4 Ways CRE Technology Can Be Used to Boost Your Firm’s Productivity
Productivity is a challenge for nearly 2/3 of CRE firms. Therefore, optimizing productivity should be a top priority for a business to focus on. After all, the efficiency, effectiveness, and productivity of your firm can have significant impacts on your company’s success. Two of the biggest areas that can boost productivity are time and tooling. Being able to dedicate time to value-add activities directly correlates to results for the company. And almost 75% of productivity loss can be attributed to the lack of access to tools, which causes inefficiency.
Read ahead to learn how CRE tech can enhance your firm’s productivity.
Streamline Communications
It’s no secret that investors are busy. Often, they are balancing multiple existing investments, while seeking future opportunities. What this means is that their time is valuable, therefore treating it as such by streamlining communications is important.
By streamlining communications, firms are able to improve their efficiencies in the way that they interact and correspond with investors. CRM’s can keep track of everything from investor’s personal contact information to their activity history to even the content of conversations that have occurred. This means that important investor data will not be siloed amongst teams, providing opportunities for firms to more effectively assist investors.
An example of how a CRM can be used to streamline the communication process is by allowing sponsors to conveniently store and organize investors’ current and past transactions with a firm. Using this type of platform to store transaction history makes it easier to quickly identify best-fit investors for future investing opportunities. And with a CRM, like RealPage IMS, finding investors’ information can be done up to 76% quicker.
Automate Workflows and Waterfall Distributions
Calculating distributions can be very manual, and the inefficiencies are likely to increase as your firm grows. Running complex waterfalls in Excel spreadsheets takes time, introduces risk, and pulls resources away from higher value work. Using technology to automate this workflow enables you to both streamline and scale the process, quickly and accurately calculating distributions.
When manual processes are eliminated, investors’ expectations are more easily met and even surpassed. Today, however, about 70% of CRE firms still use manual processes to manage their client relationships. The majority of these firms have encountered issues with inefficiencies and have client data that is scattered amongst people and locations.
Automated processes, including workflows and waterfall distributions, create more time for sponsors to focus on value-add activities that can enhance the investor experience. With workflows and waterfall distributions, spreadsheet-based risks are removed, meaning that investors can expect to consistently receive accurate distributions and statements.
Raise Equity Faster
Every year, millions of square feet of commercial property is developed in the United States, requiring billions of dollars in funding from investors. But before that can happen, countless hours are spent trying to find the right investors for each opportunity. The 21st-century CRE sponsors needs a way to expedite, simplify, and streamline the capital raise process so that they can close as quickly as possible.
An Investor Dashboard, a feature of the RealPage IMS Platform, enables you to exceed your investors’ expectations while saving time and resources. With the IMS Investor Dashboard, your firm can accelerate capital raises with an online deal room, including digital deal documents, electronic signature automation, and historical performance records.
Create a Personalized Investor Experience
Today, personalization is key to gaining an investor’s loyalty and keeping them engaged, meaning that the “one-size-fits-all” approach that may have worked a couple of years ago is no longer the best strategy for engaging investors. Unfortunately, firms that handle multiple deals and investors, can easily become overwhelmed in their attempts to effectively and consistently communicate with each investor- even the ones who may not be active in a current deal. A CRM, like RealPage IMS, enables firms to automate emails and portal notifications rather than having to manually notify each investor every time that they make an investment. This allows sponsors to be in constant communication with investors, keep them engaged, and boost the firm’s overall productivity.
Additionally, leveraging an investor statement tool enables firms to create their own templated statements with custom layouts, colors, images, investment details, and more. With this feature, every investor can receive a tailored investor experience while you enhance your firm’s professional look and reduce the amount of time it takes to create custom property and investment updates. Further, you can personalize this experience at scale, helping you keep up with firm growth.
You may also be interested in CRE Tech Implementation: 7 Tips for Success.
