Kylie Davis:

Welcome to the Proptech Podcast. It's Kylie Davis here and I'm delighted to be your host as we explore the brave new world where technology and real estate collide. It's great to have you here and to share more stories of innovation and the opportunities across real estate, property and building services. Now, the aim of each episode is to introduce listeners to a Proptech innovator who's pushing the boundaries of what's possible across how we design, build, buy, sell, rent and invest in property and all of the associated behaviour around that. Now none of this would be possible without our sponsors. So a big shout-out to the team at Direct Connect, Dynamic Methods, the innovators behind Forms Live and Realworks Forms and the Proptech Association of Australia. Thanks so much everybody for your support of the podcast.

Kylie Davis:

Now my guest this week is David Bowie. No, obviously not that David Bowie, although, of course, he gets that response all the time. But David Bowie, the senior vice president and managing director of MRI Software Asia Pacific. David has a 25 year history in the technology space, working for companies including PWC, IBM, Dimension Data and SaaS. And if you're not sure who MRI Software is, well, they are a global real estate solutions company that purchased Rockend back in 2019. David joined MRI just before the pandemic broke out and since then, he's made an impact as a transformative leader who has also acquired several well known Proptechs, including Australian CRM Box and Dice and New Zealand Proptech who is on location. David's a big believer in the importance of strong organisational cultures. And in this interview, we talk about the role of longstanding tech suppliers in the innovation ecosystem and driving change in large organisations, including the best way to handle rusted on clients who may not wish to upgrade. So David Bowie, welcome to the Proptech Podcast.

David Bowie:

Thank you so much, Kylie. Wonderful to be here.

Kylie Davis:

It is great to have you here. So David, what is the MRI elevator pitch? It's always our first question.

David Bowie:

First question. So at the mission level, our mission is about transforming the way communities live, work, and play. And fundamental to that is what we call our open and connected tech platform. So, open and connecting you'll see is a theme through this podcast is one way we support and grow the Proptech industry. In the AMZ market, we've got about 300 employees now, so fairly substantial. And they are either developers, implementers or in the support side of the Proptech solutions we take to market. And they are across two major segments. The first segment is what we call MRI @Work and that's property and asset management solutions for owners, operators and occupiers of real estate assets. So, it's the big fee managers, many of Australia's REITs and so on. So, that's our @Work business.

David Bowie:

And then we have what we call our MRI Living business. Think of that is where people lay their head at night. It includes residential solutions for property managers. So we've got something like 1.2 million properties under management on our cloud-based platforms. Our strata manager is about 800,000 whats under management there. Sales agents on the CRM side, about 5,000 users. And actually about 25 social housing providers with about 60,000 properties under management. So those are the two segments that those 300 people focused on.

Kylie Davis:

Right. So, your elevator pitch, the summary of it, is that MRI delivers software and solutions to help manage property.

David Bowie:

Manage property, buy property, sell property, measure the investment in property, everything to do with a property aspect.

Kylie Davis:

Perfect. Okay.

David Bowie:

And ecosystem that goes around it.

Kylie Davis:

Yep. Perfect. Perfect. Love that. Cool. So, you're a fairly new CEO at MRI, you came on just before COVID hit from memory. What attracted you to the job?

David Bowie:

Well, listen I think, firstly, the real estate industry itself is such a fascinating space. And for me learning about it was part of the big attraction. A company that's investing in growth in this region was also a big attraction. And also I think, as an industry, it's fairly fragmented, probably not as far on the technology maturity curve as a lot of industries. I've been involved, in the banks and Telcos in my prior life. And I think there's a lot more that can be done with tech to enable business outcomes. And that potential of the industry was certainly exciting as well.

Kylie Davis:

So, what was your background? I know you had a dark past as an account-

David Bowie:

Well, that's in my dark past. The only thing that does for me these days is it helps me make sure that anything I do to do with tech is focused on business outcomes. But the last 30 years I've been in the tech industry. Various systems, integrators, management consulting and probably the last 15 years for a software company providing analytics solutions. So I do have the spent that data is a strategic asset and that certainly excites me in this industry as well.

Kylie Davis:

Oh yeah. There's so much untapped data that we still need to get our hands on, right?

