A real-life example of transformation in the real estate and property management sector
Real estate and property management have been among the sectors that have felt the effects of the recent lockdowns and the ongoing financial and resource crisis.
The new state of engagement which is remote and digital, and the changes in demographics brought by a shift to deurbanisation and Brexit, saw many companies in this sector struggling to catch up with the rate of change. The effects of all this have been visible in their bottom line.
Modernising their IT infrastructure and leveraging digital to optimise processes, enable better collaboration, and improve customer experience throughout their lifecycle, is fast becoming the only way forward for this sector.
At makepositive we have worked with a number of companies within real estate and property management. In this blog we’ll take you through one such transformational project and the benefits the company was able to achieve.
Improving loyalty and services in property management
Our client, one of the largest property management companies in the UK, realised that their aging infrastructure and processes were hindering customer service, staff engagement, and the overall experience of their users including their suppliers and partners.
Their existing systems were connected through point-to-point, hard coded integrations that made data sharing and collaboration a strenuous, error prone and time consuming process. What’s more, these systems had to be maintained through manual checks and spreadsheets. As a result, the company was experiencing numerous challenges including:
- Fragmented customer view and user experience
- Frequent occurrences of costs that were missed during budgeting
- Poor cost allocation across properties and tenants
- Increasingly bad reputation among suppliers
- Time consuming financial reporting
Our client wanted a solution that would enable them to realise their strategy for improving customer service and staff engagement, and creating a seamless digital journey for all their users.
After a comprehensive discovery process that included workshops with all key stakeholders, makepositive presented an end-to-end solution that leveraged Salesforce’s Experience Cloud, Sales Cloud and Service Cloud to centralise information and streamline customer experience and user engagement. We also proposed MuleSoft’s Anypoint Platform to unlock legacy infrastructure, connect front-end and back-end systems, and remove data siloes.
Following the completion of the project and the enablement of both technical and business users, the company was able to:
- Standardise internal customer service and Property Manager processes that provide increased visibility of work orders, cases and ongoing repairs.
- Provide customer access to financial data along with the ability to raise cases and track planned and reactive repair work.
- Enable suppliers to quote for, accept, and complete a job through the Suppliers Portal and provide evidence of the work they’ve completed and specific feedback about asset conditions.
- Optimise cost allocation thanks to Tenant units integration and use of Orders Cost Headers across all systems.
- Apply correct first-time cost coding, significantly reducing the time and effort previously required for year-end financial reporting.
- seamlessly introduce new features and capabilities across their organisation through a centralised platform
- Improve data quality and accuracy with a unified view of all customer, partner and property data.
- Send relevant and personalised communications to its customers through using highly automated and intuitive workflows.
As a result, our client experienced significant cost savings whereas employee productivity and performance skyrocketed. Customer and supplier engagement is much more efficient leading to overall improved satisfaction. Last but not least, the IT team can now be an integral part of the growth of the business, establishing a foundation of reuse and innovation.
Final thoughts
The changing micro and macro environment has accentuated how far behind real estate and property management companies are in their digital transformation journey. With strategic consideration technology can help accelerate change with significant ROI. Get in touch if you’d like to find out how we can help: [email protected].
