More than two million real estate agents are working only in the United States and are engaged in selling, renting, or managing homes, land, and buildings for their owners.
Why are these businesses so important? Because they help you in having a comfortable home that matches your needs and comes in the price range you are willing to pay for.
Many people think that they can save some money by not involving a real estate agent and doing the job themselves, but to be honest, these agents are much more knowledgeable about the local real estate markets, availability of options that best suits you, and have more polished negotiation skills.
With the expansion of their work, real estate agencies need to use certain resources and infrastructure that can help expedite their work, increase their productivity, and facilitate their clients more efficiently.
For example, the use of social media channels such as Facebook has become a source of advertisement and client interaction for real estate businesses. According to the National Association of Realtors, 73% of realtors use Facebook for their work.
With the advent of cloud-based technology, almost every industry realized its importance because of its cost-effectiveness and the number of benefits it may offer to businesses.
Let’s dive in and explore some reasons why real estate agencies should also go cloud-based.
It Will Help Real Estate Agencies Remain Cost-effective
Every business struggles in cutting heavy costs by replacing the old obsolete hardware that requires frequent repairs. Buying expensive infrastructures such as servers, dedicated storage spaces, and installing software requires a huge budget.
Not only this, but you also have to pay the IT experts and laborers a heavy initial fee for installation and recurring costs for maintenance. With the introduction of cloud-based technology, real estate agencies can save all these expenses.
Going cloud-based is an easy procedure while freeing from several worries. Such as you can store all the important customer-related sensitive data on the cloud.
You won’t be needing to spend on hard devices that are prone to damage by the disaster.
Provides a Definite Surge in Productivity
There are many ways cloud-based technologies can positively influence the productivity of real estate agencies. Here are some reasons for this:
- Research suggests that remote employees are happier employees. Cloud-based technologies offer flexibility to the people working for you. It is not necessary to keep sitting in the office and work as their client relationship management software which is cloud-based can be accessed from anywhere and they can just log in to see the updated client information.
- It is said that clear communication is the backbone of productivity. Using cloud-based technologies helps communicate and respond on time. You are always in touch, sharing ideas and there is less ambiguity. You have a better interaction with your clients and employees as well that help you make timely decisions.
- Another thing that can help you improve the business productivity of the real estate agencies is that they can see a clear picture of tasks on a priority basis.
- Using cloud-based technologies you have access to a lot of productivity tools in place that may improve productivity for example Leadpages, Slack, Google Drive, Stalemate, Yoast SEO, and many cloud-based real estate software such as Realtyware.
Less Space Requirement and Operational Expenses
Real estate agencies can save a lot of operational and overhead expenses using cloud-based technology. This is because:
- You need less space and physical infrastructure to store your physical records and files.
- You and your employees don’t need to always stay in the office as the data is accessible from anywhere and you can interact with your client from anywhere. This helps in limiting your operational expenses.
- Your phone bills are reduced because Cloud-based phone systems use Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology to connect phone calls. The only requirement is that you have a high-quality internet connection.
Running your phone service in the cloud has many benefits such as it will lower your monthly business phone cost, better employee mobility because they have virtual phone numbers available through VoIP and have several remote workforces on board.
Better Business Promotion Opportunities
Every business needs successful promotional campaigns. For this, they need huge investments. Heavy budgets are allocated for digital and print media marketing.
Small businesses also use various promotional channels based on their limited budgets such as social media campaigns, lead generation, cold calling, and meeting the target audience in person. For real estate agents, this is equally necessary.
Improved Team Collaboration
Cloud technology makes teams collaborate virtually as it enables new platforms of working together as a team. There are plenty of chat-based workspaces that help people to remain connected in real-time, submit a task, and give continuous feedback.
In those platforms, real estate agents can even add their clients to show them your work progress, feedback, and opinions. Thus you all are not always in the need of being together.
Let’s understand this using another simple example, Dropbox is a cloud storage service and is an easily downloadable application. Once installed, you can easily save files online along with synchronizing these files to your devices.
When a user makes a change in the file, that change is saved. The other cloud-based tools, such as google docs, google sheets, and Box.net can also help you gain the same benefits.
Ability to Track Marketing Efforts
Getting the right client, engaging them in a conversation, and converting them into a buyer of your service can be challenging for real estate agents. There are several cloud-based lead acquisition and marketing management solutions available to real estate agencies.
This can be understood with the help of an example. Consider that a real estate agent is using email marketing to gain more clients. There are several cloud-based email services available on the go such as MailChimp and Constant Contact.
You can get some real-time insights such as who is opening the emails and what links are more clicked by the potential client. Once your team knows they get an idea about the interested one, they can think about how to capture those clients.
Automatic Software Updates
Going cloud-based helps real estate agencies frees the managers to worry about updating software. You don’t need to have an IT department to track when the updates are needed and perform them on a manual basis.
The cloud service keeps updating the software so that you get the up to date technology and this way a lot of your time and money is saved. This time can be spent on improving your business strategies.
Win the Trust of Your Client
Real estate agencies have several sensitive documents related to property, client personal information, bank statements, and ownership documents. Also, you might be working on contracts and files on the behalf of your customer for which you need frequent changes and opinions from your client-side.
You can share these documents with your clients using the cloud instantly without using heavy attachments again and again. You and your client can work together on the required documents. They don’t have to wait and they can enjoy instant access to the updated document. You client will be happy to check the progress on their assigned task to you
Also, it’s evident that when your most of work is managed through the cloud, you will have much time to spend on another important task such as establishing a relationship with new clients or determining the needs and concerns of the existing one.
Once they know that your business is making a serious effort to find a beautiful home for them, they will trust you more and there is a great chance that you are referred to someone else for a property deal.
Scalability
Real estate agencies can easily tailor their clouds and tech needs based on the scope of their operation and business model. With the growth or decline observed, cloud services can be adjusted accordingly. You don’t have to pay for anything you are not using.
Better Security
You might have heard about cybercrimes and identity theft these days. Knowing that there are several sensitive documents real estate agencies have to work on, there must be a reliable document security option for these businesses.
Should you only rely on storing this data on your hardware device or keeping copies physically locked somewhere in the office? The most reliable option nowadays is to keep this record in the cloud. However, your customer can limit access to their data as well. At the same time, cloud service providers focus a lot on security, and reliability all time.
Conclusion
Adapting the cloud-based technology has helped almost all industries. Real estate agencies of all sizes can gain cost and productivity by making use of cloud-based software. This software can be general or specific to the needs of the real sector. We are sure that, after going through the above reason, you’ll find multiple reasons to move towards cloud-based systems.
About the Author:
Bryan Osorio is a Blogger, SEO enthusiast, Content Marketer, and Digital Marketer with 3 years of experience within the Tech and Digital Marketing Industry. He likes to read, write, and talk about Science, Technology, AI, Video Games, World News, and more. He studied Psychology at the National University of Colombia and enjoys writing about leadership, remote work, team motivation, and others.
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