News on 01 December 2000
CREvolution, Nacore’s first annual UK summit, was attended
on Wednesday by 170 corporate real estate professionals who were given
the opportunity to participate more actively by sharing thoughts and ideas,
lead by a number of speakers
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| Rick Pederson and Dr James Bellini |
After an introduction by Rick Pederson from RealCentric,
USA, author of ‘High Tech Holocaust’ Dr James Bellini spoke
on the pace of change in the business environment. After claiming that
nine out of ten future predictions have turned out to be wrong he went
on to say that in 2005 he predicts all government services will be on-line,
the same year as the critical mass for e-commerce will peak.
Technology was the trend running throughout the conference
and Bellini stated that the net in itself is not a revolution, but the
real revolution will be in how organisations re-invent themselves and
thus transform the rules of business. He also pointed out that the net
creates an underclass of people who are not on-line.
Discussions suggested that no one is threatened by the internet because
of the belief that it will not take over the business world, although
many are not taking full advantage of it.
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| Interaction at CREvolution |
Bellini’s statement “I believe we can run corporations
with no internal cost by outsourcing everything in the future” was
a cause for discussion the whole day. Questions such as what is meant
by ‘no cost’ as well as fears of outsourcing were expressed.
Healey & Baker’s Simon O’Reilly sympathised with this, saying
companies are afraid of outsourcing FM. “It is not mature enough
in Europe,” he explained, “but both partners will have to give
something up.” This was supported in later discussions by Nacore
member Mike Beiley and Logica UK’s Tom Botting, who is responsible
for FM in London. Beiley believes companies are under pressure to outsource
and therefore do it too quickly. He says the solution would be to give
both partners more benefits and the end user more control.
Simon Ward from Cisco, who outsources most of its services,
suggested companies should focus on their core business - “what they
do best” - and outsource to reduce cost, add value, innovate and
most importantly to add speed to the market.
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| Simon Ward |
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| Ray Walker, Simon O’Reilly, Simon Ward and Richard Spray |
Chairman of the conference and marketing consultant Mindi
McLean said: “The aim of the conference was to not just get speakers’
views but to get other views and integration.” The feedback from
attendees was that this had been achieved successfully.
Other speakers included strategist and business consultant Simon Gulliford,
Professor David Rhind, Blue Circle’s Richard Spray and Pythagoras’
Ray Walker.
With its headquarters in the US, Nacore started in Europe in 1992, initially in the UK but later in France, Germany, Spain and Italy. It is a member driven, voluntary organisation which aims to educate and bring together CRE professionals.
