October 201719 Most people see real estate as a very traditional industry. It's large, complex with many verticals that require a lot of resources, research, and manpower. As a sector, real estate has sustained and thrived over the years, staying on a steady course with only minor disruptions along the way.But as more and more business processes are becoming digitalised, many traditional industries have experienced disruption at the hands of new technology platforms ­ think about Airbnb's impact on the lodgings business, or Uber's effect on taxi companies. It's clear that technology is changing the competitive landscape in the real estate business now too. It's shaping the future of the built environment, it's changing the way we work, how we shop, play, and it will change how we transact real estate in the future too.As a professional services company, JLL's job is to serve our clients' real estate needs. That means helping companies be more productive and cost-efficient, and helping them use data to make smarter decisions about their real estate portfolios.In this increasingly tech-enabled world, real estate companies have to take an agile approach to technology that will allow them to meet the needs of today while preparing for the opportunities of tomorrow. And that goes for how we operate our internal processes as well, and in particular the finance function ­ the one that I'm responsible for at JLL in Asia Pacific.Keeping up with the speed of changeI am continuously amazed at the pace of change we've witnessed in the finance profession. When I first started out, I was in the internal audit department of a company and we spent a lot of time lugging heavy files around. The good news is we're doing a lot less of that these days given how much of our data is in the Cloud rather than on paper.CXO InsightsBY AGNES LIM, CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER - ASIA PACIFIC, JLLA TECHNOLOGY DRIVEN WORLD WITHIN JLLAgnes Lim
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