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The Rockend Leaderhsip Team, Looking into the future of real estate


The Rockend Leaderhsip Team

The future of real estate is always a hot topic. Four key leaders at Rockend sat down and discussed what they thought the future of our industry would look like. Meet Alister Maple-Brown - Chief Executive Officer, John Goddard - General Manager of Marketing & Sales, Scott Shepherd - Head of Product and Sarah Dawson - Account Management Team Lead. Here's what they had to say.

JOHN

Sometimes you need to look back to see the future. Looking back, when I started with Rockend 10 years ago, everyone was telling me that it was all about consolidation. The talk was that there would no longer be a space for small agents, that it was going to consolidate into a few big players around the nation. That hasn't been the case; most agents still manage less than 300 properties.

SARAH

I think we've seen some consolidation over the past 10 years and that's affected the state of the industry. Those larger offices had to change the way they offered their services. They had to find more efficient ways of doing things and that's really where the demand for process automation originated.

SCOTT

That idea of process automation is becoming more and more common and will only increase in the future. We’ve already seen a demand for more automation and have been developing features to meet this need. For example, we’ve just built invoice automation into our software. Not too long ago agents had to manually enter invoice data individually which was time consuming and prone to errors.

The first step we took was introducing barcode scanning, but we've gone one step further and automated almost the entire process. Now a property manager can drop a piece of paper in fileSMART, which will automatically extract the invoice data, push that information to REST Professional and file it.

SARAH

I think it's important that agents don't get too caught up in automating everything though. Businesses will need to focus more on customer service in the future.

SCOTT

Absolutely. Real estate is a face to face game, it always has been and I believe it will continue to be in the future. It's about developing technology to complement the personal service. The goal is to give the agents more time to spend on valuable interactions, rather than the mundane administrative tasks.

JOHN

The businesses that will prosper are the ones that are all about customer service. To be successful in that space it's all about education and training. If you don't hire good people and invest in training, you're not going to be a top performer.

SARAH

I've noticed a real shift in the way real estate agents are hiring too. It used to be about moving up through the ranks, but now offices are starting to employ people outside the industry. They're looking for people with backgrounds in customer service or specific accounting backgrounds, people who have worked in corporate environments because that’s the kind of environment that they’re trying to create.

ALISTER

Communication is the key to great customer service. I believe that we'll see a lot of changes in the way property managers communicate in the future. Scott already touched on automation and the importance of not losing those valuable interactions but there's a lot of space for more automation around communication. At the moment, the property manager is the centre point of all communications. Everything goes though them, from owner and tenant enquiries to sending information out to tradesmen. This creates a bottleneck as property managers are spending a large portion of their time handling interactions. I believe that we will see a shift towards being far more open with communication platforms. This opens up the possibility for more system generated communications.

JOHN

I think you're right, Alister. Look at technology today; more and more businesses are going online. People want access to their data anywhere and at any time. Within two to four years most people will be accessing their core business system through a mobile device. People will want a lot more functionality in their hand, in the car and in the home.

ALISTER

Exactly. Property managers are going to be able to do more with less thanks to the sharing of and greater access to information. Consumers will continue to want more. More information and easy access to it. Agents will need to make sure that they are in the position to provide that information. Some property managers may be uncomfortable about transparency but the reality is that it gives a lot of comfort. With the shift towards greater importance of service, the smarter operators use this to their advantage.

SARAH

I've seen a real change in the adoption rate of technology over the last few years. Agencies are really embracing electronic document management and publishing information online through portals. They see it as a point of difference and a way to increase productivity. Technology is being implemented earlier in the piece too. Agents aren't waiting until they have 500 plus properties under management before they see the value in implementing technology but they are really seeing the value in getting the processes right and then building the business on that foundation.

SCOTT

I think it's important to mention social technology too. I'm not talking about Facebook and Twitter but we’re seeing some business starting to use communication applications like Microsoft Lync and Yammer. A lot of agents are on the road so this helps them stay connected with the office and share information. It also helps connect sales and property management teams. Offices are usually somewhat segregated but it's important to have a relationship there, even if it's just a social one, to open up communications and take advantage of cross sell opportunities. The younger generation is used to connecting this way so I think we'll see a lot more of that in the future.

JOHN

I think excluding the innovations in technology, in 10 years the real estate industry will look similar to what it does today but people will have to lift their game when it comes to customer service, education and training. Focus on these concepts to remain a viable business and to prosper.


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The Rockend Leaderhsip Team