Who Should Be In Charge of Proptech Strategy?

You decided that you want to focus on proptech (aka CRE tech), but you don’t know who should be in charge of your proptech strategy. As someone who’s run CRE tech for a real estate firm and sold software as a CRE tech vendor, I can help you decide. Here’s my two cents. Hint: it’s not IT.

Ideally, your CRE tech  decision-maker should be in a role that drives revenue for your organization. In a property management firm, this means the Head of Marketing (or Revenue Management). With owners, this means either your Chief Investment Officer or Head of IR/Capital Formation. In a tenant rep organization, this means your Head of Client Solutions.

Otherwise, your proptech strategy may as well have the same priority as deciding what dishwasher to put in your common area kitchen… very few will care. Those who do will care passionately, for sure. But it won’t drive the success of your CRE business.

The more I’ve seen of CRE owners’ cultures, the more I’m convinced that investments (which includes asset management) or IR would be the safer space for a head of CRE tech to flourish. The unfortunate reality is that many CRE owners consider non-deal roles to be “back office”. For CRE tech to influence your firm strategy, your decision-maker must be on the revenue-generating side of the firm.

If you’re large enough, then you should 1000% hire someone specific to this role. My current favorite title for this role belongs to Ilene Goldfine, Chief Digital Strategy Officer at Hines. You will also see this title framed as a Head of Innovation or similar.