Glimpses into the digital future of the real estate sector

The criteria of practicality and direct benefits will determine which of the now countless digital innovations in the real estate sector will have long-term success – this is the consensus at this year’s OpenPromos user forum.

A diverse group of experts including Prof. Katarina Adams of the HTW Berlin and Prof. Manfred Helmus of the University of Wuppertal as well as lateral thinker Prof. Gunter Dueck and futurologist Max Thinius held sometimes entertaining and sometimes controversial discussions on the effects, the purpose and the absurdities of trends and innovations like artificial intelligence, blockchain technology, and building information modelling.

PROMOS presented concrete, innovative applications for the improvement and acceleration of real estate processes at the INNOVATION Lounge. The latest PROMOS solutions for using the new SAP Business Suite S/4HANA^® provided a glimpse into the digital future of property management and were very well received by the visitors.

But the event also presented smaller innovations like the integration of a donation function into the tenant app of a housing company affiliated to the Protestant church: Berlin’s Hilfswerk-Siedlung GmbH (HWS) used the forum’s opening to launch this additional feature of its tenant app, which was developed together with PROMOS. To celebrate the app’s activation, HWS presented a €10,000 donation to the charity Bread for the World.

“For acts of social responsibility, the barrier between paying lip service and actually taking action should be as low as possible. With the development of the donation function in the tenant app, we wanted to make things as simple as possible”, said Jörn von der Lieth, managing director of Hilfswerk-Siedlung GmbH. “Donating in the app is as simple for the tenant as pushing the donation button when returning deposit bottles”, added Jens Kramer, CEO of PROMOS consult. “For example, tenants can donate some of the credit balance of their utility statements to a vetted organisation of their choice listed in the app”.