Winning Commercial Real Estate Technology

Date: 12/22/2015

Commercial real estate has a rep for being resistant to new technology. Jeff Finn, CEO of RealNex, put it this way:

“I know from the arrows in my back what its like, trying to get a brokerage business to adopt new technology.”

But what if the tech was designed by actual CRE professionals? Finn’s company RealNex has been doing just that: developing digital tools for real-life CRE business challenges.

Finn, an experienced broker, could see the potential for improving CRE workflow with a smart system — one that simplifies routine tasks by bringing information sources together. That’s why he led RealNex in developing a comprehensive suite of CRE products.  

It all starts with CRM

Customer Relations Management is essential for any business. Most CRM systems provide a contact manager to keep track of names, phone numbers and customer contact tracking. But our business has reams of detail specific to the real estate business.

RealNexCRM is designed for CRE workflows. In 2014 REA joined RealNex, which built all the functionality of REA10, fondly known as the ‘Ferrari of CRE CRMs,’ into its current system.

This CRM will answer questions for any broker, tenant rep, sales broker, and leasing agent, and in any sector. Questions like:

• What do they own?
• What are they looking for?
• What do they lease?
• What’s in your deal pipeline?

Brokers, landlords, REITs, leasing agents, and anyone who wants to manage multiple properties, like investors will find it useful. It’s applicable to service providers like appraisers, mortgage brokers as well. It’s process-specific for your business, with reports and workflows are available for each of these variations.

Fully relational, RealNex CRM works at an enterprise, company or team level. And it’s running on the second-generation cloud application. You have full access to all your data on the road, including editability.

Analysis & Marketing — from Proposal to Closing

To succeed we must do our job efficiently: deliver services, report to clients, never miss an opportunity, and keep the pipeline filled. REI Wise is the ‘propose to close’ system that will handle communications: develop a property proposal, create a ‘Deal Room,’ a marketing flyer, then re-purpose that content into an email marketing campaign, flash brochure and website.

Broker with a new listing: First task is determining price. What could it be worth?  Enter the essential information on ‘Parkview Plaza’ and REI Wise analysis tools help evaluate the opportunity. Then the system can generate the property package, e-marketing and more, with everything consistently branded for your firm.

Landlord needs to attract tenants: Develop your listing and e-marketing campaign. From there you repurpose the content to create a website. When you’re ready to sell, the same information helps you with the property package.

The Deal Room is a smart tool for property marketing: It creates a vault with all the documents a buyer will want to review, beginning with the NDA. You know exactly who has reviewed what information. Those prospects that come back again and again are your strongest leads.

Because REI Wise integrates so much data, it also functions as a comprehensive investment and/or comparative lease analyst. It’s as powerful a tool on the marketing side as on the analysis side. A five-property side-by-side lease analysis is a labor-intensive project in Excel. Those tasks are simplified by easy access to comprehensive numbers, charting and other display features. Generate reports and share them online in much less time.

Geographic Intelligence

One of the largest public listing services in the country, Property Line is an alternative to LoopNet with complete marketing and search functions. But its real magic is how Property Line can generate the customized listing module for your website. If you’ve ever hired a programmer to create this you know, that the listing feature is the most expensive part of a website.

Property Line also includes AREAS: ‘Area Research Economic Analytics & Sites,’ that analyzes property by region, in a portfolio or other geography. It’s geographic intelligence that’s popular with economic development offices, or firms with large portfolios.

Breakthrough Interactive Leasing

Landlords, tenants, tenant and landlord reps leasing space will want to check out Ten-Eight. It’s a transaction manager and efficiency driver for the leasing business, designed for mobile devices.

Starting with a tenant inquiry, the prospect enters the details of what they’re shopping for. From there, it’s easy to create the tour book for them. No more killing trees – it’s online and in the cloud. Maps, photos, street view, floor plans to review, reorder a tour on the fly. It’s readily available on smart phone or tablet – everything that a client needs in one place.

The best part is the interactivity. Encourage your client to take pictures of what they’re interested in, make notes on likes and dislikes, rate and evaluate the property during their visit. It helps a client to visualize themselves moving in as they tour. And the landlord or broker captures great feedback on the product.

This subjective reporting is an important part of the commitment process. And it eliminates confusion. Look at too much, your memory may be inaccurate.  Ten-Eight remembers everything.

Since every inquiry gets logged —tour, negotiation, and completion — you get great metrics on your business. For instance, which reps bring the best tenants? Over time, how fast is space moving? This product was developed by a tenant rep who knew what he needed.

Buzz Target

E-marketing part of every business marketing today. Until BUZZ Target there wasn’t something customized for the CRE business. Buzz Target replaces the generic email marketing tools, eliminating the need to enter data that’s already in your system. It includes access to public lists, and imports your lists. Import, create and customize emails and social media messaging; broad- or narrowcast, and get real-time analytics on who’s responding.

The Whole Picture

If you’re ready to consider smart tech tools for your CRE business, RealNex has a suite of tools developed by experts from our industry. They’ve grown out of, and will continue to evolve with, real experience within the commercial real estate business.