ANNUAL REPORT YEAR 2006 15.2.2007 NAME OF THE PROJECT ICT as an Enabler for Conversion of Real Estate Business to Customer Focused Workplace Industry (REALISE) PERSON IN CHARGE Professor Reijo Sulonen SITES OF THE RESEARCH Helsinki University of Technology (HUT), Software Business and Engineering Institute (SoberIT), Department of Industrial Engineering and Management (DIEM), and Laboratory of Construction Economics and Management (CEM) PARTICIPANTS Professors: Reijo Sulonen, Eila Järvenpää, Jouko Kankainen Researchers: Ilkka Miettinen, Kaija-Stiina Paloheimo, Maria Paasivaara, Casper Lassenius, Antti Tuomela, Heidi Rasila, Nils Gersberg, Tomi Ventovuori, Suvi Nenonen, Jussi Kanerva Research assistants: Eero Uusitalo and Tuomas Niinimäki Abstract Real estate business is one of the business areas that is undergoing profound changes, and, at the same time, growing fast in Western countries, and in Asia as well. However, today end-user organizations, customers of real estate business, focus on their core business, and the ownership of facilities concentrates to professional owners, and services are procured from specialized service providers. To develop as a new industry, real estate business needs new innovative business ideas, models, and applications from other industries. Research and applications in service business, especially in industrial services, has increasingly developed in recent years. This knowledge can be applied and developed for real estate business. Applications of ICT (information and communication technologies) are comprehensively used in other industries, such as manufacturing, logistics or e-commerce. However, so far real estate business has not comprehensively applied ICT in its operations that in some important respects are apt to change. The concept of workplace, referring to the entire work environment with all the services, facilities, and ICT the organizations and their employees need in conducting their business and work, is a rather new concept. Using the workplace concept we can model and understand the combination of real estate business, services for end-users, and ICT applications needed. Workplace industry is seen as the result of development and merger of new business models in real estate business and in service business facilitated with mass-customized ICT applications for this industry. This study is a joint research project of three research units SoberIT (Software Business and Engineering Institute at Department of Information Technology), DIEM (Department of Industrial Engineering and Management) and CEM (Laboratory of Construction Economics and Management) that combines expertise needed to study the change in real estate business and the requirements the conversion of real estate business to workplace industry needs. Our goal is to provide new knowledge and understanding about different actors and their roles in emerging workplace industry, to analyse and develop service concepts for workplace industry, and to analyse the need for ICT applications for the workplace industry.