be obsolete.

Louisa

Yeah, I would agree with you on that Rich.

Kevin

Just to interject. I mean, I think it’s a very interesting debate and discussion about where this goes. And I mean, from my perspective, and you could argue, I would say this, but data is one thing, but the interpretation of data, and the recommendations of that is another and I think it’s going to be this evolution of the role from broker agent to advisor because people still need to understand, data will give you some answers, but are you asking the right questions, and all of this type of stuff and real estate is a slow moving asset class, and what I mean by that is not in terms of its adoption as of technology. But in terms of the fact that what you’re dealing with is tangible it’s a physical thing and there’s lots of external factors just in my world, warehousing you can be dealing with, with planning authorities, you can be dealing with environmental issues, you can be dealing with transport issues, you can be dealing with a whole myriad of different things, and often the land that we’re dealing with is owned by a farmer and the lands been in their family for generations and the way the way they transact is different to the way global multinational investors transact. So there’s lots of nuances to it and the evolution of it. I think we would do well to remember that not all real estate works in the same way. So I think that said just the point I’d like to make

Louisa

Rich anything else you’d like to add?

Richard

No, I think Kevin’s right it’s very easy just to kind of have this blanket approach to “this is the way it’s going to be”, I think some jurisdictions will move slower, even within real estate, some asset classes perhaps will evolve quicker than others, which changes the workforce dynamic and the way that people are deployed to do certain jobs and tasks. And I mean, I maintain that I think that anyone who is sat there thinking that technology is a threat, you have an opportunity to nip that in the bud and do something about it. But what I will say is that your companies will perhaps be, as you say, replacing roles with, as Kevin points out roles that look at more of a value creation to clients and stakeholders in an advisory and consulting capacity, as opposed to a doing a repetitive, mundane document collection, data aggregation tasks. So, and I think that just staying ahead of those trends and what’s coming, there’s so much research, I mean just a couple of weeks ago, reading a report that Accenture put out on artificial intelligence, even just kind of staying plugged into how some of that research is compiled and the themes and the conclusions, I think gives anyone enough opportunity to stay ahead of the curve and not risk over time being crowded out of the workforce, because there is going to be opportunity for anyone, it takes a bit of ingenuity to figure out where you can still fit into the equation.

Louisa

Yes I think a big thing is as long as we’re doing a little bit of adoption, and as long as we’re moving in the right direction, everyone may have a different pace, but as long as we are all innovating and adopting that should hopefully mean good things. Sadly, this is bringing us to the end of the show, before we go, is there any bit of information, like share our audience, and also the best way for them to connect with you,

Richard

Please connect with me through LinkedIn, I don’t have a quirky name like Kevin unfortunately, just Richard Belgrave, but please do reach out if you want to know more about what we’re doing at MRI, or just pick my brain on some of the wins and losses that we’ve experienced. There was something I’d like to say, so something which I experience day in day out is because AI is branded shiny and new, people seem to forget the core principles of how to allocate money and resources in the same way that they would buying a traditional piece of software, or even as an individual investing money in the stock market. And I think my parting advice would be do not forget that irrespective of what vendor you’re looking at, what kind of technology it represents, always think about evaluation as a strategic fit. So how does the product align to overall goals of the company? How do you determine value contribution of that product? So make sure you’re piloting, make sure you’re thinking about how the results of the pilot translate into short-term long-term value, and again please, please, please assess the feasibility with which your organisation can actually adopt this technology. So often I speak to friends who are running other companies, or even from my own experiences so often, I see projects and relationships go sour, because the client wasn’t ready. They didn’t have the right people, they didn’t have the right knowledge, they didn’t have the right data available to even kind of start processing through a platform like ours. And I think so those three components, don’t lose sight of them. And I think if you if you keep track of them and stay true to them when you’re praising artificial intelligence vendors or any other technology, you will go a lot further than those that don’t.

Louisa

Kevin, is there any bit of information you’d like to leave the audience?

Kevin

Yes. So just two things you can contact me on Twitter or LinkedIn. LinkedIn, just my name on Twitter, I’m @kevtheshed. So if you want anything about warehousing that’s the place to come, and just a bit of information just from our experience, through our work with Leverton and the UK logistics markets, we’ve looked at data for about it’s not even a fifth of market, the total market is close to 3 billion square feet of property in the UK. And so far, we’ve just dipped our toe. So there’s a huge amount to go out here. And as I say, as the sector matures the data needs are going to grow exponentially.