Historically, real estate has relied heavily on disparate and outdated systems, using CRM tools and spreadsheets as the main tools to keep tonnes of data. However, these systems don’t talk to each other, which causes huge problems for asset managers, brokers and landlords, with them wasting hours going through multiple systems to try and answer a relatively simple question.
These systems also make it much harder for them to see the big picture.
Thankfully, though, business intelligence (BI) tools have come to the rescue, providing everyone, including landlords, easy access to portfolios, offering a high-level view of this from a performance and data perspective.
BI tools provide a letting agency and landlord with actionable insights. Furthermore, the real estate industry is already enjoying access to huge sources of data on portfolio metrics, comparable sales, tenants and more. This plethora of data sources is fantastic, but if these systems aren’t synced, they’re not as powerful. BI’s aim is to add another step in how processes are automated by aggregating and analysing data, thus helping landlords increase tenant retention, close deals quickly and reduce their downtime.
As the real estate agency sees what potential data can unlock, it’s keen to find even more possibilities in these types of innovative business solutions.
Here are just some of the vital ways BI tools are altering real estate for letting agencies:
Deeper Portfolio Analytics
Using BI enables an agency and/or landlord to see the full history of their portfolio’s performance with the analytics delving deep into every asset under management. By creating a powerful visual from these various data sources, it allows users to see important health metrics relating to their portfolio, while also enabling them to pipeline activity and deal. The best bit? All of this is done in real-time.
For example, a landlord could discover one of their buildings’ vacancies as soon as it happens, getting to work to fill this space straight away.
Customised Reporting
Landlords can spend many hours putting together duplicative data entry and building reports. Analytics platforms with custom reports allow a user to see unique insights, both on-demand and dynamic. Often, users can update these reports directly, integrating them with the platforms and data sets in their portfolio. Therefore, the time they would spend creating these reports can now be used to build new tenant relationships and seek deals. This means they can increase tenant retention and close deals faster thanks to their new source of insights.
Mobile Access
A lot of these BI tools can be used through a smartphone, which means landlords and brokers are able to use them on their everyday jobs. This gives them access to valuable information at all times, whether they’re on the go or in important meetings. Good BI platforms will deliver a high-value view of an organisations’ portfolio, offering insights that are easy to digest but that can also be looked ata granular level to make savvier business decisions.
Data is and should be a huge business advantage for asset managers, brokers and landlords. These platforms allow users to utilise actionable, strategic insights from the sources of data that they’re using on a day-to-day basis. Ultimately, these tools allow those using them to better gather data, before transforming this invaluable information into insights that allow them to make great decisions when it comes to their business.