For decades, commercial property owners focused primarily on location, parking, visibility, building condition, and lease rates. Those fundamentals still matter, but today’s tenants are increasingly dependent on something that wasn’t nearly as important when many commercial properties were originally built:
Technology infrastructure.
Whether the property is a neighborhood strip mall, professional office complex, or multitenant healthcare facility, reliable connectivity, communications, Wi-Fi, cybersecurity, surveillance, and other technology services have become essential to day-to-day operations.
American Technology Solutions & Cloud (ATSC) believes this creates an opportunity for property owners and managers to rethink technology as part of the building itself, and potentially as another value-added service provided to tenants.
From Commercial Property to Connected Property
Consider a typical strip mall.
One tenant may be a restaurant. Another may be an insurance agency, dental office, salon, retail store, financial services firm, or healthcare provider. Their businesses are very different, but nearly everyone depends upon internet connectivity and technology to operate.
Now consider a multitenant healthcare property.
Its tenants may include physicians, dentists, physical therapists, imaging centers, laboratories, behavioral health practices, pharmacies, or other healthcare providers. These organizations can have even greater requirements for reliable communications, secure connectivity, cybersecurity, and protection of sensitive information.
Traditionally, each tenant is left to assemble these services independently.
ATSC offers another approach.
A Technology Infrastructure Designed for the Entire Property
Instead of treating every tenant suite as an isolated technology project, ATSC can work with the property owner, developer, or management company to develop a technology infrastructure strategy for the entire facility.
Depending upon the property and tenant requirements, that strategy can incorporate:
- Business internet and redundant connectivity
- Managed network infrastructure
- Business-class Wi-Fi
- Cloud-based voice communications and UCaaS
- Structured cabling and fiber infrastructure
- Cybersecurity and endpoint protection
- AI-enabled video surveillance
- Data backup, archiving, and recovery
- Access control and security technologies
- Technology support and lifecycle management
The objective isn’t to force every tenant into an identical configuration. It is to establish a common technology foundation while allowing services to be customized for individual businesses.
The Multitenant Advantage
This model can create benefits for both sides of the lease.
For property owners and managers, a technology-enabled property can become more attractive to prospective tenants, simplify the technology conversation during move-in, provide greater standardization across the property, and create opportunities to offer additional tenant amenities.
For tenants, it can eliminate one of the headaches associated with opening or relocating a business.
Imagine signing a lease and being told:
“Your suite can be technology-ready when you move in.”
Instead of spending weeks coordinating internet providers, telephone companies, cabling contractors, Wi-Fi installers, security vendors, and IT companies, a tenant can work with an established technology partner that already understands the property.
That can be particularly valuable for healthcare practices where technology downtime can affect patient communications, scheduling, clinical workflows, and revenue.
Multitenant Healthcare Requires a Different Level of Planning
Healthcare facilities present additional considerations.
A medical practice isn’t simply looking for internet access and telephone service. Its technology environment may support appointment scheduling, patient communications, electronic health records, practice-management applications, cloud services, imaging systems, payment processing, and other critical applications.
Security is equally important.
ATSC can help healthcare property owners establish the building-level infrastructure while working directly with individual practices to address their specific communications, network, cybersecurity, backup, and technology requirements.
This creates a model in which the property owner provides the technology-ready environment, while each healthcare organization maintains the services, applications, policies, and controls appropriate for its operation.
Cloud Communications Can Become Part of the Property Strategy
Cloud-based communications are particularly well suited to multitenant properties.
Instead of installing and maintaining traditional premise-based telephone systems in every suite, tenants can use cloud communications services that are scalable and portable.
New users can be added as a business grows. Employees can communicate from the office, home, or mobile devices. Businesses can maintain their telephone numbers if they relocate, and multiple locations can operate as one communications environment.
For a property owner with facilities in several markets, the same basic technology strategy can also be replicated across locations.
Technology Can Help Differentiate Commercial Real Estate
Commercial property owners continually look for ways to make their properties more attractive than competing locations.
Technology can become part of that differentiation.
A prospective tenant comparing two similar properties may see significant value in a location where connectivity, communications, cybersecurity, Wi-Fi, and technology support have already been considered.
The conversation begins to change from:
“Here is your suite. Now go find your technology providers.”
to:
“Here is your suite, and we already have a technology strategy available to help get your business operational.”
That is a very different tenant experience.
One Technology Partner—Multiple Services
One of the challenges facing small and midsized businesses is vendor fragmentation.
The internet provider handles connectivity. Another company handles phones. Someone else manages Wi-Fi. Another vendor installed the cameras. Cybersecurity comes from somewhere else, and when something stops working, determining who is responsible can become an exercise in finger-pointing.
ATSC’s approach is designed around integration.
We can help property owners and tenants evaluate the entire technology environment and coordinate solutions across communications, connectivity, networking, cybersecurity, surveillance, cabling, cloud services, and ongoing support.
For multitenant environments, that creates an opportunity to establish a technology framework that can grow along with the property.
Building for the Next Generation of Tenants
Commercial buildings can remain in service for decades. Technology changes much faster.
The challenge for property owners is therefore not simply determining what technology tenants need today. It is creating an infrastructure capable of adapting to what they will need tomorrow.
Cloud communications, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, IoT devices, wireless technologies, remote work, patient engagement platforms, and increasingly connected business applications will continue changing how tenants operate.
The properties best prepared for that future will be those where technology is considered part of the strategic infrastructure, not an afterthought.
Is Your Property Technology-Ready?
Whether you own or manage a neighborhood strip mall, professional office building, medical office property, or a portfolio of multitenant facilities, ATSC can help evaluate the technology infrastructure already in place and identify opportunities for modernization.
We can also work with developers and property managers during renovations, tenant improvements, expansions, and new construction to develop a scalable technology roadmap.
American Technology Solutions & Cloud helps connect the property, the tenant, and the technology that keeps modern businesses operating.
Ready to Explore a Connected Property Strategy?
Contact ATSC to schedule a technology assessment for your commercial or multitenant healthcare property.
American Technology Solutions & Cloud
Empowering Your Business through Technology
