Will AI replace CRE brokers? | AI Adoption Challenges and Practical Solutions

“ I know that you're investing in AI, obviously. You're building products. So, can you tell us a bit more about that, and also maybe some challenges that you faced? ”

“ One of the biggest challenges is to try not to do everything at once. I mean, there are so many opportunities to do so many things today. How do we know which ones to go tackle first?

We have great relationships with many customers. We have conversations with them. They're contacting us, "What are we doing about AI?" We're contacting them, saying, "What's your AI vision? How do you see it helping you in your enterprise?" Every conversation is enlightening. We're energized, but we can't do everything. We have to pick one, two, or three things that we can focus on and that we can actually take to market in a suitable amount of time. If we come in too late, our customers will have 10 other choices.

That's probably our biggest challenge: staying focused. ”

“ The second biggest challenge, I would say, is that AI is evolving so fast that we spend time trying to overcome a deficiency in the AI system that we're using.

Let's use document abstraction as an example. When we first started building and exploring the tools, these LLMs, as the backends, had varying amounts of accuracy because they didn't have the attention span that they needed. We had to implement something called RAG, where we chunk it up into pieces, and then, based on the template, we're doing a summary, just retrieving the information we need. Well, then, it comes out with a new LLM that has a bigger attention span. All the work we did on this particular type of RAG is a little bit obsolete.

It's just constantly changing. I guess it's a good challenge, but at the same time, you risk coming to market with something that's already going to be obsolete. ”

“ Our third biggest challenge, I would say, is talent. There are not a lot of people who have developed using AI tools and understand that technology. They don't grow on trees, so we have to grow them ourselves or find them in the market. Many, many of our team members are real busy on projects already, and so to have them stop and educate themselves mid-flight so that they can be useful to us in this way is not easy. It's a challenge. ”

“ You've been doing this for years. Looking back, what would you say is the most valuable lesson you learned from these challenges? ”

“ We were doing a global implementation of CRM for Colliers International Canada. They were so committed to implementing it right. We had a great project. Their president, David Bowden, was very involved. He wanted to personally make sure that the project was a success. They invested in the right way. We went on this multi-city training, and we were in the last city, Vancouver. We had all the brokers assembled. I personally did the training that day. Everyone leaves, and I've got the biggest smile on my face. [And then this conversation happened.] ”

“ You know, Todd, the product is strong. The team did an amazing job, but I still have to wonder why it is so hard to use CRM. You know, it's 2009. Why is it still so hard to use? Brokers don't need to go through a training course to build their smart list and Apple playlist. They don't need to go through training to figure out how to use LinkedIn, build their network, or even find people. Yet we had to do a half-day training course for every user, and I think there must be something fundamentally wrong with enterprise software that we have to train them on this. I want Apple CRM, you know? ”

“ Todd, you need to go look at FAST [at the time, it was an indexing technology]. You need to figure out how to use FAST, or something like it, to take data from a CRM system and make it available in searches to users that way. ”

“ And it popped my bubble. The lesson that I learned was, "How do we make our applications Apple CRM?" But if we really want our users to adopt the system, we have to think differently. We have to stay tuned to WIFM, "What's In It For Me," and that's what's in it for the broker. ”

“ I'm glad you brought up the user experience. I recently watched some of the clips from Steve Jobs' conference, and I don't pretend to remember it word by word, but he said, "We don't take the technology and come up with what we can do for users with it. We first see what user problems are and then look for the technology to solve them." 
  
So I believe that's a very good line of thought and a good idea to keep in mind when you are thinking about AI.  ”

“ That's an important lesson for any enterprise, commercial real estate, or otherwise, that's thinking, "How do I implement AI?" That exact line of thought is probably one of the best ways to approach it. "What can I do to impact my business the most now? Are there some pain points that I can address?" Don't try to go out and just think, "Oh, this will be cool." Don't do that. You have to understand yourself and your business.
  
You can't try to do everything at once. Pick one, two, or three pain points that you need to solve, and look to see if AI is ready to solve that pain. It may not be. That will be the recipe for a successful introduction of AI in your organization. ”

“ If you're imagining that AI can do something where it's actually replacing people, that's not what it's for. It's the Tony Stark suit. It's how to empower your team and bring AI with them.  
 
For example, when the spreadsheet happened, there were probably predictions about what was going to happen to all the clerks. They're going to be replaced by spreadsheets because someone can just make a change, and the spreadsheet automatically recalculates everything. Did it replace some types of jobs? Yes, but it created a whole new industry, which is financial analysts, which outnumbered the clerks and the bookkeepers much more.

It brought data, which is oxygen, to an organization. I think we'll be looking back at what AI does like the spreadsheets did for financial analysis.  ”