India has experienced healthydevelopment in last 10 years and is considered one of the fastest growing economies in the coming years. India’s expertise in segments like IT and ITES, auto-components, chemicals, apparels, pharmaceuticals and jewelry where India have delivered best in the world, will definitely attract more foreign investors in the near future.
The real estate sector in India assumed greater prominence with the liberalization of the economy, as the consequent increase in business opportunities and labor migration led to rising demand for commercial and housing space. At present, the real estate and construction sectors are playing a crucial role in the overall development of India’s core infrastructure. Over the next decade, the real estate sector is expected to grow by 30 per cent.India is going to produce an estimated 2 million new graduates from various Indian universities during this year, creating demand for 100 million square feet of office and industrial space.
Having said all this and so many other optimistic measures, the sector has gained over a period of time, the concern is now how to deal withthe challenges posed by competition, squeezing credit, and rising input costs. The question to be answered is “how to build customer focus and new markets within current business & economic environment”..
In this highly competitive market it is important for a real estate company to lead the field by differentiating itself from customer acquisition stage to post-acquisition or customer service stage.Technologies such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools play an important role in achieving this objective
Instead of long story and general markets stats, let us visit the actual CRM journey of Real Estate company.
his Company is involved in real estate projects management & consultancy and is based in Bangalore having over 250+ sales & marketing personnel working across India and Middle East. This company strives towards delivering a personalized, strong service-based model never before experienced in real estate.
To realize this customer centric service and relationship based model, the company needed a true CRM solution that would enable them and their customers with in-depth and complete view of their bookings, payments, site visits, registration and documentations, help Sales team track leads effectively and create bookings with clear visibility on available plots.
Earlier Relationship Managers managed their activities manually through Excel sheets; few regions/departments had custom built application which was not taking care of above issues. There was no visibility on booking pipelines and no central depository of customer database.
Company evaluated several CRM vendors including Microsoft Dynamics, Salesforce.com, SugarCRM and their custom built CRM solution. After thorough analysis it was fairly clear that all Tier 1 CRM solutions offer similar feature and functionalities for standard business requirements but company selected SugarCRM based on 3 key factors
Company worked with SugarCRM gold-level partner Bhea Technologies Pte Ltd (www.bheacrm.com) to deploy its Sugar solution. Company preferred to GoLive with full-fledged integration with accounting system and it took less than 3 months to complete Phase 1 implementation following with release of Phase 2 that has advanced Document Management System and Advanced Reporting.
Company focused its SugarCRM implementation on customized integrated solutions that facilitated Sales Automation, enhanced lead generation to provide detailed lead tracking, measure effectiveness of marketing campaigns and enable MIS reporting.
With the Integration with Land Management System (Custom built), Company can now extract data related to projects/land/plots from LAMS and make it available in various custom modules which enable sales team to sell plots or take bookings towards available plots. With the integration with accounting system Sales team gets update on customer payment status. The Reports on onsite visits are now available in the system so management has clear visibility on onsite visits done by customers. With Marketing Automation, company runs various marketing campaigns like Email, Newsletter, etc. and SMS campaigns with the integration to SMS gateway. Once the leads are generated it gets assigned to sales guys to further create bookings towards available plots. They have various booking status at each of the status there will be workflows which trigger respective email alerts/tasks and actions to other integrated systems (LAMS and Accounting). At this stage Company now is fully making use of SugarCRM features and benefits with all customizations specific to their requirements. Users/Sales team has now moved one step above to leverage on SocialCRM benefits built in Sugar to help them in business by getting connected to customers on Linkedin, Twitter, FaceBook etc.., Field sales guys are accessing customer information on the move with their Android or iPhone smartphones, and top management is getting full business visibility via reporting and dashboards.