Mobility & CRM

Insight from Realcomm 2012

By Yardi Blog Staff on Jun 19, 2012 in News

With a commitment to deliver the most relevant, up-to-date insight and technology available for the commercial real estate industry, Realcomm attendees typically seize the chance to investigate the latest tools. With over 100 vendors, searching for a product with the breadth and footprint to fit your business was a top priority for many attendees at this conference, held June 13-14 in Las Vegas. The vendor expo was alive with buzz, and hot topics included smart building technology, CRM, and mobility.

Historically, a major hurdle for commercial real estate has been the brokers’ reluctance to share their contacts.   After all, a positive (and often long-term) client/broker relationship has consistently proven to be a driving force behind closing deals. For brokerage firms, this has been a constant obstruction to the industry’s adoption of technology: figuring out how to secure the information available inside a CRM to a point where brokers feel their relationships can remain intact while still allowing the firm to access the decision making information they need.

Fortunately, improved technology has led to convergence: being able to see the pipeline, discover possible closes, and most importantly increase revenue by lowering vacancy rates all the while maintaining a secure database of clientele that’s available on the go.

Mobility is transitioning from a luxury to a necessity and as a result was an equally hot topic.  In part due to increased security concerns brought about by the recent mobility and BYOD (bring your own device) trends have left commercial real estate IT executives in perpetual problem solving mode.  There’s a lot to think about when it comes to incorporating the consumer driven tech fads we see today; security being at the forefront.  At our recent user conference, Yardi Voyager clients learned about the syncing and wiping functions available through Voyager for the mobile CRM application.

Kim Maddox, Commercial Product Specialist for Yardi Systems and a panelist at RealComm, told us: “There’s a big push right now for CRM and a lot of curiosity around the integration in Voyager. It’s definitely a good story; no rekeying or synching up to some external system; the data they are looking at is real time data because of our architecture and solution.”

While in commercial real estate the business-to-business model is not as conducive to direct debits or electronic payments as the business-to-consumer model is, Realcomm chatter revealed that it’s certainly becoming more of a discussion.  If you were in attendance, what takeaways did you gain from the conference?