Context: What is Hub by CBRE?

CBRE is the world’s largest commercial real estate firm. They help businesses find, maintain, and invest in commercial properties. CBRE had identified a “small office” segment as a valuable group. These “small office” clients are businesses requiring up to 10,000 sqft of office space. Hub was a highly visible initiative for helping small offices to browse the huge catalog of properties that CBRE maintains. The goal of the project was to build an online website that allowed this segment of clients to find the perfect office space while also minimizing the amount of time a broker was needed to fill the space.

Action: Launching a problematic product.

Originally Hub was conceived to just be a listing platform. The technology used to construct it was overly complicated and many of the key engineers had left. Once in charge, I immediately choose a launch date two months out and began working with the engineering team to reduce the complexity of the system. In parallel I established clear communications with the stakeholders and began the agile process of building a backlog, sizing, and scoping individual user stories. Within two months a working prototype was formed that could be used as a starting point for what Hub could be.

Once the initial site was constructed, I developed a marketing campaign to test the product in a real market. The city of San Francisco was chosen and a brokerage team was assigned to help provide properties and to help any customers find spaces.

The next step was to help understand the vision and grow it. To achieve this I worked with the User Research team and built out qualitative and quantitative measurements for what Hub should accomplish. We found that a key metric was time. We also found that it was important “when” a broker was introduced to the team doing the office search. Too early and it felt sales focused and reduced the usage of the tool. However, if the agent was still necessary to help guide the complex real estate process and to offer up solutions that the client would not be aware of. Essentially there was a sweet spot for when the client was ready to buy after using Hub to do their own research and facilitate their conversations.

Results: Using good product practices to find valuable markets.

With a team of 4 developers, a designer, and a minimal marketing budget, the Hub team was able to build and launch a successful product and then tune it to the target market. 121 listings were produced and managed through the platform resulting in 2 leads in under 3 weeks. The product was then aligned with partnership initiatives so that we would have WeWork properties displayed for a national rollout.

The final product team reached the conclusion that communication was the key. Brokers ended up using a significant amount of time helping these smaller office customers when a website would allow the customer to accomplish the same thing. The broker would still be part of the process, however they would be more on call instead of having to steer the process. The Hub team found that by using a well designed communication process, a small office client could find their next office more efficiently. This saved brokers time and made the small office segment more valuable.