Upclose With Altus Group CEO, Bob Courteau

Bob Courteau, CEO at Altus Group, recently spoke at RealComm and caught up with GlobeSt.com to talk a bit more about his panel discussion: “The Age of Acceleration—The Real Estate Tech Giants Weigh In.” As part of the discussion, he told us that the technologies coming into the marketplace in the next few years will be based on AI, automation, better risk management and will measure value more similar to the way equity and financial markets already do now, but essentially it will be all about the data being used, analyzed and managed in more powerful ways.

GlobeSt.com: What are you seeing in the business – demand, growth objectives, etc.?

Bob Courteau: We’re entering into a fascinating time of accelerated adoption of technology. We just invested in Honest Buildings, and have previously invested in Waypoint and REIX, and we’re continuing to look at, partner with and invest in early stage proptech companies that have the potential to enable and drive the consumption of technologies much faster for clients.

GlobeSt.com: Analytics are becoming so important and an external play across the industry, where do you see it going?

Courteau: For Altus Group, we don’t think of ourselves as a software, or data or advisory company but as an information services company. As we expand our current engagements with the largest companies across North America, Europe, Asia and the world, we now see a different model that is beginning to focus on a “give get” approach where clients provide their data, and when aggregated with other companies’ data and industry data, they can get back valuable benchmarks and insights on the performance of assets. Along with this is a client approach to partnerships and platforms that allow you to do much more with your data that is much more broadly connected.

GlobeSt.com: The last 20 years have focused on consolidation in the industry of vendors. What’s the short story in next 10 years?

Courteau: Technologies coming into the marketplace now and in next few years will be based on AI, automation, better risk management and will measure value more similar to the way equity and financial markets already do now, but essentially it will be all about the data being used, analyzed and managed in more powerful ways.

We did a global survey of 400 real estate executives and only 9% said autonomous vehicles will have a major disruptive impact on the industry, and there were other emerging technologies such as AR/VR and Big Data and Predictive Analytics with similar lower levels of buy-in, but I think we’ll see these kinds of disruptive technologies go mainstream.

Blockchain is like mobility, the internet, but to put it in place and expect it will derive winners and losers this may not be so easy or how it plays out. The application set for it will come from people within the industry, right now it may be a solution looking for a problem, we can see it could help address property titles, but beyond it’s still less clear than other technologies.

GlobeSt.com: If capital is cheap but SaaS model is not considering it’s an opex model, does that mean on-premise still has merit?

Courteau: More and more of our customers are moving to a hosted SaaS model, almost 700 of our 6,000 software clients have moved to this model already, and more will continue to move on a rapidly accelerated basis to our new cloud products that are now coming out. We’re seeing this every day. There is still a place for on premise depending on client objectives, but I think the ship has sailed on this—there are just too many compelling reasons and advantages to the cloud and SaaS models.”

If I was a new customer, is there language in there for data rights related to analytics?

Courteau: Absolutely. We have a responsibility to protect client data contractually and provide anonymity.

GlobeSt.com: Do you view major technology providers as competitors?

Courteau: We may have different strategies but we’re all trying to solve the challenges of data and investment management and in some ways it’s competitive around offerings and product stacks, but ultimately we’re helping to enable the forward movement and momentum of the market for technology adoption and doing more with data in different and new ways.

GlobeSt.com: Who do you see as your competitors or threats?

Courteau: There are lots of proptech players entering the industry, but our strategy is to bring these emerging players in and invest in them and partner with many of them to leverage an ecosystem approach.

What is one thing you would like to leave our readers with about your company?

Courteau: We’re committed to modernization, globalization and functional benefits that provide the basis of a powerful ability to manage investment performance. We offer the best ROI in the industry because our solutions work and have been consistently proven to deliver results for our clients, many of which are the biggest real estate players in the world, and we’re really proud of that.

The Realcomm | IBcon 2018 conference, one of the most powerful gatherings for the commercial and corporate real estate, facilities and technology industries, was held June 4-8 in Las Vegas. The event brought together over thousands of leaders from more than 20 countries, including Canada, Australia, Japan, U.K., Singapore, China, France, India, Germany, South Africa and many more.

This year also marked the 20th anniversary for Realcomm, which contributed to the remarkable turnout and undeniable buzz of energy and had more than 2,000 in attendance.