HIH Real Estate shortens the rental process by 80 percent
Investment manager HIH Real Estate has digitalised its rental process in cooperation with Hamburg-based prop-tech Tower360. For this purpose, the company uses a modular and cloud-based asset management platform that has been adapted to the company's specific requirements. Since the beginning of this year, the software has been used throughout the company, explains Florian Schnieder, project manager for digitalisation at IntReal Solutions, a subsidiary of HIH Real Estate.
That means concretely: From vacancy management to application preparation to contract drafting, all work processes can be handled digitally. Fund, asset and property management are integrated. The aim is to create a digital rental contract.
According to Schnieder, digitalisation makes the rental process much more efficient. All participants are always up to date, which significantly reduces the need for agreements and the lack of transparency. In addition, staff would no longer have to compile the information for a rental contract from Excel, Word and Outlook. "This now runs completely via the platform, the rental contract is generated automatically," reports the digitalisation expert. "This results in a time saving in the process of about 80 percent.”
Although the digitalisation of companies' internal asset management processes in particular offer "enormous potential", digital processes and data-driven decisions have hardly been realised in the industry, reports Julian Vogel, one of the two founders of Tower360.
The prop-tech has focused its platform primarily on commercial real estate. Rental processes for offices, logistics or retail properties are significantly more complex than those for flats, says Vogel. The different requirements of the individual types of use are covered by the software. Since the HIH portfolio is "very commercial-heavy, it made sense to start there," Schnieder adds.
Tower360 and HIH Real Estate have been working for a good year to adapt the platform to the needs of the investment manager. According to Vogel, the prop-tech is active in Germany, Austria and Switzerland and currently has 30 billion Euro in assets under management. Katja Bühren