DIGITAL REAL ESTATE
A groundbreaking online tool for both the office and the field – RealitApp.
Three quarters of real estate agencies in Slovakia would welcome the opportunity to make their work easier through a mobile interface, instead of the old school use of notebooks or Excel. When the creators of RealitApp discovered this during their market research, they definitely decided to put this innovative idea into real practice.
Today, a real estate tour generally looks the same as it did 20 years ago. The real estate broker sets up a meeting (often forgetting to ask something and has to find out later), prepares photo documentation and goes to the office, where he transcribes the collected data into internal back-office systems, prepares a brokerage contract and hangs the offer on the internet-web. And now imagine that the same broker comes on a tour with a phone and tablet or laptop, continuously noting data through any gadget to a special application, then sends all the data together with photo documentation, to the software cloud CRM system and notifies the client that he will receive a broker contract by e-mail for inspection within five minutes. The client can electronically sign said contract and send it straight back.
As a next step, the creators of RealitApp expect to expand first, to the most culturally, linguistically, geographically and legislatively related market, which is the Czech Republic, later to the Balkans, the Baltics countries and, in the future, even further. Although there are already similar solutions abroad, however without a complex summary of all features and functionalities and especially without real usability in the field.
The authors are proud of the overall solution based on the Microsoft Dynamics 365 platform, one of the individual benefits they draw attention to, e.g. is the possibility of drawing data from several external databases (property list, etc.), electronic document signing, homestaging, reports/ analyzes, or easy generation of various documentation (handover protocol, reservation and brokerage contracts).
Development costs are of course, not the lowest. However, the creators of RealitApp firmly belief that in an instant, when we all want and need to have as much information as possible and as quickly as possible, it therefore makes sense to invest in tools that meet this demand.
The framework idea was born in the spring of 2019, the company is based in the center of Bratislava and was founded in May 2020 with the project being fully launched in August 2020: “The preface was very challenging. I was still working in banking so there was little time to create a business and financial plan. The real spark was my departure from the bank. I was able to devote myself fully to all details, meet friends and the professional and lay public, get feedback and fine-tune the ‘strings on a musical instrument’.
As the main point of the project was in the field of IT and specifically CRM, my business partner Marián bore a considerable burden on his shoulders. I knew him as a passionate cyclist which united the two of us. At first, however, I did not know he was a CRM expert, who is responsible for designing, consulting and delivering solutions on the MS CRM platform. When our mutual friend found out about my intention and business idea, he immediately notified me that it was Marián who would be able to fulfill it technically. We have joined forces to create a quality and unique product in Realitapp. We are the main coordinators and surround ourselves with professionals from various industries: the financial manager who oversees the execution of the financial budget, the project manager who is my advisor in coordinating the entire project, and also work with top IT-suppliers, such as a team of programmers who program, consult and test – they are the right hand of Marián.”
After half a year of development, the CRM solution was ready for sharp pre-arranged testing with three users: “Subsequently, our salespeople ran around the real estate agencies. The biggest challenge was and still is ahead of us: being with customers and showing them the way to the ‘Covid-after Future’. So far, the corona crisis has slowed us down only to a minimal extent. We have reduced the possibilities of personal meetings, but have replaced them with video calls. This age shows how important it is to be innovative.”
The corona crisis was inspiring for the RealitApp team: “It has encouraged us to pay even more attention on how to simplify the presentation of real estate to those interested as much as possible and simplify the entire sales process. It is therefore not only about minimizing direct meetings with sellers, but also about reducing the number of physical inspections of potential buyers. Of course, all this with the ambition to increase the comfort and thus the satisfaction of clients, make the properties offered more attractive, save those interested time and streamline the activities of brokers. We have a long way to go: we already have many more ideas on how to continuously increase the quality of RealitApp, the image of users and their productivity.
In my opinion, our solution is ‘user friendly’. The application is intuitive and allows easy data entry and handling. Yes, there are always users who are afraid of change. However, we are here with our entire team of salespeople to be helpful to our customers,” declares Martin Tóth.