David Bowie:

Yeah, that's correct.

Kylie Davis:

So what made MRI, because MRIs a global company, they took over Rockend about two or three years ago now, pandemic blurring the timelines as it has but what made MRI want to come into Australia?

David Bowie:

So we were already in Australia. So we had on the MRI work site about 40, 50 people providing solutions for the likes of JLL and some have been clients for 20, 30 years.

Kylie Davis:

Okay.

David Bowie:

So we were already there but the acquisition of Rockend was a significant step into the residential property management side. And for MRI as a global player, we've got something like two and a half thousand staff globally. We saw the APAC region as a key strategic growth pillar for us. And obviously within the APAC region Australia and New Zealand are fundamental to that. So it was a very natural step to step out of or step into the residential side as complimentary to what we already had here in Australia.

Kylie Davis:

Okay. But your acquisition hasn't ended at Rockend. You've been quite busy for the last six months or so or 12 months. You recently bought Box and Dice. And I think you've also bought What's On Location, which is a New Zealand Proptech.

David Bowie:

Who's On Location.

Kylie Davis:

Who's On Location. Sorry.

David Bowie:

There's a skip we could do there, of course.

Kylie Davis:

Yeah, what's on. Yeah. Who's on first. What was the thinking behind acquiring those two businesses? What do they let you do?

David Bowie:

Well since the acquisition of Rockend there's been three and all of them been this year. So never a dull day, I must say, Kylie. So Box and Dice was, when I went out and spoke to clients and being a newbie of the industry, I had to spent a lot of time listening to understand what was going on. And certainly there was a desire to simplify the ecosystem of technology and more growing trend towards having, well not one platform but more common platforms. And so it was a natural way of simplifying the ecosystem to offer, not just property management but also agency CRM. Where that strategically lead is starting to head towards having this concept of a single view of a customer and to be able to view them across the life cycle of the person rather than the life cycle of the property.

David Bowie:

As people move from being a tenant to a perspective buyer, to an owner, to a landlord, to a seller and build that relation there. So we saw Box and Dice as a key part of that evolution. And not that that's going to be for everyone but that is I think, somewhere where we'll start to head. And if you think about that life cycle of a person in the property ecosystem, the amount of services and so on, they consume over that lifetime is just huge. So, being able to have that single view, I think is important and be able to use the data is important. Probably the other thing we saw in Box and Dice is very strong footprint in Melbourne and Victoria in particular but not so much other states of Australia or New Zealand. And that's where we are strong. So we saw a natural synergy for us to be able to help fuel the growth of Box and Dice beyond just Melbourne and Victoria.

Kylie Davis:

Awesome. So I love this idea that, I mean, I love the way that you've encapsulated that, that we are moving away from a property centric view of what happens inside real estate to a customer or a person centric view. And that opens up a whole new world, doesn't it? Like that whole life customer for life and all the things you can add onto that. So, your vision is to help enable agents and property managers or businesses in the property space deliver that end to end customer experience.

David Bowie:

Yeah, absolutely. And it won't be just us. I mean, there's so many cool tech players out there and for many of them, we are going to be a channel to market for those innovations. So it won't be just us but I think, yeah the possibilities around data and the services that come with property is huge. So that's an exciting part of it. And I think there's plenty smart people in this industry who will figure out ways to capitalise on that as well.

Kylie Davis:

And does MRI need to own everyone that's part of your ecosystem or are you looking at plugging and playing?

David Bowie:

Yeah, plug and play. So that whole concept of being open and connected is about not trying to be all things to all people. I don't think you can constantly keep up with every innovation that is possible if you try and do it all yourself, that's not the way to innovation in our mind.

Kylie Davis:

Well, it gives you a very big tech debt.

David Bowie:

It does. It does. And so we certainly see ourselves as a platform play. The underlying opinions of the transactions you manage in your property environment, that's across all the solutions we have but bringing in some of the other, the innovations that might help deliver a better outcome, a more efficient outcome and a better experience.

Kylie Davis:

And so is that why you brought in Box and Dice? Is that bringing in or buying in innovation that you don't have part of your innovation strategy?

