First to Enable Intelligent Conversations in Commercial Buildings Using Messaging Tools

NEW YORK, NY – November 6, 2018 - Building Engines™, the commercial real estate (CRE) industry’s innovation leader for property management solutions, today announced its new AI-powered intelligent building conversation platform, Bengie™.

Bengie by Building Engines provides an entirely new and easier way to interact with commercial buildings through chat. With Bengie, building tenants, staff and guests can use messaging to ask for assistance and information. Criticalactivities such as pre-clearing visitors or requesting service are now much easier to complete using natural language. Users of Bengie can also request updates on the latest building news, events, as well as receive important announcements. All activity is tightly connected to existing workflows in the Building Engines platform.

“We believe the next big advancement in property management is not delivered with more apps, but through real-time, intelligent conversations via the channels and tools most people already use every day—tools like SMS texting, Facebook Messenger, Slackand other messaging platforms. This will dramatically simplify communications and improve the user and tenant experience,” said Daniel Cozza, Chief Product Officer at Building Engines, Inc.

Building Engines’ latest research into the future of tenant experience shows the rise and proliferation of messaging among CRE tenants. Eighty percent of building occupants use messaging more than phone calls, email, social media, or video chat to communicate with friends and family. As they shift more and more toward these channels, a majority of tenants now want their commercial property managers to support them. Sixty-one percent expect that they will soon communicate with their buildings using messaging platforms. The full report is scheduled to be released later this year.

“The PropTech world is full of tenant mobile apps, but many people are reluctant to download and keep engaging with something so highly specialized,” said Phil Mobley, Head of Research at Building Engines, Inc. Mobley continued, “Our research indicates that many commercial building occupants would prefer to interact with buildings on the same messaging channels they already frequently use. These findings illustrate a mandate for commercial building owners to adapt to the evolving communication demands of modern occupants by meeting them where they already are.”

 

Bengie Builds Deeper Connections with More Occupants

With Bengie, building management teams can easily connect to anyone in the building without the need to manage constantly-changing contact lists or rely on message distribution from a limited set of tenant points of contact. Bengie solves this significant pain point without additionally burdening management with difficult setup or ongoing administration. Existing Building Engines workflow, notifications and permissions rules also assure that work requests are only submitted by users with proper authorization.

 A Powerful Conversational Engine Powered by AI

Unlike standalone, generic chatbots, Bengie is fully integrated with Building Engines’ comprehensive commercial real estate operation platform and workflows. The conversation platform is powered by AI and Machine Learning technology, so it can process and engage in natural conversation that becomes more intuitive and accurate as usage increases.

See Bengie in Action at MIPIM and Live Webinar

Building Engines will demonstrate Bengie in booth #A12 at MIPIM PropTech NYCon November 6, 2018 in New York, NY at the Metropolitan Pavilion.

Building Engines will also present a live webinar on Thursday, November 29 at 1:00 pm EST. Attendees can see a demonstration of Bengie and learn how to leverage messaging and chatbots to improve their tenant experience. Registration is available here.

Availability

Bengie is available in beta for existing Building Engines customers through the end of 2018 with general availability to new customers in early 2019. Those interested can request more information here.

About Building Engines

Building Engines is an operations platform for modern commercial real estate management connecting and aligning the people, processes, and activities required for better building performance. It provides operations teams with the data and insight they need to deliver amazing tenant service, maintain assets, improve operational efficiency, mitigate operational risk, and make better, data-driven decisions.

Building Engines clients include many of the leading public REITs, private owner-managers and third-party management firms operating over 2 billion square feet of multi-tenant commercial office, medical office, retail and industrial properties in the United States and Canada. www.buildingengines.com

 

 Press Contact

Anna Silva, Marketing Manager

asilva@buildingengines.com

(781) 902-8538

 

Building Engines and Bengie are trademarks of Building Engines, Inc. Slack is a trademark of Slack. Facebook Messenger is a trademark of Facebook.