Revolutionizing Real Estate And Facilities: AI-Enabled CRE Software Transforms Critical Business Processes

Commercial real estate and facilities professionals at large enterprises face the demanding responsibility of managing diverse, capital-intensive portfolios across multiple locations. To effectively plan for enterprise growth, they require consistent visibility into portfolio performance, capital and operating expenses and prevailing market conditions.

This complexity is heightened by industry-specific challenges, including intricate rental terms, complex ownership and lease-sublease structures, compliance with accounting standards, and evolving environmental, social and governance regulations. The scale and intricacy of these responsibilities can overwhelm even the most experienced teams as they balance operational efficiency with broader organizational goals.

Cloud-native, artificial intelligence-powered platforms like Nakisa are transforming how enterprises manage real estate portfolios, streamlining critical business functions, enabling rapid visibility and optimizing costs across global operations.

“Our Nakisa Integrated Workplace Management System, IWMS, offers a modern, efficient alternative to the legacy systems enterprises have relied on for real estate management,” said Ashwath Muralidharan, director of business development and strategy at Nakisa.

Through its work with industry leaders such as Walmart, Exxon, BP, 3M and Delta Airlines, Nakisa has observed how effective automation can deliver significant value, often exceeding $2M for large portfolios, he said.

Muralidharan added that by automating recurring portfolio management tasks, enterprises can achieve substantial operational savings, reduce errors and free teams to focus on strategic initiatives.

Bisnow spoke with Muralidharan about technology revolutionizing CRE activities ranging from capital planning and portfolio management to lease accounting and facility maintenance. 

Advanced Capital Planning

Manual budgeting, offline deal reviews and Excel-heavy analysis often fall short of meeting the demands of modern CRE teams.

“Traditional approaches lack centralized information and real-time analytics, which are critical for precise, data-driven capital planning and site selection,” Muralidharan said.

Nakisa’s cloud-native IWMS bridges this gap with scenario planning tools that allows teams to compare multiple sites side by side across operational and financial key performance indicators. The platform integrates live market data and performs in-app financial analyses, including cash flow, net present value and internal rate of return calculations.

“By centralizing this wealth of information, Nakisa enables CRE professionals to make timely, informed decisions rooted in actionable data,” Muralidharan said.

AI-Assisted Portfolio Insights

AI is transforming how CRE professionals operate. True assistive and generative AI capabilities, embedded within the software platform, enhance user workflows by automating tedious tasks. For instance, bulk uploads of lease documents are processed with the Nakisa AI Co-Pilot, which extracts, summarizes and highlights critical data points such as rent escalations and renewal clauses.

Muralidharan said that CRE professionals can also interact with the Nakisa Co-Pilot chatbot to access quick insights and analytics without manually searching through lease data.

“These tools significantly reduce time spent on manual inferences while ensuring real-time portfolio insights for better decision-making,” he said.

Integrated Lease Management and Accounting

Managing commercial spaces often involves complex lease structures, including embedded and sandwich leases, multi-currency transactions and sales-based rent. Muralidharan said that traditional tools often struggle with these intricacies. Nakisa IWMS, in turn, can meet those specific requirements by consolidating lease management, portfolio analytics and accounting compliance into a single solution and offering purpose-built features for each.

Nakisa automates multifactor rent calculations, handles reconciliations for maintenance, taxes and insurance and manages lease concessions like rent-free periods or tenant improvement allowances. It also ensures real-time tracking of lease events and proactive alerts to eliminate errors and manual inefficiencies.

“Nakisa’s assistive AI translates complex lease terms into actionable data, ensuring compliance with contractual agreements. Our in-app workflows then allow teams to manage all ‘Day 2’ asset events with multimodal notifications, role-based approvals and dashboard summaries for timely insights and actions,” Muralidharan said.

A strong platform bridges the gap between real estate and finance teams, offering a seamless flow of financial and general ledger data between upstream systems and enterprise resource planning, or ERP, platforms. Nakisa achieves this natively with major ERPs like SAP, Oracle, and Workday. This eliminates common issues such as manual postings, data duplication, discrepancies and delays, ensuring synchronized data across departments. 

“Aligning financial and operational data in one solution enhances data visibility, streamlines audits, and simplifies compliance with IFRS 16 and ASC 842,” Muralidharan said. “For accounting teams, this integration can save more than 50% of work hours during month-end processes.” 

Intelligent Facility Management

Muralidharan said that effective facility management in large enterprises requires seamless coordination of space utilization, asset maintenance and work orders. True life cycle solutions centralize facility data and automate work requests, enabling efficient resource allocation, asset tracking and maintenance prioritization. AI-driven insights and predictive analytics further enable facility managers to preempt issues, reducing downtime and operational costs. 

“By integrating tactical facility operations with Nakisa’s portfolio management tools and smart building/Internet of Things platforms, Nakisa helps organizations enhance efficiency, sustainability and alignment with organizational ESG goals,” he said.

Looking to the Future

As CRE professionals navigate the complexities of real estate and facilities management, software leaders must deeply understand their evolving business processes, data needs and jobs.

The recently launched Nakisa IWMS is at the forefront of transforming CRE technology, offering precision and efficiency that surpasses outdated, on-premises legacy solutions, Muralidharan said. By integrating operations, analytics and compliance into a unified platform, Nakisa helps organizations streamline workflows, optimize costs and make informed, strategic decisions.

“Nakisa's advanced AI capabilities and seamless ERP integration redefine efficiency and drive the next generation of innovation for CRE and facilities management,” he said. “Trusted by global industry leaders and recognized as a disruptor in the IWMS space by Gartner, Nakisa equips enterprises with the tools they need to thrive in an ever-changing, competitive market.”

This article was produced in collaboration between Nakisa and Studio B. Bisnow news staff was not involved in the production of this content.

Studio B is Bisnow’s in-house content and design studio. To learn more about how Studio B can help your team, reach out to studio@bisnow.com.