David Bowie:

Yeah. So if you talk about innovation for a sec, we see that innovation is about reducing time to value, as opposed to that's a definition I choose to use because I would never describe myself as a technologist per se. But if innovation is about reducing the time to value and recognising that innovation without business value is really just novelty. Our strategy around that has three paths to drive that innovation. The first is developing our own products. Of course you would expect our products are going to evolve that the trend towards cloud, that's going to continue drive innovation.

David Bowie:

And we need to come up with that. And sometimes for example, we do has rolled out some new capabilities in a particular function that came from a hackathon we had internally, a global hackathon that one of our teams here locally won and that's just rolled into production. So that's great when you have that ingrown innovation. The second path is so partnering with other Proptech companies. And I think we've got something like 165 partnerships here in Australia. Through organisations who are connected into our platform, some of those are just on the fringe, some of them are quite deeply embedded. So for example, we have a solution called Maintenance Plus, which is the white labelling of the solution from Bricks + Agents.

Kylie Davis:

Hey, Ralph, here you go [inaudible 00:11:59].

David Bowie:

Graph is indeed, that wasn't a paid advertorial either. I think that's about providing a white label solution, so less complexity but using the innovation and what was already placed with them, you might have also seen, fairly recently we also announced a partnership with Prop inc and that's bringing, they've got some great AI capability that we can bring to market throughout our channel as well. So there's that angle of innovation. And the third angle is around acquisition so that, an accelerative way of reducing time to value is sometimes to acquire the technology. And we are always on a lookout for complimentary solutions that might accelerate or reduce the time to value through our own innovation.

Kylie Davis:

All right. Let's explore that a little bit more because I love this idea and what I'm trying to push as a concept at the Proptech association is that there's lots of ways you can exit as a founder. You don't just have to hang in there and wait to become a unicorn because that doesn't necessarily work for everyone but there's lots of different successful ways that you can exit. Tell me about what the opportunity is for businesses, for Proptechs that get acquired by MRI. What does that offer them, offer the founders as a pathway?

David Bowie:

It's horses for courses. It really depends on the objectives of the founder, of the investors exiting as to what their personal objectives are. I think one of the things we've got now, what I'm really excited about, our business here in this region and why it's such a great learning experience for me to learn from some industry experts is, the leadership team I've got, some have been MRI for quite a long time some have come from Rockend. Michael Abbot was the CEO of Palace. He's on the leadership team now running our whole product strategy. So yeah and it depends and we've had different people move into different roles. So That brings that diverse thinking, it's not a sense of, we've got a bolt on acquisition but we do see the opportunity to give career paths and growth for people who've come from the acquired company in our business.

David Bowie:

So some look at it as great career opportunity to be involved in a, a significantly significant global Proptech from their small beginnings and maybe not having to worry about the day to day cash flow and those sorts of nitty gritty things and capitalise on the efficiency we have but others just want to exit, some want to put their feet up and retire. And so we don't have a prescribed model. I do really think, one of my biggest focuses is, it's not just about integrating the technology, it is about integrating a client base and the people. And I'll probably put more focus on that than the technology day one, to know how we're aligned to people's individual career goals and objectives.

Kylie Davis:

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Kylie Davis:

So what are your challenge? Let's talk a little bit about culture because I know that you and Chris Hanley have been talking recently and we had him on the show a couple of weeks ago and we had this aha moment where we all realised that actually, we've been talking about technology being a human issue ornately but I know that you've got lots of really interesting thoughts around the importance of culture in an organisation. So how does culture help you innovate?

David Bowie:

So I think they go hand in hand. Yeah, my view on innovation is it is absolutely linked to culture. I think culture creates the climate for the innovation by giving people the permission to challenge the status quo. Now in a small startup, that innovation typically gets directed at technology and that's appropriate and that drives great innovation. In a bigger company like us it's not just about the technology, it might be the way we do things. And so the favourite question I hate is in any big company, not just here is that's the way we've done things around here. You need to be able to challenge that and say, "Well, hang on, why do we do it that way? Is that still the best way? Is there some other way to do it??

