Michael Vartholomaios is head of digital transformation and technology at PRODEA Investments, one of Greece's leading listed real estate companies, with about 380 commercial properties from offices and shops to warehouses, hotels and homes. He joined when the company was a small subsidiary of the National Bank of Greece and built its first property database by hand from his colleagues' spreadsheets. He is a practical voice on what digital transformation looks like inside a landlord still moving off Excel.

Michael Vartholomaios, Head of Digital Transformation & Technology, PRODEA Investments

Watch the episode ↗

In this conversation

How Michael gathered every colleague's Excel files, without telling them, and merged them into the property database the team still uses.

His "quiet power" mornings, and the Airtable list of tools he reviews almost every day.

Why a property management system took from 2019 to launch, through independence from the bank and then COVID.

Why he thinks many existing buildings will have to be torn down rather than renovated, and how Greek neoclassical rules keep wooden window frames wooden.

The three Ps of digital transformation: people, processes and product.

We call it digital transformation, but it's more user focused than it is tool focused.

Michael Vartholomaios

Chapters

From car shows to real estate

Event planning, a failing shipping company, and the sale-and-leaseback deals that hooked him.

Becoming a data junkie

Three weeks of quiet work that turned scattered spreadsheets into one property database.

What the data is for

ESG reporting for investors and usage data for running buildings.

Replacing the spreadsheets

A property management system, the change management behind it, and why real estate adopts slowly.

Renovate or rebuild

Why much of the existing stock may never meet a moving standard.

By the numbers

The EU building stock

40%

of EU energy is used in buildings

85%

of EU buildings were built before 2000

75%

have poor energy performance

annual energy renovation rate

Michael doubts the existing stock can all be made green and expects much of it to be torn down and rebuilt. The EU's own figures show the size of the problem: most buildings are old and inefficient, and about one percent a year get an energy renovation.

Source: European Commission, Energy Performance of Buildings Directive ↗

People, processes, product

AI that runs a building, tokenized ownership, and advice for newcomers.

Just start collecting data as soon as possible. It doesn't matter if you know what it's going to be used for or not.

Michael Vartholomaios

Takeaways

Centralize before you automate. Michael's first win was merging everyone's spreadsheets into one property database, so figures like occupancy and annualized income update with the push of a button.

Treat digital transformation as change management. Involve users early, get leadership behind it, set honest expectations, and pick the tool that helps the most people instead of chasing every new product.

Collect data now even without a use for it. EU sustainability reporting keeps expanding, and data gathered today is far easier to sort later than to reconstruct.

Sustainable 10 years ago isn't what sustainable is today.

Michael Vartholomaios