Business Strategy And Property Strategy- How Strong Is The Linkage

Most organizations develop strategic business plans as a foundation and focus for decision-making. These business plans ideally take account of the existing and potential operating environment, potential competitors and the strengths and weaknesses of the individual organization. An organizationís management of its property assets can be either a strength, or a weakness, but this aspect does not figure prominently in many organizationsí strategic business plans. Property strategy should ideally be consistent with business strategy, adding value by the efficient provision of effective real estate solutions that accommodate the workforce and machinery of that business. This research investigated the strength of the link between overall business strategy and supporting property strategies in New Zealand organizations. A survey of 313 organisations found nearly all had a clearly defined overall business strategy but many did not put corresponding effort into real estate strategies. Even amongst those organizations with a property strategy, significant weaknesses were found in the linkage between this strategy and overall business strategy. Further work is underway to measure the performance of companies that do have a strong connection compared to those that do not, to ascertain whether the connection does in fact correlate with business performance.