David Bowie:

So I think creating an environment where it's safe to challenge the status quo is an important part of innovation and recognising the best ideas do not come from, certainly don't come from me. And often don't come from a leadership team. They often will come from a developer working on a hackathon. So creating a culture where people feel safe to challenge the status quo, in fact, actually feel even probably better than safe. They feel inspired to come up with new ideas and ways of doing things. I think that's a healthy culture around innovation. So yeah, that's the innovation lens to the culture, there's a whole other segue when you go down culture path, but we'll see.

Kylie Davis:

Yeah, no, well let's do that. Let's just take a minute to do that because I know you've got your vision and values and just run us through what they are again.

David Bowie:

Well, so I'll go back to a step above mission is, I put a purpose statement and our purpose, I think it's be driven by the way. And our purpose is that we believe people thrive in well connected communities. It's not a big statement but what it means is, at a technology level, how do we help our clients be connected with their stakeholders? So technology that allows a smooth interaction in, for a property manager, for a sales agent, whatever it is, there's a technology answer to that. There is a client partnership answer to that, which is you all want us to be connected with our client stakeholders. And that means having a voice of a customer, listening to what's the issues are in the industry. We've got a client advisory board, those sorts of things to connect with the customer. Actually, if I could throw in a plug, we've actually just launched our voice to the property manager survey.

Kylie Davis:

Go for it.

David Bowie:

I'm sure if I ask you nicely, we can put a link with a podcast-

Kylie Davis:

We certainly will. No, we love links. We love links.

David Bowie:

Love the links.

Kylie Davis:

Links and shoutouts. We love them.

David Bowie:

With that angle of connection. But the other thing is important is, people thrive and well connected communities in today's COVID world, more than ever. Things like mental health are real issues and connecting internally is an important part of mental health and wellbeing. And I think again you want people to go home feeling good about themselves when you finish your working day and you can't separate work and life these days, it's impossible. So you want to make them more synonymous so people can thrive not just in their home environment but in their work environment. And I think that's an ongoing challenge for any business is to bring those sorts of conversations around mental wellness and so on to the table. Because if we are connected as an industry, we will all thrive. And there's room for competition, there's room for things not to always work out. But I think that sense of connection is important.

Kylie Davis:

Cool. I'm going to ask, I'm going to go backwards a little bit and ask you a question that I feel like I missed out before. But if I am a Proptech who is interested in integrating with MRI and again, this might be another link in the show notes kind of question but how do you do that?

David Bowie:

Typically it comes from, it'll come from one of two ways. It'll come from people reaching out to us and saying, "Hey, we've done this great thing. How about a connection?" That's one way. There's probably three, actually. The second is, "Hey, listen, we are already doing this stuff with some of your clients and they'd like us to be more tightly integrated. Can we do an integration?" And the third area is, we go looking as well. So if we think there's a gap in our product portfolio that we think a partner might have a core solution, we will go looking as well. So it can be outbound if you like.

Kylie Davis:

Awesome. So, that's a great segue to the next question, which is, what do you think the challenges are? What do you see the challenges are that your customers are facing at the moment?

David Bowie:

It's, putting up efficiency probably at the top of it. I think you might just develop ways of doing more with less and doing it in an integrated fashion, given that very now mobile diverse workforce.

Kylie Davis:

That's a whole time to value conversation, isn't it? Yeah.

David Bowie:

Time to value and decluttering their day to day. So they're focused on value added tasks and is tied with mental wellness. People get frustrated if they can't get their job done easily. At the moment they're and this is vision rather than presence. So yeah, it is about fewer systems, more seamless workflow processes, those sorts of things to get to that sense of connection in my environment. I think there's that efficiency challenge. I think that the challenge around things like staff retention and culture are very real as well. I ran a panel at our client event, a few months ago back in May, I think it was. And around the question of staff retention in the property management industry. And there's no question that some of the turnover stats are quite significant.

David Bowie:

And so being able to integrate, bring people in from a client service background into a role like property management, get them up to spare it quickly, give them the data, the systems, the tools, I guess the organisational knowledge that allows them to be up to speed with the relationships with landlords and tenants more rapidly is important. So I think that whole sense of dealing with attrition in the industry and making it smoother for people to join but also then hopeful want to stay longer, is an important part of that. So I think there's that and I think the other one is around consolidation and challenge the industry is, well, which bets do I place? And what are the relative pros and cons of the different types of directions I can go around Proptech. So you published an article a couple months ago on the different startup, to scale up, to mature organisations in that ecosystem. And I think that was important to know the difference and what you get depending what your choice is and what your appetite is for those different scenarios because-

Kylie Davis:

Yeah, for the risk that, what your appetite for risk is.

