JLL partners with Google to create a new app for office workers

Top real estate company, JLL, which manages luxury buildings across the globe and aids in finding office space for international tech giants, is looking towards Google for its next impressive endeavor.

JLL has unveiled a smartphone-based voice assistant designed for office workers to book conference rooms and desks in their buildings, file maintenance requests and more. JLL is working with Google to build the voice assistant known as JiLL that the company will soon begin testing with a handful of customers. The project is part of a broader effort from JLL to create new technology offerings that take advantage of its real estate expertise.

Digital assistants like Amazon’s Alexa have transformed people’s daily lives, making it easier to control their homes, play music and more. But there’s no catch-all solution for the office worker, argues Vinay Goel, Chief Digital Product Officer for JLL and a former Google executive.

“When we come to the office there is a different portal when you look at what’s for lunch, or when you need to file a service request or when you need to book a meeting,” Goel said. “All those types of things tend to be very siloed experiences.”

JLL isn’t the only company trying to solve these issues. Amazon in late 2017 expanded Alexa to the enterprise and Microsoft recently showed off its plans for enhanced conversational abilities focused on managing schedules for its assistant Cortana. Beyond consumer-facing digital assistants like Alexa and Cortana, a handful of big software companies are working on their own virtual brains to solve specific problems.

JiLL differs from Alexa, Cortana, Google Assistant and others because it is strictly smartphone-based and focuses primarily on the office setting. The wealth of data that JLL has from managing buildings and working with companies as they plan and build out offices makes JiLL stand out from the pack, Goel says.

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