In our latest Spotlight Interview, we spoke to Brendan Canny, CEO, Open Box Software. Brendan reflects on Open Box Software’s 15+ year journey, the growing impact of AI, and the trends shaping the future of PropTech. “There can be no doubt that AI will have an impact on Real Estate. In late 2023 and early 2024 AI was the main topic at most Real Estate events. This led to execs pushing their business and IT departments to invest in AI so as to not “fall behind”. This in turn perpetuated a lot of activity in rolling out trials and POCs of various AI tools such as Microsoft’s Co-Pilot and Open AI’s ChatGPT. What was missing was the thinking behind the true business value. In 2025 we have seen a positive shift towards ROI driven thinking when it comes to AI. At Open Box our preferred approach is to sit with business stakeholders and facilitate a deep dive into areas in which AI may assist the business”

Q1- Open Box Software is a key player in the industry, having seen great growth across the last few years. Can you share what led to the founding of Open Box software and how your journey has been so far?

The foundations of Open Box Software (Open Box) were laid many years before our Chairman and Founder Malcolm Hall officially started Open Box in late 2001. Prior to founding Open Box Malcolm worked at start-up technology consultancies and one of the Big 4 Audit Firms where he was exposed to the desperate need for Real Estate software solutions tailored to the clients’ need. Malcolm’s view at the time was that there had to be “a better way”, a statement that continues to drive our approach today.

Our first opportunity to find a better way was building a custom service charge application for the German leasing team of a New York based owner operator. We are proud to say that they are still an active client of ours today and has been every month for over 23 years. The success of our first project led to the rolling out of 45 major applications across the globe for them.

Our dedication to gold standard delivery led to many referrals from our founding client resulting in Open Box working with many more prominent property companies throughout the UK, Europe and the US.

Open Box strives to be a trusted partner, delivering specialised consulting and technology solutions with a goal of providing long term value and efficiency gains for our clients. Open Box Software has delivered hundreds of solutions to our clients, delivering not only bespoke software solutions in high and low code, but sophisticated Data Solutions and AI solutions. We also specialise in Microsoft 365, SharePoint, Salesforce, Yardi and MRI consultancy and solutions.

With approximately 200 people located in the United Kingdom, North America and South Africa, Open Box, is made up of an experienced teams of specialists in the major technologies relevant to modern property companies. Our talented and dedicated team members are handpicked not only for their technical abilities but also for their quality of character. This is what ensures our commitment to deliver work of exceptional quality, and ultimately our commitment to client success.

Q2- Could you elaborate on how your Data & Analytics services help real estate businesses gain actionable insights

First and foremost, we focus on understanding our client’s business so that we can help consult on valuable outcomes, not just reports and dashboards. This is where our focus on Real Estate really comes to the fore, as we truly “speak” the language of Real Estate. With Data & Analytics projects it is vital to understand where in the journey each client is, as well as their budget. For clients at the start of their journey with less budget, we often start by connecting systems together into PowerBI to build trust and adoption within the business and then grow from there. On the other spectrum, some clients are interested in a full data strategy. In this case we assist in helping to define a comprehensive strategy that spans across the full business including finance, leasing, acquisitions, asset management and marketing. We prioritise understanding the key business questions driving decision-making, enabling us to design insightful, system-agnostic reporting that consolidates data across sources for a unified view across the Enterprise. Our services also identify process and integration gaps, enhance forecasting capabilities, and emphasise data as a strategic asset—ensuring it is leveraged to drive efficiency, competitiveness, and informed planning.  For specific business cases we deliver machine learning models to provide advanced analytics capabilities and insights which augment the decision-making processes. They key point is to make a start, the sooner you begin treating your data as an asset, the better.

Q3- What is your view on the Real Estate market’s adoption of AI and how are you helping clients navigate next steps?

There can be no doubt that AI will have an impact on Real Estate. In late 2023 and early 2024 AI was the main topic at most Real Estate events. This led to execs pushing their business and IT departments to invest in AI so as to not “fall behind”. This in turn perpetuated a lot of activity in rolling out trials and POCs of various AI tools such as Microsoft’s Co-Pilot and Open AI’s ChatGPT. What was missing was the thinking behind the true business value. In 2025 we have seen a positive shift towards ROI driven thinking when it comes to AI. At Open Box our preferred approach is to sit with business stakeholders and facilitate a deep dive into areas in which AI may assist the business. This often takes the form of workshops to uncover areas of inefficiency and opportunity. Open Box is then able to take the output of these workshops and categorise the requests into those where AI could drive value vs. those that won’t. From there Open Box works with the business to investigate the best technology and approach to solve the given problem. Using this approach we have helped our clients take that all important “first step” on the journey with confidence in their ability to show ROI on the spend. Our work has seen AI helping to speed up help desk ticket resolution, assist with investment decisions, bolster market research and identify areas of compliance risk and many more.

Q4- How do you customise your services to meet the unique needs of the different real estate organisations you work with?