David Bowie:

Well, exactly. And you, whether you want to be a leader or a follower, whether you want to be risk safe or risky, all those sorts of things because it is a very, very fragmented industry. I think that'll change over time. I think there will be more consolidations in the industry. Innovation is great, not every innovation makes it to delivering a business outcome and survives. You Want to create an environment where people give things a go and that can flourish when it solves a real business problem.

Kylie Davis:

Yeah. Well it'll certainly consolidate if you guys keep going the way going, right?

David Bowie:

Well, we'll do a few.

Kylie Davis:

I know, there's lot more out there. I can recommend a few.

David Bowie:

Depending who are active that's for sure.

Kylie Davis:

So we talked a little bit about, so you mentioned just before the problems that your customers are facing. We are seeing, we are very likely to see a big resignation. They're talking about the great resignation that's going to hit after COVID. And I read an interesting report by a group called Employment Hero, which were taking, had done their own data search. And they were an Australian group that was saying, they are estimating about 48% of employees are thinking of resigning and moving jobs in the next six to 12 months post COVID. What is the... And we know from the Voice of Property Managers, the last survey that came out a while ago, that the average time a property manager is in their job was what about two years or something that was and maximum was around about six. So when these are not really long term careers for the majority of women that take up the profession, what's the industry going to look like if we see some of that kind of resignation levels?

David Bowie:

I think there's a couple of things around the way culture helps people engage within the business regardless of the industry. So, some of it will be specific to real estate others generic. I do think having purpose beyond just task is important. I think we've got to give people the why, especially the younger generation, the millennials have a strong sense of purpose. How we making a difference in people's lives? How we making it better? How do we feel like we're contributing to purpose is important. So to me, that means, especially for senior leaders in the industry is to create the why and trust people to work out the what and how. I do also think, I like to use the term work life integration rather than work life balance. We touched on this before they do merge.

David Bowie:

So and I think that should be encouraged. I think there is a positive benefit of allowing that integration to happen. And COVID accelerated some of that thinking, certainly my own. I've progressed hugely in how I would adapt and adopt and embrace a more diverse working environment. So I think work better and work life integration is not feeling you have to leave your values at the door. I think feeling that you can be yourself in the work environment as you can at home. And whether that's a gender thing, whether it's a sexuality thing, whether it's religion, whether it's family, all those aspects of diversity, I think, need to come alive in a culture that thrives because in the great resignation, people will be able to find a company that meets all their values. It's not just about money. It is about purpose and interest and alignment to people's personal story. And it's going to be different for everybody. It's a good challenge for leaders.

Kylie Davis:

Yeah. Well, I think it definitely is because what we saw during COVID was that those companies that had innovation in place that meant that they could mobilise their workforce, their agents and their property managers at home quickly. They were much better set up than companies who still had tech sitting under the desk that needed people to be physically in the office to manage it.

David Bowie:

Well, exactly. So and that won't work in the future span, then I don't think businesses will be able to survive with that.

Kylie Davis:

Yeah. But if we embrace that kind of cloud and that more flexible work practises, then the type of people that we can invite into the industry and the opportunities that we have to grow the workforce and is much stronger than what we have at the moment. So this whole complaint about not having enough people out there who want to do the job starts to actually change. Let's just take a short break and hear a quick word from our sponsors.

Kylie Davis:

Do you run a Proptech business or are you the founder of a Proptech? Make sure you join the Proptech Association of Australia. It's Australia's new, not for profit association made up of tech people who are passionate about the property industry and committed to improving experiences in how we buy, sell, rent, manage, build and finance property. Joining will give you access to events and networks across Australia and globally to help help you promote and grow your business. Go to proptechassociation.com.au And follow the prompts to join. We talked about what the challenges are that your customers are facing and what's MRI doing to try and address some of those challenges? Did we talk about that?

