Winner of the Svit Award 2022 H&B Real Estate AG

January 2023

The winner of the SVIT AWARD is the property management company H&B Real Estate AG. The company won in the public voting out of three property management companies that implemented particularly innovative solutions for managing day-to-day business. The solutions of Certimo AG and Roche were honoured with a gift by SVIT Zurich Managing Director Pascal Stutz.

In order to make condominium mandates more attractive, the winner of the award, H&B Real Estate AG, has adapted a proptech solution with which condominium owner meetings and the upstream and downstream processes can be digitised. The condominium owners can view documents independently and around the clock, and managers can record agenda items throughout the year, which are then effortlessly compiled and distributed. Votes can be counted more easily and decisions recorded immediately. A ticketing system simplifies communication; in addition to owners, tenants can also be informed directly.

To ensure that the software solution adequately takes into account the needs of property management, H&B Real Estate AG entered into an innovation partnership with the developers in 2020. The cooperation ensured that management processes were correctly mapped and problematic media and system discontinuities were eliminated. Thanks to more efficient processes, the company was able to acquire additional mandates. It was also possible to save specialised staff through the improved structuring of meetings. Thanks to the task and order system, enquiries can be dealt with more quickly. Conclusion from the first experiences: The management of condominiums has not only become more efficient overall, but also more transparent.

Certimo’s employees can now digitally handle the work steps from the tendering of rental properties and tenant selection to the signing of contracts and deposit payments. The company thus saves a lot of time and can use it for other tasks and projects that were previously neglected in day-to-day business. Another benefit of digital filing and processes is the flexibility of the work location. This means that skilled workers can be recruited from a larger catchment area.

Behind the success is not simply a proptech solution, but the willingness to try out digital products, to actively support the further development of a promising solution with expertise and know-how, and to make the introduction of new processes and functions in the company as easy and convenient as possible. Facilitations were demonstrated for step-by-step onboarding and new procedures were documented in concise checklists. The decision to digitise new business completely and to digitise existing business only in the event of changes enabled a resource-saving rollout. Building on the successes, the next digitisation steps were planned.

Roche shows how Big Data enables smart management of commercial space. The jury particularly appreciates that the Roche team is not simply oriented towards what is technically feasible. The insight that the added value is generated by end users and that technical innovations require a use case sharpens the focus on the essentials, especially in complex digitalisation projects: the company’s success. As part of the Smart Building Initiative, Roche collects building and facility data that supports employees and service providers in their work and makes the company more attractive, efficient and sustainable. In order to prepare relevant information and decision-making bases for buildings with varying degrees of automation, the Digital & Site Engineering team uses an open IoT (Internet of Things) platform and “use cases” that are developed with users.

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