An overview of steps and tools for the corporate real estate strategy alignment process

Strategic thinking is a continuous process, alternating between thinking, planning and evaluating. Corporate real estate management (CREM) practitioners need to align their strategy and activities with corporate strategy during the entire process that the organisation goes through. Along the way, many different issues need to be considered, and the right tools used to make the right decisions. This paper aims to provide an overview of the strategic thinking process, and to identify important steps to take, and possible tools to use when taking them. First, strategic thinking is discussed and where CREM should start alignment. Then, CREM literature on the activities of CRE managers and possible tools is assigned to the different steps of the alignment process. Finally, an overview is created for CREM in practice to improve strategic thinking and alignment. CREM research has identified and created many tools for CREM practitioners to use to work towards alignment. However, an overview of how to proceed with alignment during the entire strategic thinking process was lacking. This paper contains a first attempt at such an overview. This overview of steps and tools to reach alignment could be used by CREM practitioners to discuss alignment with general management. Hopefully, this will help with receiving more strategic attention and the promotion of CREM departments as strategists in CREM's evolution. Studies on alignment of CREM with corporate strategy tend to focus on one phase of the alignment (either initial alignment or performance management). This paper extends the alignment strategy from initial alignment towards implementation and evaluation, covering the whole process while also providing an overview of existing tools and methods to use.