David Bowie:

Yeah, well, no, we didn't. One of the big things we do, even if we did, I clearly missed the point. One of the, client centricity is a really important part of that. So really listening and understanding what the problem is. So you can't assume the answer is the blue widget versus a red widget. You got to look at what's the core of the problem and how, what are innovative ways of solving it. So I think that clients come to innovation being aligned to a business outcome and not for the sake of it. So I think client centricity is an important part of that. And I think wrapping it around things like change management, recognising that to change new systems, especially when people are remote requires a fair bit of focus. So we are putting, we're building out a client experience team.

David Bowie:

And part of that is about making sure the experience of adapting to new technologies is a positive one, so that people readily adopt it rather than being forced down that path. Because yeah. And I think we want in terms of some of those other challenges that we talked about that are not necessarily related to technology, things like culture and working environments. Yeah, we want to contribute to industry. We want be an active player in industry in having the conversations, in listening to the conversations and hopefully adding value to businesses in ways other than just providing tech.

Kylie Davis:

So, a lot of the original Rockend products and the MRI, you have products that have been around for a long time. How do you get those rusted on clients to adapt to innovation or to upgrade with you? Are you carrot and sticking them or what's the-

David Bowie:

The roles are mostly carrot then stick, to be honest. We as a company, as a philosophy, don't actively try an end of life product. We don't like to force people to move off if there's a significant base of clients who really want to stay where they are, we won't force them. So we do have clients on Altech who want to stay there and that's fine. We absolutely believe that the future is the Cloud. And we actively either develop, acquire, integrate with Cloud Solutions to provide more capability in the Cloud, even if it's not the whole solution on the Cloud, the ability to do your day to day job in a more mobile way is important. So it is more carrot than it is stick I'd say, based on that, rather than just forcing people to move. Would it be great if everyone would moves in the next year? Yep, that would but I don't think that's realistic and we'll go at a timeframe that suits the clients.

Kylie Davis:

And what about at that kind of cutting edge element for a company as big as MRI, how do you try and accommodate your clients who are urging you to maybe do more or innovate more?

David Bowie:

There is always a desire to do more. And it's, we can't do everything. The important part of strategy is what we say no to and that's why I think our innovation strategy having three prongs is about trying to keep up with the pace because I don't think we can do it all ourselves. Hence partnering and acquisitioning is also part of bringing that innovation to bear. It's always a tension point and to me it is about being clear on what bets we place and really doubling down on that and the markets we choose rather than trying to be all things to all people.

Kylie Davis:

It's good tension to have though, isn't it? It keeps you alive.

David Bowie:

Yeah, that's right.

Kylie Davis:

Lets you know, you're alive. What do you want MRI to be known for under your leadership?

David Bowie:

I think, I treat it as great honour being here and having a senior role in this industry. I don't take you for granted. I think I'd love to get to the point where we are seen as setting a benchmark for the industry. As aa mature player, I think we've got a duty to be a good citizen in the industry, that we set a benchmark for what good player relationships look like over the long term and that we are a player that acts with integrity and we've supported others in the ecosystem to do well. So I think that partnership at a client level and a partner level and having a good reputation that is key.

David Bowie:

And I think the second thing I'd also say is that an internal culture that the people who've been here have developed their own skills, their own innovation and are future leaders in the business and that they look back on their careers, whether they're here or somewhere else and say, "I learned something at MRI. I learned what good leadership was about. I learned technology skills. I learned what a good team looked like and I'm able to take that learning forward in my own career." So the people look back fondly at the time at MRI and say, "I grew." Because I think for everybody, you don't stay at one company forever and anyone who does is crazy. So you hope people are always growing and developing would be my internal goal while I'm here.

Kylie Davis:

Alright. And what about your external goal? What do you want clients to-

David Bowie:

And it's about our client relationship so that we've got a reputation for client relationship and we do what we say, that we are trusted, that whenever there's a problem we will muck in and get it sorted, we never back away from a challenge. And I think as, again, a player with scale that responsibility and integrity in the industry. And I think that we've contributed to the industry itself, that we're not just in it for ourselves, that we're in it to contribute to the growth and reputation of the industry.

