Jan C. Laufs
Management Board Germany

Driving down costs is a dominant part of today’s corporate agenda and within the CRE domain it is ‘knocking on’ to extract as much cost efficiency as possible on leases, space utilisation, facilities management, energy consumption and so much more.

And having the same agenda, real estate services providers are continually optimising their own cost structures and efficiencies to offer highly competitive pricing. Yet there is a growing concern that outsourced services are being procured on a cost basis and nothing else, and decision-makers’ eyes are shooting straight to the bottom line of the contract pitch. Is it because service providers are perceived by CRE teams as looking, sounding and acting so similarly that they no longer have points of differentiation. Are we all the same?

We, of course, would disagree. Being even handed, service providers ‘are’ different, with greater and lesser qualities, and unique cultures. Importantly, our value is not in a corporate cost saved, but in the deep quality of expertise and experience – backed up with a considerable investment in people and technology – that can discover and extract opportunity, value and innovation in real estate that will support tomorrow’s winning businesses – whose success will be founded more on quality than cost.