The Voice of the Customer

Hey friends, 

‍Nexus Lore unites us around the concept of a horizontal architecture—which will give building owners flexibility, control, cybersecurity, and the robust technology infrastructure required to enable the business outcomes they need. 

But that view is missing the ecosystem required to reach that future state. Buildings (and the industry supporting them) are transformed by humans and organizations of humans. 

Today’s newsletter is part 3 in our series about the humans we wrap around the tech stack to form the smart buildings ecosystem. Here’s a summary of the series: 

• Part 1: The two sides of the ecosystem: buyers and sellers—where do you fit? 
• Part 2: The buyer personas (last week) 
• Part 3: Voices of the buyer personas 
• Part 4: The seller-side ecosystem; launching our Partner Hub for sellers

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We have this saying in our industry: “every building is a snowflake.”  Do you say it? 

It’s true… but we shouldn’t let that be an excuse for inaction or resisting change. We can simplify the snow-flakiness by creating playbooks that apply to all buildings—as we’ve done for the technology stack. Every building is different, sure, but they all need a horizontal architecture. 

Every real estate organization is a snowflake too. And just like with the tech stack, we can simplify it by breaking it down into common patterns. 

We can speak in general about what’s true for each facility manager, each sustainability manager, or each chief information officer. And from that perspective, we can dive into what’s special about an individual organization. 

Ready? Let’s do it. 

Facility Management

Facility managers are responsible for maintaining the organization's buildings and building systems, including HVAC, plumbing, electrical, lighting, access control, and security systems. Buildings must be safe, clean, and comfortable for occupants, plus meet all relevant health and safety standards. 

The facility management team is managed by the facility manager (FM), but includes internal engineering/maintenance technicians and a slew of external vendors and contractors who are always performing repairs, scheduled maintenance, and upgrades. All of that costs money—and the FM manages the organization's property budgets, including tracking capital and operational expenses (CapEx and OpEx) and identifying cost-saving opportunities.

Sounds overwhelming, right? I’ve met very few FMs that aren’t overwhelmed by everything on their plate. Their budgets are always shrinking, good people to help them are elusive (and retiring!), and they’re always caught between the needs and expectations of many different stakeholders. 

Technology conversations with FMs must meet them where they’re at: 

• We can’t make them more overwhelmed. 
• We can’t give them a solution looking for a problem—they ain’t got time for that bullsh*t! 
• We can’t bog their already short staff down with useless “insights”. 
• We can’t have a negative impact on their budget, even if might meet a corporate goal. 

Sustainability

Speaking of corporate goals, the sustainability team is responsible for setting targets for the organization's carbon emissions and resource consumption, then working to reach those targets through initiatives such as renewable energy projects and building retrofits.

The definition of “sustainable” is always ratcheting upwards, so the sustainability leader must stay up-to-date on the latest trends and regulations while developing the reports and earning the certifications required to communicate progress and compliance to all relevant stakeholders, including customers, employees, investors, and other departments. Most sustainability teams are incomplete without data analysts, who gather data and perform magic in Excel to crunch the numbers (and fill data gaps) supporting those reports. 

Real talk: sustainability has historically been bolted onto the real estate organization, meaning it’s not integrated into the core business. That reality means these teams must be adept collaborators, salespeople, and change managers. Sustainability can’t happen at the corporate level without the FMs on the ground buying in. And speaking of buying, procurement teams must change the way the real estate organization buys stuff to reach sustainability targets. 

Technology conversations with sustainability teams must meet them where they’re at: 

• We can’t give them another data silo or ignore all the other tools and processes they already use. 
• We can’t act like technology will save them while ignoring the organizational resistance to change they’re up against. 
• We can’t leave out the stakeholders that will actually get them to their targets, e.g. FMs!
• We can’t actually ask them to buy something if they lack their own budget. 

Technology 

Technology teams are responsible for aligning the organization's overall technology strategy and program with the organization's goals and objectives. 

They manage the organization's IT and OT infrastructure, including devices, networks, servers, cloud resources, and data layers. Crucially, they’re responsible for the cybersecurity program, including implementing security protocols and monitoring for potential threats. 

Sitting on top of that infrastructure is the software used by all corners of the organization, including facility management, sustainability,  property management, financial systems, and customer-facing platforms. They’re here to understand each department’s technology needs and ensure they are being met. 

Finally, they’re managing an IT budget and ensuring that the organization is getting the most value from its technology investments. The OT budget might reside under the FM, and they must coordinate accordingly. 

Technology conversations with technology teams must meet them where they’re at: 

• Not only is technology rapidly evolving, but the vendor marketplace is too. The sales pitches are exhausting and we can’t act like it’s not. 
• We can’t propose tech that makes their stack less secure, or that ignores their data policy. We must listen to what they want rather than assuming they haven’t thought about it. They have. 
• We can’t upgrade devices without considering the network and connectivity requirements. On the flipside, we can’t propose new technologies while neglecting their legacy systems that are difficult to maintain or update.
• We can’t neglect “day 2”, as not all technology organizations have the support staff to maintain technology infrastructure across the whole portfolio. 
• We must help them find the right balance between security and functionality in a world with increasing expectations on occupant experience. 

Finally, when we speak to all three of these “buyers”, we must remember that they aren’t actually on different teams. They’re part of the same organization with the same goals. These organizational silos need to exist, but the technology strategy for the organization must sit across all of them. 

And as we build up to the launch of our Partner Program, we’re selecting partners that think this way too. One stack, many outcomes. 