Kylie Davis:

Awesome. So, David, to wrap up the interview, we always ask our guests to look into, get the magic eight ball or the crystal ball out and tell us, what do you think are the technology trends out there that are going to impact real estate and property management over the next five years?

David Bowie:

You Kylie, I put the disclaimer in earlier that I wouldn't describe myself as a tech innovator per se. So I'm probably not going to give you some wild idea to go and invest in that's going to make gazillions of dollars.

Kylie Davis:

That's all right. I've got more than enough ideas on who I want to invest in. I've just-

David Bowie:

So, but my view is I think increasingly we'll see technology being artificial intelligence lead. And what that means is that organisations realise their data is a strategic asset. It's something that your competitors don't have. They can replicate your technology, they can't replicate your data. So it needs to be used for benefit. So I think that's a really important trend. Data is a strategic asset. I think the other one is about and it's related to that first one, is about knowing your customer through their, the life cycle of their journey, knowing them as a person, not as attachment to a property. And that applies across the spectrum. And I think it's no longer one size fits all, our marketing to a customer needs to take account of where they are in their life journey because the services and the propensity to buy those services changes over time.

David Bowie:

So I think data, used well facilitates that ability to know your customer. And I think the third trend I would say is your consolidation in the industry, I think it is fragmented, that makes it difficult for everyone to survive and thrive. Clients probably want a more, a simpler landscape to navigate. So I do think there will be some aspect of that and clients are suffering from subscription fatigue, if I call that. Now they don't want to have to have 20 different systems to run their business. They want to narrow it down to those that can really grow with them and scale and still innovate.

Kylie Davis:

Yeah. No I completely agree. Well, look, David, thank you so much. It's been awesome to have you on the Proptech Podcast. Thanks so much for your time.

David Bowie:

Thank you, Kylie. Love chatting and we'll hopefully catch up again in person.

Kylie Davis:

Hopefully we won't do this again next week, right?

David Bowie:

That's when I [inaudible 00:35:14].

Kylie Davis:

Now during that interview, you may have heard a few references to it being our second take confession time. We had a really large electrical storm when I did the first interview, which freaked my dog out and just as the interview started and I actually forgot to hit record on the Zoom if you can believe it. A fact I realised just as we were finishing up but David was extraordinarily gracious and immediately agreed to redo the interview saying he wanted a practise run anyway. And my face was the colour of my red shirt. I think this is a sign of a really good CEO. Someone who recognises that we can all be fallible and human and make mistakes but also understands the importance of keeping your eye on the and goal and being flexible and good human in getting there. I also really like the MRI approach to acquisitions.

Kylie Davis:

It's common when big firms buy smaller innovative companies for them to break the newcomer by imposing their way of doing things. And it's great to see that MRI is adopting different integration models based on the goals of the original founders and their own career aspirations. And I'm looking forward to interviewing Travis from Box and Dice shortly too. There are lots of different ways to exit a startup or scale up and not every Proptech will be a unicorn. Selling to a bigger player is a great exit as well, especially when the bigger player is happy to incorporate your career goals into how they adopt and embrace your technology. Now, MRI when they were Rockend together with realestate.com.au domain and call logic are what I would call the founding fathers of Australian Proptech. So it is great to see them playing such a positive role in supporting innovation and as the author of the original Voice of Australian Property Manager's Report, I am really looking forward to getting stuck into the new data set.

Kylie Davis:

So if you're a property manager, please click the links in the show notes and fill out the survey. It will take just a few minutes. Now, if you have enjoyed this episode of the Proptech Podcast, I would love you to tell all your friends. Check out all our episodes on theproptechpodcast.com or drop me a line either via email, LinkedIn or Facebook. You can follow this podcast on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Anchor and Apple iTunes or anywhere good podcasts are heard. I'd like to thank my podcast, producer, Charlie Hollands and the fabulous Jill Escudero and our sponsors Direct Connect, making moving easy. Dynamic Methods, the name behind Forms Live, REI Forms Live and Realworks. And the Proptech Association of Australia. Australia's peak industry bodies supporting the flourishing Proptech community. Now, if you're an Australian or New Zealand Proptech, who would like to be on the show, drop me a line via LinkedIn or kylie@Proptechassociation.com.au. Thanks everyone. Until next time, keep on Propteching.