How to build your data roadmap and future-proof your CRE business

Leading CRE businesses are taking steps to build data-enabled operations designed for agility within a fast-shifting environment. This requires an actionable data strategy roadmap that can evolve rapidly and continuously to act on opportunities and threats.

To successfully drive a strategy for data and analytics excellence, we’ve identified five fundamental elements critical to overcoming barriers and progressing along your transformation journey. This insight explores the fifth and final fundamental: build your data roadmap and future-proof your business.

What is a data road map, and why does it matter?

A data road map provides a step-by-step guide to reaching your business goals. It is crucial in determining how goals will be reached, figuring out potential roadblocks, and communicating your expectations to stakeholders and leadership.

Without a plan, reaching your organization’s goals will be complicated and processes will go unchecked. Consider the following best practices that can help build your data roadmap and future-proof your CRE business.

Learn how to build your data roadmap and future-proof your CRE business by following the steps below.

Step one: Start with the current state

Begin with a current state analysis of your data. Understand data sets, architectures, data and analytics capabilities, and the challenges data users are experiencing. This will provide a baseline for measuring progress while also serving as a reminder of the case for change and justification for the investment in a data strategy.

Step two: Document recommendations

Recommendations for the data strategy should specify the people, processes and technology needed to make the strategy happen.

• The people to deliver expected outcomes

• The processes to ensure the integrity and accessibility of the data

• The technologies to enable the storage, sharing, analysis and reporting of data

Step three: Chart the path

Develop a roadmap of the proposed projects with a schedule that demonstrates the chronological order of execution. Since a data strategy may be 18-24 months in duration, maintaining support for these initiatives requires linking them to short-term wins. Taking an agile approach with three- to six-month action plans within the overall timeline helps to sustain momentum.

"Focus your roadmap around easy wins, like creating a dashboard for your portfolio. Then you can start building out more complete data sets, data infrastructure and resources."

Michael Clawar

VP, Head of Data & Analytics

Step four: Preserve data security

With data proliferating and cyber attacks a constant threat, data security, and resilience are a top priority. To mitigate risk, ensure that data protection is an integral component of your business continuity and disaster recovery plan.

Step five: Acquire the talent to execute

The ability to future-proof your business depends on acquiring the expertise and skills needed to execute your data strategy.

Some large real estate organizations are acquiring chief data officers and assembling data science teams that include data strategists and analysts, and software and machine learning engineers. Since many organizations do not even know what data they have, the first responsibility for many data specialists is unpacking internal data with the goal of being able to use it to make meaningful decisions.

Given the challenges in acquiring and managing new data science teams, it may be advantageous to collaborate early with a trusted partner who can provide the data and technology expertise and immediate scalability to help you drive the progress of your strategy.

Next steps

By developing a data strategy roadmap, you can start telling stakeholders and leadership where you are heading, how you are going to get there, and demonstrate preparedness for opportunities and threats in a fast-shifting environment. Follow these five steps when it’s time to execute your roadmap and you’ll be well on your way to future-proofing your organization:

• Analyze your current state of data

• Document people, process, and technologies

• Build a roadmap in chronological order

• Implement data security and protection

• Acquire the talent needed to execute your plan