Nearly a third (31%) of interviewees in a new survey by Verdantix expect their budget for facilities and asset management software to grow by more than 5%. Improving the comfort of occupants is the top real estate objective for 28% of firms, followed by minimizing risk to business operations (26% of respondents), and reducing operating costs the top objective (16% of respondents), according to the annual global survey of 304 real estate occupiers across 16 geographies and 18 industries. Participants were asked about their firms’ real estate strategic direction, governance, budgets, and priorities in relation to technology decisions.
“Our Smart Building Technologies global survey provides unique data on the 2020 budgets, business priorities, and technology preferences of managers responsible for corporate real estate and facilities management decisions at the world’s largest firms,” commented Verdantix Principal Analyst, Susan Clarke. “With the Verdantix Smart Building Technologies survey data corporate managers can benchmark against their peer group and tech vendors can align go-to-market plans for 2020 with customer requirements.”
Key findings include:
- Space efficiency and coworking are the most significant factors shaping real estate strategies (91%), closely followed by rapidly increasing volumes of building data (90%), and sustainability initiatives (89%).
- The highest budget increase will be in well-proven hardware solutions such as LED lighting, with 66% of respondents anticipating growing budgets due mature solutions facilitating an easier budget sign-off.
- As part of facilities executives’ strategies to make buildings engaging for occupants, they are evaluating new investments in employee-facing technology such as workplace kiosks (22%), meeting room panels (10%), and voice-activated digital assistants (9%).
- The majority (73%) of firms expect their outsourced energy services budget to remain flat, apart from in the UAE where 38% of executives’ budgets will grow in 2020 as they tackle burgeoning energy consumption.
The Verdantix report, “Global Corporate Survey 2019: Smart Building Technology Budgets, Priorities & Preferences,” is available to research subscription clients.
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