So what should commercial real estate companies do now? The report suggests turning to technology. "Companies can capitalize on the slower business climate by engaging their key application users to review the effectiveness of their current application suite," it notes.

Scott Metro, a partner in the Real Estate Systems and Process Assurance unit at professional services firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, identifies spreadsheet replacement software as a specific area of interest. Metro says many real estate companies are installing sophisticated software to shore up data security and flexibility--and resolve what he calls "spreadsheet overload." Metro predicts spreadsheet replacement software will become increasingly important to commercial real estate professionals in 2008 and 2009 as they seek competitive advantages in a softening market.

In a PricewaterhouseCoopers report on technology trends for 2008, Metro notes that real estate companies use spreadsheets to store vast amounts of information, as well as forecast property performance and create models for acquisition financing. "In fact, it is not uncommon to find that Microsoft Excel is used to maintain a quick reference list of properties and their key attributes," he adds.