COVID-19 crisis exposes digital shortcomings in real estate

The COVID-19 crisis has exposed a “digital deficit” within the real estate industry, according to Alexandre Grellier, CEO and co-founder of Drooms.

Grellier, whose company provides technological solutions and virtual data rooms, says the pandemic has shown that many organizations within the real estate industry still rely on poor quality IT networks and do not pay enough attention to data security.

“This crisis has really brought out the poor IT infrastructure that a lot of real estate companies, even the bigger companies out there, have,” said Grellier.

With so many staff having to work from home across Europe, he said the pressure on IT networks has exposed their fragility, with many firms seeing their networks crash during busy periods of the working day. “They have internal systems, which in normal times sort of run smoothly, but in times when you have thousands of people accessing information from outside the office, their VPNs are really gettin