Cognitive Analytics is an area to keep an eye on in the data rich (even data overloaded), property industry.
“Artificial intelligence, machine learning, and natural language processing have moved from experimental concepts to potential business disruptors – harnessing internet speed, cloud scale, and adaptive mastery of business processes to drive insights that aid real-time decision making.
For organisations that want to improve their ability to sense and respond, cognitive analytics can be a powerful way to bridge the gap between the intent of big data and the reality of practical decision making.”
Read the full Deloitte article on Cognitive Analytics
Imagine being able to access your business data and isolate options and recommendations for your property decisions in real time.
Think of how you use Google now to find a hotel versus what you used to 15 years ago. Now apply that instant information access to your business data and external environment to make faster and more accurate decisions on opportunities and implement efficient real time sense and respond actions.
There will be a period of time, perhaps a few years where those who embrace this technology will benefit over the market in general in their property decisions.
It is likely facilities and asset management operational decisions will be the first to benefit as they require data rich scenario analysis and often require quick effective decisions when there are operational problems .
Property investment decisions may follow. Although you can set business rules it is often difficult to isolate the best potential options at the best potential cost in the market place, especially when business and market variables are in flux. Consider for example if at the auction the price is rising every 30 seconds and your due-diligence may have miscalculated the market reaction and you want real time decision support to push your bid higher (or not!).
Property development, a much more subjective ‘science’ could be one of the last areas to benefit. However, information, risk analysis and the ability to read a situation and find associations and trends are key to an intuitive property developer – imagine where a lot of this can be provided in real time by cognitive analytics as you assess potential acquisition sites.
Over time the entire market will catch up, cognitive analytic systems will become the norm and any future competitive advantage will be marginal.
Until then I can see some significant breakthroughs for early mover cognitive analytics in the property industry.
This post will be updated as practical applications to property in this new field are sourced and researched.