Faropoint Finds the Challenge in Integrating Technology

As is true in any industry, pulling together a technology solution in commercial real estate often results in the use of third-party software. 

“We are developing inhouse technology, but my perspective is if something is out there and it’s good, you don’t need to build it from scratch,” Doris Pitilon, chief technology officer for last mile industrial real estate investment firm Faropoint, tells GlobeSt.com. 

However, making use of third-party software can be a challenge, even with a solid IT team, when it comes time to integrating applications into an existing system.

“I see in a lot of companies, when they integrate outside software, usually the software doesn’t get full integration and then the people need to work with different software [packages],” Pitilon adds. “Before I joined, Faropoint had third party software. They were a pretty amazing company that embraced technology. They used a lot of software for managing the pipeline and the tenants, because we’re doing asset management and acquisition, and doing a lot of analysis. They were tech oriented but not tech savvy.”

Pitilon joined the company after getting a BS and MS in engineering and then spending seven years in the Israeli Defense Force working on “cutting-edge technology.” But even with that background, starting the process of integration was “hard work.” First her team had to study and document all the data structures and then find the ways they could get at the data they needed.

One of the classic problems is data formatting. For example, one program has information on “162 W. Avenue” and another might use “162 West Ave.”

“If we want to understand it’s the same address and we want to use AI, it needs to be standardized and talk to the same language,” Pitilon says. “It was huge work standardizing, translating the data, cleaning the data. Eventually everything streamlines to our propriety software.”

Standardizing terminology meant writing a large data dictionary that could translate between different versions of the same concept. But that doesn’t automate communications between business and technical people. “We dedicated hours sitting together, learning the language on the other side,” she says.

Since Pitilon joined the company in June 2021, she’s expanded her team to 15 engineers and made great progress, crediting in part her time in the military. “The IDF teaches you how to tackle problems because you don’t have another choice. It trains you to find a creative solution, bring an idea to reality and see how it works in the field. We [now] have a working platform, we had AI models, we cleaned the data, we established a research department to understand what happens at a portfolio and property level.”