Digital transformation in commercial real estate still struggles to scale

By Allan Fourie, International Tech Product Lead, JLL Technologies

In a recent CRE roundtable discussion in partnership with the UK PropTech Association, one message was clear, it’s no longer about if digital transformation matters, but how to make it work.

Across landlords, operators, and PropTech leaders, there was clear agreement: tech investment in commercial real estate is accelerating beyond efficiency alone. Priorities for the next 12–24 months include operational optimisation, data unification, AI adoption and a single source of truth, while current investment is still driven by efficiency, cost reduction, and competitive pressure.

Yet while investment appetite is growing, scaling digital initiatives remains difficult.

The clearest barrier identified by participants was not budget or even technology itself, it was culture. In a live polling, 67 per cent of respondents identified cultural resistance as the primary reason digital initiatives fail to move beyond pilot stages.

That finding aligned closely with the discussion in the room- technology often moves faster than organisations are prepared to absorb it.

A recurring point was that many digital projects still begin with leadership enthusiasm but lack operational ownership. In many cases, the team purchasing the technology is not the same team expected to use it every day. Without early involvement from users, clear accountability and visible sponsorship from senior leadership, even well-funded initiatives struggle to gain traction.

Participants also noted that commercial real estate continues to wrestle with fragmentation. Many organisations operate across multiple systems, vendors, and regional workflows, making integration far more complex than it first appears. Several attendees described portfolios where buildings are still selecting technology asset by asset rather than through a unified strategy. This creates inconsistency, slows scale and makes ROI harder to prove.

That complexity is one reason why change management emerged as another dominant theme. More than half of respondents in the room said the greatest thing each side underestimates, whether landlord or technology provider, is the effort required to manage organisational change.

Technology capability is rarely the only challenge; adoption depends on how well people understand why a system exists, how it improves their work and what outcomes it should deliver.

AI inevitably became part of the conversation, but notably in a more mature way than many technology discussions of the past year. Rather than focusing on novelty, attendees focused on governance, accountability, and practical application. There was a strong consensus that AI’s most immediate value lies in data management, surfacing insight faster, and improving decision-making, particularly in environments where teams have historically depended on individual spreadsheets, manual reporting or siloed knowledge.

At the same time, there was caution. Poor data quality remains a concern, as does cybersecurity and data provenance. Several participants stressed that while “bad data in, bad data out” remains true, waiting for perfect data is increasingly seen as its own risk. Organisations that delay experimentation may simply fall behind. The financial lens remained constant throughout the discussion: if technology does not clearly save money, make money, or protect value, adoption slows.

That means ROI conversations are becoming sharper. Efficiency alone is no longer enough as a narrative; financial defensibility is becoming the standard for approval.

Perhaps the most important takeaway here is that digital transformation in commercial real estate is no longer a technology conversation alone, it is increasingly a leadership conversation. The leaders will become the ones who tie it to organisational confidence, cross-functional ownership and the ability to move from experimentation to embedded operational practice.

The sector has historically moved cautiously, but expectations are changing quickly. Smart buildings are becoming baseline expectations and tenant demands mean the office continues to evolve. AI is accelerating how decisions can be made across portfolios.

For commercial real estate leaders, the challenge now is less about finding the next tool, and more about building the internal conditions that allow the right technology to create measurable value.