Real Estate Marketing Firm Take Innovation to the Next Level with PlanPlus™ Online by FranklinCovey
Overview
WaldenPacific Property Trust, with business operations in Florida, is a pioneering organization. Working in tandem with real estate developers, WaldenPacific is a marketing organization developing innovative corporate lease programs, backed by its property management division, that result in high velocity condominium property sales.
The company helps developers market their properties quickly and effectively through a network of skilled realtors. Realtors sell the properties in conjunction with WaldenPacific's Absolutely Effortless Ownership™ program that manages the property for investment buyers. All parties become partners in success and satisfaction.
Challenge
In order to manage all the players and processes in this customized program, Project Manager Susie Hipp knew that no typical CRM package would apply. Participants in the WaldenPacific process include not only sales personnel and property managers, but also mortgage officers, appraisers, title companies, and realtors. Once each property is sold, each new network of tenants, owners and vendors would then be involved in a business process specific to that new set of needs.
Further complicating the process is that WaldenPacific lives in a constant state of innovation. No sooner is a program in place than a newer, better idea requires the working process to change.
As WaldenPacific considered its options, the company first looked at Salesforce.com. However, a custom CRM solution would have cost upward of $30,000, plus ongoing maintenance to manage program changes.
Solution
The program might have been worth it. But before she could act, Hipp happened upon an even better alternative: PlanPlus™ Online by FranklinCovey, which was developed jointly with COMPLETExRM, an Enterprise 2.0 CRM solution provider for small and medium businesses.
For less than $5,000, Hipp now uses PlanPlus™ Online, which was built on COMPLETExRM's xRM™ Foundation, a Java-based, service-oriented application delivered through the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform. PlanPlus™ Online easily integrates customizable CRM solutions such as contact management and sales force automation with the FranklinCovey planning methodology of task management, daily and weekly planning, among others for individuals and organizations to utilize virtually anytime and anywhere via the Internet.
Results
For WaldenPacific, the solution has given Hipp a program she was able to customize by herself with one day's training. Since Hipp customized PlanPlus™ Online, she is also able to quickly modify and change the resulting application as contracts, vendor transactions and work processes change dramatically.
"A huge factor in my decision is the fact that with PlanPlus™ Online I only need to buy licenses for my own team members, but the system is fully capable of communicating with people outside of our user base," she said. "That's huge for us. We deal with title companies, realtors, lenders - hundreds of people I don't want to pay a license fee for, but who can add value to our process if I can give them a link to a document or a note at the appropriate time."
As an example, Hipp describes the new property her company is currently preparing to launch. Each of the 200 units in the property will require a unique "buyer pack," of documents which could entail 35 to 40 pages apiece. In the past, the firm has hired programmers to create the automated PDF files required for each part of the pack.
With PlanPlus™ Online in place, the programmers are no longer required. Hipp is able to create the documents herself, which saves a significant amount of money and programming times. In addition, since PlanPlus™ Online is a Web application, Hipp no longer need the storage or the e-mail bandwidth to manage 5-10 MB files. Now she's e-mailing only the link to the document, which means that the odds of successful delivery to the recipient are vastly increased.
"We are truly pioneers in this process." Hipp says. "We can create reports to track our activity from any number of angles, and set it up to notify the people automatically when they need to take an action, or send out alerts when corrective steps are required."
"There isn't any other program I'm aware of that could have helped us meet all of these needs," she added. "PlanPlus™ Online has been a solid, scalable solution for us."