PropTech Today - Is the pace of technological development accelerating?

If we turn the clock back only twenty years, the concept of managing our lives from a handheld device was within the realms of science fiction only. Yet only five years onward from that point, smartphones hit the market and the world quickly evolved. 

It was a defining moment and one which was a catalyst for incredible innovation, with the property industry exploring new ideas from the very start to enhance customer experiences, gather greater user insight and provide innovative services.

Smartphone technology was the perfect next step and complimented the already fascinating development of online platforms. It brought property professionals a step closer to users by freeing them of wires and gave people an experience that was smoother and more seamless than ever before.

This technological journey continues within the property sector. Recently, Propertymark hosted Reach UK and their handpicked cohort of tech trailblazers progressing through this exciting PropTech arena. The event unveiled presentations brimming with ingenuity, wherein visionary teams showcased their capacity to reshape the industry. Their proposals revolved around interconnected systems and the fluidity of insights, promising an era of accelerated transformation.

Spending considerable time with these innovative products was insightful and the amount of work that had been undertaken to achieve the output was phenomenal.

For me, the level of innovation behind the scenes is something the industry has proven to be groundbreaking and in some areas of the home buying, selling and rental processes it makes a justifiable difference.

However, there still seems to be a missing piece to the puzzle, within the frenzy lies a pivotal conundrum that is prohibiting many concepts from having long-term, all-rounded success, and that is “true collaboration”.

This crucial piece of the puzzle seems to elude the majority of the Proptech scene. The precise understanding of what the agents at the very coalface of the industry, truly require. This is something we are working hard to address and working with accelerators such as Reach UK we are able to make a difference.  Without knowing what is needed from agents, how can fledgling start-ups adequately address industry needs without understanding the true challenges or the nuanced gaps that exist and require filling?

There is already a strong desire within the industry to simplify processes and offer new levels of flexibility and also within development teams that strive to code systems that push new boundaries.

We want to promote wide-ranging discussion from all corners to ensure solutions exceed demand, but also to safeguard quality and in some circumstances also influence regulation so that it keeps pace with development and needs.

The support out there helping to get inspiring ideas to the marketplace much quicker and more efficiently than some industries are currently achieving is starting to help but – we all know we are in a world where artificial intelligence is the next wave on the horizon, it is imperative that the industry's voice is heard on what they require from our future tech.

Artificial intelligence will bring a trend of evolution and play a major role in enhancing usability, but the subject of technology is a never-ending journey and now is the time for all stakeholders to turn up the volume on the conversation, engage in the future in order to steer the direction development takes for the benefit of us all.

Much as we have cast our mind back to the birth of smartphones and the changes they heralded. I wonder what we will be thinking looking back in 20 years at today’s developments…..