I often highlight to our clients and prospects that what sets Open Box apart from a lot of consultancies out there, beyond our core focus on the Real Estate Sector, is the fact that we bring an entire “toolbox” and creative thinking to the jobsite. This means that we are not focussed on trying to figure out how best to sell a particular product, service or platform but rather focussing on each client’s specific need and then picking the best “tool” from the “box”. These tools could be as simple as a process change, through to a complex implementation of a large ERP and everything in between. With over 24 years in global real estate software consulting and development, we leverage our experience to offer informed advice on the best way forward. This ensures we are engaging as a trusted advisor, rather than just a solution provider. This approach has led to us building long standing relationships with our clients as per our founding story. A good example of what this looks like in practise can be found in a recent case study wherein a client sought our expertise on tracking and managing activities related to critical lease dates. There are numerous methodologies to address this issue. A service provider specialising in Property Management solutions might advocate for leveraging the platform’s capabilities to build custom pages and workflows. Conversely, a pure custom development firm might propose creating a fully tailored web application or low-code app. Meanwhile, a business consultancy might suggest a comprehensive process reengineering exercise to optimise operational efficiency before referring the client to a delivery partner for implementing a potentially costly off-the-shelf workflow solution. Open Box’s multidisciplinary consultation approach enabled us to identify a superior solution by utilising the client’s existing Salesforce platform, thereby providing a complete 360-degree view of their leasing journey. Our expertise across all of the above options allowed us to position an unbiased view of each of the above options to the client and allow them to make an informed decision on which way to go.

Q5- Looking ahead, with your experience working with various organisations in the sector, what trends in PropTech and the wider industry do you foresee, and how is Open Box Software preparing to adapt to these?

Standardisation and Consolidation: Whilst the huge influx of investment into PropTech has led to the creation of so many amazing point solutions in our industry, we are now facing an issue where many companies simply have too many narrowly focussed solutions. This has led to substantial increases in operational expenditure as well as data silos.  We are seeing a trend towards clients looking to reassess their tech stacks with the goal of standardising and reducing the number of solutions. For some clients this is doubling down on core platforms like Microsoft (Azure/Fabric/Teams/PowerApps etc.) for others it is working to see if newer versions of their Property Management platforms have caught up with the specialist solutions. This trend is also being accelerated by the next trend, in that clients are trying to minimise the sheer number of data sources they need to connect to in order to provide a connected data platform.

Data: A continuing trend is the focus on Data as a true business asset. Data is what drives decisions, but ultimately data will also be what makes AI successful or not. Having a data strategy is paramount in today’s world. In today’s high-speed environment, leaders must make decisions based on information that is live, not on reports created by analysts with week old data. Companies therefore need to ensure that they are storing, cleaning, protecting and then understanding their own data as well as looking at ways to supplement their own data with trusted external data. This has led to many companies working with us on defining and implementing their overall data strategy.

Build to Rent: In terms of the wider industry, one cannot ignore the sheer amount of new and growing BTR companies in the UK and Europe. The current macro-economic trends will no doubt continue to drive the shift to rental. The BTR space will also continue to push tech, and real estate companies, to focus on the end customer’s experience vs. the traditional view of a “tenant”. Platforms that allow clients to really “know” their customer, will be very important. The shorter lease terms also leave a lot of room for predictive AI. Many traditional build to sell operators are also pivoting into the space, often requiring a substantial change in their systems and processes.

AI: As mentioned above, one cannot ignore AI as a trend. Digging below the surface, we are seeing businesses faced with several choices and conundrums.

• The current AI tooling is still either very good at one thing, or just OK at a lot of things. This is driving complexity in truly leveraging AI, as companies are being pushed to invest in multiple disconnected tools, which often means that the user experience of AI suffers as users must switch between systems to accomplish a given task
• Competitive edge vs. efficiency gains. If you’re using AI just to speed up what you’re already doing, you’re not playing to win — you’re just playing to keep up. This conundrum is also linked to the other choice of buy vs. build. Whilst buy often gets you the efficiency the choice to build is where you craft the advantage – the custom intelligence, the workflows tailored to your business, your strategy, your people. That’s the part competitors can’t just purchase.

What could a well thought out AI workflow really look like?

As a first step, we have begun working with clients on providing a prima face “simple” Chatbot as the entry point. Whilst the interface is not complex, it’s what lies beneath that is the true value driver. Behind the scenes the Chatbot (or other interface) is orchestrating sentiment analysis, pulling credit risk data, abstracting lease terms, analysing real-time exposure. Allowing clients to ask questions like “What’s the risk on tenant XYZ? And how exposed are we if they go out of business?”. The results are not simply tables or disconnected dashboards, but rather something along the lines of “Tenant XYZ is flagged as high risk, with drivers such as, declining revenue, mounting debt, social backlash, and regulatory pressure. We’ve got £12 million in exposure across five leases, with break clauses in 18 months. Risk-adjusted exposure: X%.”