Custom real estate CRM solutions are becoming increasingly popular in proptech software development.
However, many ready-made solutions, such as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platforms, are available. These options often appear cheaper and faster to implement. This raises the question: Why should businesses opt for a custom real estate CRM over ready-made solutions?
To answer this, we need to explore the differences between these approaches and evaluate the advantages and drawbacks of custom CRM systems for real estate businesses compared to conventional, off-the-shelf solutions.
CRM System for Real Estate Explained
First, we must define a CRM system and its purposes in the real estate business.
CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. CRM systems are designed to improve the overall customer experience and satisfaction by covering almost all client-related processes, gathering and processing data about their interactions, etc.
CRM systems generally offer similar functionalities. However, for better efficiency and performance, companies commonly prefer a custom development approach, industry-specific SaaS solutions, or adjustable ready-made software that can be suited for particular needs.
The reason for this is simple: each industry has requirements and preferences, demanding tools for monitoring and managing different processes and gathering various types of data. Each industry sector has specific KPIs and includes diverse efficiency-tracking factors.
Therefore, having a general CRM system is great, but it won’t cover specific demands and business needs. The more specific the CRM use cases, the more justified a custom development approach becomes. For a better illustration, let’s consider an example of a custom real estate CRM, the challenges it covers, and the benefits it brings.
Common Challenges Real Estate Businesses Face Without CRM
As mentioned, CRM systems are designed to improve business management and process monitoring. Here are the most common challenges CRM addresses:
- Disorganized Data and Inefficient Operations
- Inefficient Lead Tracking
- Poor Customer Communication and Relationship Management
- Limited Insights into Business Performance
Disorganized Data and Inefficient Operations
One of the core services of CRM for real estate business is the possibility of streamlining data-related processes and ensuring the efficiency of affiliated operations.
CRMs are designed to improve the efficiency of services provided to customers. However, before enhancing something, you should clarify what, how, and why it should be improved. The only way to do so is to gather and process different data types, such as internal business metrics, user feedback, customer support requests, etc.
Without real estate CRM solutions, businesses must manually maintain and control several complex processes simultaneously to fulfill these needs. As a result, the gathered data will be more disorganized and unprocessed, while most operations will be inefficient compared to automated solutions.
Inefficient Lead Tracking
One crucial data-related task in real estate is lead tracking. In other words, it enables tracking of your new potential customers and their demands, including what attracts or repels them from your services.
A real estate CRM is just one of many tools for tracking this information. Besides, it is not even a must-have tool for lead generation. However, custom real estate CRM software development offers more efficient and valuable toolsets for enhanced lead tracking and generation.
In summary, integrating a CRM for real estate businesses helps companies track and analyze their interactions with clients to learn the most efficient ways to engage new audiences. As a result, it becomes much easier to plan and embody a better marketing and engagement campaign.
Poor Customer Communication and Relationship Management
Another challenge covered by CRM for real estate business is poor communication and customer relationships.
CRM collects customer interaction data, including support inquiries, to enhance these aspects. Moreover, custom CRM solutions regularly offer client profiling options when all data is stored more conveniently and efficiently, helping businesses learn customer behavior, previous challenges and requests, as well as offer the best personalized approach.
Limited Insights into Business Performance
Finally, CRMs serve as centralized business management platforms. In addition to integrating with other management tools, they track and analyze key user metrics.
As a result, businesses with custom real estate CRM on board can define the most valuable metrics and ensure transparent and efficient tracking. You must track multiple factors based on customer preferences and demands to learn your business efficiency and performance.
Factors like lead generation, customer satisfaction, user reviews, feedback, and various ratios play a significant role in business planning and management, providing companies with valuable insights useful for further business scaling and improvement.
Benefits of CRM for Real Estate Businesses
So, what are the benefits of CRM in real estate, and how does it help address the mentioned challenges? To simplify it, the list of core benefits of CRM in real estate includes:
- Centralized Data Management
- Automated Tracking of Inquiries
- Better Decision-Making
- Improving Customer Relationships
- Seamless Collaboration Among Team Members
Centralized Data Management
As was mentioned before, a CRM system is a centralized platform, and one of its core functions is data management.
Therefore, using almost any real estate CRM solution, businesses obtain a chance to ensure the efficiency and success of their data management, which also impacts other valuable business processes and operations.
Automated Tracking of Inquiries
Automated tracking of inquiries is essential for customer profiling and pattern recognition.
Such a streamlined process allows companies to recognize trends and user demands more accurately. For instance, if your users commonly address customer support services with similar or similar issues, an automated system can notify you about potential bugs or functional issues worth fixing.
Alternatively, CRM systems can be used for advanced market analysis, defining the most popular goods or services among customers, etc. Thus, businesses can also boost their sales and monetize services more efficiently.
Better Decision-Making
Once again, custom real estate software development services offer better data management and processing. This significantly boosts business decision-making by providing deeper insights, more information, and suggestions.
This explains the popularity of CRM for real estate businesses, as well as their presence in other industries.
Improving Customer Relationships
CRMs are designed specifically for enhancing customer relationships.
To simplify it, their core goal and use case is to help businesses improve their customer relations in all ways possible. It includes processes and operations automation. One of CRM systems’ most valuable yet underestimated advantages is user profiling, which suggests much easier and faster customer support. Having an interaction and request history of the client helps specialists learn their context to offer a more personalized and satisfying experience.
Seamless Collaboration Among Team Members
Finally, CRM for real estate businesses suggests better team collaboration. As a result, members of different departments can share certain requests or reports, share customer data, and redirect tickets on demand.
Long story short, a centralized platform is an excellent solution for enhanced data sharing and other team collaboration practices.
Key Features to Include in a Custom Real Estate CRM
Still, what advantages can custom real estate CRM software development offer? Frankly, the most crucial benefit of such a development approach is the possibility of personalizing the system to meet your needs. To be specific, custom CRM for real estate businesses can include advanced features and functionality like:
- Lead Tracking and Management Tools
- Automated Workflows and Task Management
- Integration with Third-Party Platforms
- AI-powered Chatbots
- Mobile Accessibility
Lead Tracking and Management Tools
In our experience, most companies use various management and tracking tools for lead generation.
Many of these tools are standard in most cases. However, each company has its own preferences and business needs. To meet them, you can choose a custom development approach that suggests complete control over app code, allowing you to upgrade software functionality.
Automated Workflows and Task Management
Custom real estate CRMs offer greater process automation and task management. By building custom software, your company can adjust and personalize automation and management tools.
Integration with Third-Party Platforms
An additional advantage of having complete control over code is the possibility to make changes and functional adjustments. For instance, having your own CRM for real estate business allows your company to integrate whatever third-party platform you want or need.
At the same time, ready-made solutions suggest a predefined list of possible integrations, which has limitations and might not meet your requirements.
AI-Powered Chatbots
One example of advanced software integration is personalized AI-powered chatbots or similar advanced features requiring coding practices. While the rest of the “extra” solutions are speculative, AI-powered chatbots are a great and popular integration for your CRM.
They can be used to upscale and automate undergoing processes even more, bringing more competitive edge and advanced features for customer support.
Mobile Accessibility
Finally, having complete control over the code base of an app in terms of custom real estate CRM software development allows you to scale the functionality almost unlimitedly.
One such possibility is implementing mobile accessibility for your CRM, making it more accessible for employees offering faster and alternative ways to access information on demand or urgently.
⸻ Author Bio ⸻
Bohdan Vasylkiv is the CEO & Co-Founder of Incora, a software development company specializing in custom solutions and full-service cycle development. With his extensive background in the field, he consistently provides valuable industry insights.
