Branding realty

Date : Apr 12, 2014

Real estate consultants are likely to close more deals by reaching out to professionals and customers with the help of social media.

The Indian real estate market, over the last few years, has been categorised as one of the hottest destinations for investment because of the growing demand for residential, commercial and retail spaces. It is envisaged that Indian real estate market will grow from $55.6 billion in 2010-11 to $180 billion by 2020. Growth in the sector, experts predict, will be guided by demands from retail, hospitality, education and healthcare sectors, apart from a whopping demand for residential housing.

Despite such potential, Indian real estate consultancy firms till lately, have not been able to create brand names that could be matched with the best of the world. The disorganised nature of Indian real estate consultancy was pulling the sector back from creating monoliths, which could compete with the world leaders in business. It also hobbled with issues like absence of

standardisation and lack of adequate knowledge sharing.

However, of late, a few consultancy organisations have started to reveal their potential and are giving good ideas and models to international companies that are trying to expand their franchise network in India. These key players are taking advantage of home grown IT products that are enabling them to manage their entire end-to-end business processes.

Be it campaign management, contact management, lead management, task management, property management, project management, transaction management or calculation of ROI, products from IT solution providers like RealtoExpress, Salesforce and SAP are changing the working style of real estate consultancy firms in India.

These customer relationship management (CRM) or enterprise resource-planning (ERP) solutions are becoming the backbone of the empire that new age consultants are aspiring to build. India is undergoing a demographic shift and is gaining economically from it. ERP systems refer to the software packages that integrate all data and the related processes of an organisation into a unified information system (IS).

An ERP system uses a central database that holds all information relating to the various system modules. In order to achieve a seamless integration, an ERP system uses multiple hardware and software components. Designed to facilitate the administration and optimisation of internal business processes across an enterprise, these packages have become competitive tools for most large real estate consultancies.

ERP software uses a single database that allows different departments to communicate with each other through information sharing. ERP systems comprise function-specific components that are designed to interact with other modules such as the order entry, accounts payable, accounts receivable, purchasing and distribution. The consultants can integrate both internal and external information flows used by the organisation into a single, comprehensive solution through this system. It also helps in incorporating the practical systems used by organisations to manage the basic commercial functions of their businesses, such as planning, inventory/materials management, purchasing, manufacturing, finance, accounting, human resources, marketing and sales and services.

The objective of the ERP solution is to drive the flow of information between all internal business functions while managing connections, or “touch points”, to outside stakeholders. The use of an integrated database to manage the solution’s multi-module application framework within a common information system is one of the primary ERP benefits of this kind of system over “point solutions”.

India’s real estate sector has been one of the fastest growing yet it is still unregulated. It has been gravely faced with issues such as absence of standardisation and lack of

adequate knowledge sharing. Little wonder that its healthy and orderly growth has been restrained.

India’s yo­uth population (15 to 32 years), comprising nearly 40 per cent of the urban population, is fast turning into a brand new sets of consumers, delighting marketing wizards. To capture the imagination of these consumers, Indian real estate consultants are making their presence felt in the online space, as this has emerged as an imperative medium for new-age marketing and communications.

Consultants today are showcasing their products at their individual real estate portals with dynamic content and features like instant proposals with relevant information, pictures and instant cost sheet creations.

Advance CRM/ERP solutions are now offering the sync advantage, which helps in keeping data synchronised between portal and CRM. You can change anything, be it project/property information in the CRM and publish it in the portal within a matter of seconds. Incoming leads from websites directly land into CRM. Such IT tools are making the life of a consultant easier by eliminating the tedious manual process.

ERP products come with built in business processes, which real estate consultants can start implementing from day one. Such solutions are offered through the cloud model where consultants need to pay only for what they use. These services are offered on SaaS/cloud model, which require the client to invest in the usage of application and forget about managing the associated hardware, software and upgrade cost.

This reduces the upfront IT expenditure and instead offers a cost-effective business planning option for the consultants thus enabling future growth. Clients are only required to have a laptop and internet connection and they can have their CRM /ERP solution installed securely anywhere, anytime.

Such IT solutions and a proper vision will help attain the standards expected of a world-class organisation. IT needs to be a part of every department, be it marketing, pre sales, post sales or accounts.

Real estate consultants in India are campaigning much more methodically now. The new age CRM/ERP systems have given them a tool to extract categorised data for targeted campaign, which in turn is giving them better ROI. As the volume of business dropped last year, such IT solutions have helped the organisations to maintain sustainability. CRM/ERP solutions have helped real estate consultants increase their lead conversion efficiency.

International solutions to manage booking and transaction management have somehow failed to accommodate the complex requirements of payment plans and other charges for local builders. Therefore, it never fitted the requirements of the Indian real estate sector. However, home grown IT solution providers with their local knowledge base have provided tools that, apart from accounts management, allows consultants to manage multi-city set up with ease.

Going beyond the consumers, real estate consultants are embracing social media to connect with their associate networks beyond city limits. This kind of set up enables consultants to offer products from Delhi to consumers belonging to any part of India and vice versa. Fine tuned social media tools, which can be implemented internally within the organisation as well as externally, help consultants to widen their reach.

Taking ERP/CRM and social media together, social features are also getting embedded in internal CRM/ERP solutions and, therefore, become a part of digital commutation with clients or employees. It is now predicted that in the near future email communication will slowly take a back seat in favour of social media tools that is a faster medium and reaches a wider set of audience, thereby increasing the chances of closing a deal in good time, highly probable.

The year 2014 will be the year of “social revolution” in the real estate sector. Consultants are likely to close more deals by reaching other real estate consultants and a new breed of consumers by way of social media. Today’s youth aspires big in a shorter time; they are mobile, social and have high disposable incomes.

Online B2B platforms help in bringing consultants from all over India. It is predicted that once a platform with all possible resources is made available, a truly global idea can also be developed and executed by anyone. If we look at the recent past it has been observed that experts from other industries are now moving to real estate consultancy. They are nurturing and building up professional organisations with a global perspective and a world-class service mission.

As an organised business process supports people with vision. Thus the recent developments are laying the foundation for a complete turn around of the system and sow the seeds for world class organisations.

(Anupam Saha is co-founder and business head RealtoExpress)

Source And Courtsey by :- http://www.mydigitalfc.com/real-estate/branding-realty-659