Real Estate: understanding to optimise

In complex organisations, property is often the second-largest item of expenditure after staff costs. Yet it remains surprisingly opaque. Not because the data does not exist — but because it is fragmented, spread across different systems, functions, countries and people, with no single source of truth.

The starting point for any effective property strategy is not optimisation but understanding.

The simplest — and most difficult — question

When embarking on a process to optimise a property portfolio, the first question to ask the organisation is, on the face of it, a trivial one:

“What does your property portfolio look like?”

Behind this question, however, lie far more complex issues:

• How many properties are in the portfolio?
• Where are they located geographically?
• Which are leased and which are owned?
• Who occupies the spaces and to what extent?
• How much do they cost in terms of rent, management and services?
• Which suppliers work on the assets, and under what contracts?
• Which assets are critical? What is the energy consumption? What are the key risks?

In most cases, answering these questions requires weeks of gathering different data.

Invisible assets: a structural problem

This is a phenomenon that eFM frequently encounters, as explained by Andrea Bonelli, Strategic Account Manager, who has supported numerous organisations through this process:

“A newly appointed property manager spent the first two weeks of his tenure solely on compiling a list of the addresses of the organisation’s properties worldwide. Not because of a lack of resources, but because that information was not available in one place.”

Only after this exploratory phase is it possible to begin the actual strategic work: verifying the contractual status of each property, estimating occupied and under-utilised spaces, reconstructing rental costs and related deadlines, as well as mapping suppliers and facility management contracts.

This is not an exception. It is the most common situation in organisations operating across multiple sites and countries without an integrated digital platform for asset management.

From fragmented data to business performance

eFM has developed an operational model that guides organisations through a six-stage process, from basic visibility to the generation of measurable value:

• Unknown Assets → identification and inventory of assets
• Known Assets → establishing the foundations of visibility (location, type, ownership/lease)
• Connected Data → linking systems: occupancy, costs, suppliers, energy
• Portfolio Intelligence → transforming data into actionable insights (usage per m², energy performance, scenario analysis)
• Property Governance → accountability models, policies, intervention priorities, risk management
• Business Performance → cost reduction, capital optimisation, faster decision-making, agility and resilience

Each phase builds on the previous one. It is not possible to optimise what cannot be seen, nor to govern what is unknown.

Key questions to start understanding your property portfolio

Before making any investment in workplace strategy and space management, it should be possible to answer at least six categories of questions accurately:

• Buildings: where are the assets located? What are their main characteristics?
• Occupancy: who occupies the spaces? How are they used?
• Contracts: what are the terms, expiry dates and rental costs?
• Costs: what is the total cost of the property portfolio, per asset and per m²?
• Suppliers: which suppliers and contracts support the portfolio?
• Critical Assets: which properties require priority attention? What is their condition?

The real difficulty isn’t building the system. It’s retrieving the information.

Many organisations believe the problem is technological: they lack the right software, the right platform, or the necessary integration. In reality, the main challenge is organisational, process-related and information-based.

The data almost always exists. It is simply scattered across different business functions, non-integrated systems, local offices and contacts who do not communicate with one another. Collecting it, verifying it and consolidating it into a single source of truth is the most critical task — and often the most underestimated.

“The hardest part wasn’t building the dashboard. The hardest part was accessing the information.”

This is the operational reality that eFM encounters every day in the organisations it works with.

The first strategic question is simpler than it seems

Before discussing cost optimisation, portfolio strategies, remote working or the regeneration of workspaces, there is one question that every organisation should be able to answer with confidence:

“Do we really know what we’re managing?”

eFM supports organisations in building this awareness — through a systematic approach that starts with asset visibility and leads to the generation of measurable value for the business.