Driving Digital Enablement in the Commercial Real Estate Industry

essensys, the intelligent digital backbone for commercial real estate delivering digitally-enabled buildings and spaces, accelerates growth in the Asia-Pacific region.

As working practices and the purpose of the office continue to evolve, office landlords and flexible workspace operators are looking towards technology to provide seamless experiences for their customers, react quickly to emerging market opportunities and realise smart building and environmental, social and governance (ESG) initiatives. Delivering easy access to on-demand digital services brings with it network complexity across spaces, buildings, and portfolios. It is not just about technology — it is about using the right technology to solve these problems.

Established in 2006 in the United Kingdom, essensys is a leading global technology company for commercial real estate. The essensys platform provides the foundation to create seamless portfolio-wide and in-building experiences, generate deep insights, reduce operational complexity at scale and meet evolving customer needs today, and in the future. In 2021, essensys set up its first office in Hong Kong, tapping into the business opportunities in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) market.

Hong Kong — Base to Accelerate Growth in APAC

According to Eric Schaffer, CEO of Asia Pacific, essensys, Hong Kong offers incredible opportunities for essensys’ business expansion. He stated, “Last year, as a strategic initiative, we embarked on our expansion journey into APAC. Since Hong Kong is a leading regional centre for the real estate industry and innovation and technology (I&T), it’s well-positioned for establishing essensys’ regional hub. In addition, the Hong Kong government provides excellent support for technology businesses to grow, including smart city development, promotion of cloud technology, and advanced information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure. Specifically, the government-supported Technology Voucher Programme offers great benefits to the industry, enabling some of our customers to invest in upgrading their digital infrastructure.”

He continued, “Hong Kong is a trendsetter for real estate industry standards and best practices in real estate. Many developers and workspace providers seek technology solutions to upgrade their buildings and deliver exceptional in-building and portfolio-wide experiences. With growing requirements for digital enablement and workspace transformation initiatives in the office asset class, there’s an obvious product-market fit.” By leveraging Hong Kong’s business-friendly environment and strategic geographical location in Asia, essensys has ramped up its presence in the region.

Higher Demands upon the Network

Technology has enabled the drive towards flexibility and modern hybrid working styles have completely changed the customer demand profile in commercial properties since the pandemic.

Schaffer said, “Consumers today expect ease of access to services, premium spaces, seamless experiences, amenities and greater technology enablement. Our platform solution combines best-in-class private cloud network architecture with proprietary software to automate network management and provisioning, all 100 percent purpose-built for the commercial real estate environment. By consolidating tens or hundreds of networks across a portfolio into one central converged network, the essensys platform removes the complexity of managing network connectivity across portfolios, buildings and spaces, and enables the secure delivery of digital services in real-time.” Schaffer added that the company’s strategy is to leverage both the supply-side and demand-side drivers of growth and evolution of the commercial real estate industry.

Schaffer remarked that Hong Kong has a strong and deep talent pool. “Local talent is equipped with good language skills, international perspectives, and professional knowledge that we need, particularly in the I&T and real estate industries. We plan to form a bigger team in Hong Kong to support our expansion in APAC,” he concluded.