What do you think? 

—James Dice, Founder and CEO of Nexus Labs

P.S. We reached out to Nexus Pro members who sit in each of these departments and asked them: What’s on your mind right now? I loved reading their answers. Members can check out that deep dive below.

Facility Manager, Higher Education

What's on your mind right now?  

Budgets (which are tight) and staffing (it has been difficult to find qualified techs, so we're having to bring in less experienced people and train them)

What are your top goals/initiatives for the year? 

Use our new CMMS data to better inform investments.  Drive down energy use due to increasing rates. Standardize our BAS.

What frustrates you about technology providers that every FM feels across the board?‍

Everyone has "the" solution but few understand the hoops that we have to jump through to purchase said solution.  And most of the solutions don't integrate with what we have easily, and half the time it's not a solution I need (a solution looking for a problem).

Which jobs to be done are you investing in this year? 

• cleaning - we're starting to explore some robotic vacuum cleaners, and have been migrating to green cleaning to include purchasing our own on-site generator of Hypochlorous Acid (HOCI)
• comfort - we've been steadily upgrading our campus BAS to a single platform 
• maintenance - we rolled out a new CMMS this past year and are spending a lot of time and effort to get it populated to start repeating the benefits of better tracking our efforts
• energy - we've been piloting FDD through a 3rd party commissioning agent
• data mgmt - trying to standardize our BAS naming conventions and graphic standards as we upgrade BAS
• occupant experience - trying to make it easy for occupants to submit issues with their facilities with our new CMMS, which has an app people can download on their smart device
  

Sustainability Manager, Multifamily

What's on your mind right now? 

• Data coverage – access to actual consumption data remains a key issue in both multifamily real estate and TripleNet real estate.  The relationship between the utility controlled meter is directly with the tenant in both cases, yet the owner of the property still needs the data to measure impact and for reporting purposes. Unfortunately, green lease options tend to be burdensome on the property management and require too many steps for both resident/tenant and the property staff to keep up with turn. It is further complicated by the lack of a uniform letter of authorization amongst utility providers, requiring customization of leases across portfolios. While there are technology solutions, the cost of equipment and monitoring make adoption challenging as the current cost still exceeds the return. This time of year we are busy collecting and QC’ing energy, water, carbon, and waste data for the upcoming 2023 reporting season. Top of mind is data quality and data coverage.
• Tenant Engagement - That same dynamic also means in multifamily real estate, we often lack operational control to make changes inside the resident/tenant controlled space. By lease, we are prohibited. This means we can’t simply use a BAS and adjust set points inside 70% of the energy consuming area. This inability to centrally control these spaces is why we don’t typically see BAS in multifamily with the potential exception of high rises. The control is the thermostat and the control is the residents. This means resident engagement is key. We have to be able to influence without having the ability to control.
  

What are your top goals/initiatives for the year? 

We are rolling out a property-facing data analysis platform to better enable us to organize and benchmark the energy, water, carbon and waste data in order to provide insights into where efficiency opportunities exist. In addition, we are expanding our waste service offering for our properties and rolling out a national energy procurement program.

What frustrates you about technology providers that every sustainability leader feels across the board?

The model of monthly subscriptions for device access for every sensor typically pushes the cost of implementation beyond the potential return. On scale, this model nearly always fails. The industry needs to learn from the submeter industry, in which data is transmitted on an internal network to data collectors which can reduce the amount of access points, lowering cost. This seems to be one of the biggest reasons why technologies fail to advance along the technology adoption curve.

Which of these are you investing in this year? 

Energy, trash, data management, tenant engagement

Chief Information Officer, Office Buildings 

What's on your mind right now?

Right Now – ‘all in’ on mobile credentials in the Apple Wallet  …with our first ‘go live’ this past week. A five-month slog on the first launch …and done in partnership with a major client of ours.

What are your top goals/initiatives for the year? 

• See above
• Integrating data sets/feeds into our operations, e.g., occupancy
• Figuring out how to converse in ‘carbon’ terms
• Expanding ‘energy efficiency’ tools
• Extending occupancy measurement beyond turnstile sites
  

What frustrates you about technology providers that every technology leader feels across the board?
Not partnering or creating forums for understanding and listening to the customer.

Which of these are you investing in this year? 
Lots of ‘activity’ across a breath of topics:

• security
• energy
• capital projects
• health
• data mgmt
• tenant engagement
• zero carbon
• assessments
• occupant experience
• cybersecurity
• network mgmt

IT Manager, Higher Education

What's on your mind right now?

My idle thoughts have been consumed with handling whole buildings like software projects.  I want to have all the benefits we have in software development but for buildings: tight feedback loops, version control, the ability to fail fast, rollback and try again. IT has amazing free and open-source tools for handling these types of challenges for some of the worlds most complicated technology challenges, how can I apply that to OT.

What are your top goals/initiatives for the year? ‍

Development and implementation of a smart building roadmap, with any luck it would include many of the following items:

• Automated project/endpoint backups
• Automated device deployments
  -DHCP/DNS
  -Self-service BACnet configurations
  -Integration with CMMS
• Device name standardization + metadata tagging
• Change management at scale

What frustrates you about technology providers that every tech leader feels across the board?‍

Lack of open information, lack of open tools, lack of standardization.

Which of these are you investing in this year?

• Vendor mgmt
• Data mgmt
• Network mgmt

👋 That's all for this week. See you next Tuesday!

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