Last Updated on October 30, 2024 by Owen McGab Enaohwo
As the managing director at All Residential Real Estate, Perry Beebe is committed to offering his clients the best property management services. The constant changes in the real estate industry call for regular updates to the business process. However, the paper-based checklists on the ground initially were ineffective in meeting the documentation needs. They were easily outdated, leaving team members with inadequate information that prevented them from working efficiently.
In a bid to streamline his business operations, Perry sought to create paperless documentation with effective software. After several searches, he discovered SweetProcess.
Perry shares his experience with how SweetProcess helped in documenting the business processes at All Residential Real Estate effectively and increased employee efficiency.
About All Residential Real Estate
All Residential Real Estate is a property management company. Based in the Greater Wollongong area in the south of Sydney, Australia, the organization boasts of having one of the largest property managers in the area. In addition to our residential services, for those interested in commercial properties, you can explore compelling commercial real estate images to enhance your listings and attract more potential clients.
The team at All Residential Real Estate works closely with their clients to provide them with quality property at the best rates on the market. It guides clients looking to sell or rent their property while making the most of it. For those looking to diversify their real estate strategy, methods like Driving for Dollars can help identify off-market properties with great investment potential.
The organization currently has fifteen employees.
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The Troubles of Ineffective Documentation
One of the first things that Perry realized when he purchased All Residential Real Estate was ineffective documentation that held employees back. There was a list of tasks that employees needed to do, but there were no clear instructions on how they were to execute the tasks.
The organization had paper-based checklists, but the checklists did not really explain how to get things done.
“They worked but business processes changed and it was difficult to keep those checklists up to date. A checklist only provides a small amount of information. On a single line, it will say ‘do X and then you tick it off.’ One of the biggest challenges with that is to know how to do X, for example. And then also challenges from a personal perspective where they may not follow the checklist, but just tick it off as completed,” Perry says.
In the absence of effective standard operating procedures, team members couldn’t maintain consistency in their operations. They relied on their knowledge to get things done, and it didn’t always provide the best results.
“We could no longer stay at a paper-based level and be able to improve the level of service that we provide,” Perry further reveals.
Finding a Perfect Match in SweetProcess
Advancements in technology avail businesses of several opportunities to increase their productivity and efficiency. In light of this, it was obvious to Perry that operating a paper-based operation was outdated.
“We were looking to move everything that we did into the cloud—this was three to four years ago. Up until then, everything had been paper-based. I made the decision that we needed to go paperless.”
Perry started searching for the perfect tool, but he couldn’t find a good match initially.
“I started searching for software online that would be able to meet our requirements. I went through a series of different providers like Trello and Monday. There’s a series of software that other companies were using, but primarily they’re project-based and what we needed was procedure-based software that had the software equivalent of doing checklists.”
When Perry found SweetProcess, he knew that it was a perfect match because it met the specific needs of his business.
How SweetProcess Improved the Operations at All Residential Real Estate
There’s only so much employees can do based on their knowledge; they need the right systems to be efficient. As a business owner or manager, it’s your responsibility to make these systems available.
Perry wanted to empower his employees with all the information they needed so they could be efficient. Did he achieve that with SweetProcess? From what he says, he did. Let’s see how that happened.
- Effective Documentation
The success of a business lies in its ability to answer the “how” question of getting things done. Documenting business processes effectively goes a long way in guiding employees through their tasks.
The team at All Residential made provision for documentation with checklists, but they weren’t adequate. Team members relied so much on other people to get things done.
“The biggest thing is that we no longer need to have subject matter experts. Previously, there would be a person who was an expert and would answer everybody’s questions. But that person may not be in the office at that point in time,” Perry says.
If they asked two people to perform the same task, they ended up doing the task differently due to a lack of standard documentation. SweetProcess has helped the team to resolve that challenge. Not only have the team members become efficient, but they also no longer rely much on experts for guidance.
“All the experts need to do is when there’s a change to a system or we are introducing a new procedure, they go through and create it. Once they’ve done it and tested it in a live environment, they can move on.”
- Seamless Employee Onboarding and Training
One area the organization has greatly benefited from implementing SweetProcess is employee onboarding and training. Like most businesses, they used to spend a lot of time and resources bringing new employees up to speed.
Using paper-based checklists for employee onboarding and training was tasking to both the organization and the trainees until SweetProcess came to the rescue.
According to Perry, SweetProcess has simplified the organization’s employee onboarding and training.
“For onboarding, all we need to do is show a new person how to use SweetProcess. If there is a new task that needs to be done, because of our various systems, we can automate the creation of that task.”
SweetProcess offers several features for training new and established employees. One of its outstanding features is video. Employees get to see what they need to do in action and easily replicate it. Perry and his team are leveraging this feature in their onboarding and training.
“Historically in the business, we had used video a lot to show how to do particular steps in a procedure. Within SweetProcess, we were able to include those videos into the procedure. What it means is that they can have a procedure open up on one screen of their computer and be doing the work on another screen and they can step through the video and it tells them what needs to be done.”
- Consistency in Operations
Being consistent in your product or service delivery is key for business sustenance. When there are no standard operating procedures and team members perform their duties based on their knowledge, there will be different outcomes. This was the case at All Residential Real Estate.
The organization makes use of the knowledgebase feature in SweetProcess to distribute knowledge across the organization for consistent outcomes.
Perry found videos to be very effective in passing information across the team, so he uses them to achieve consistent outcomes.
“Watching videos does add on a lot more time to being able to do the task, but that little bit of extra time is more than made up by the consistency of what the team produces. Consistency is one of the biggest things we needed in the business…. We can actually go back and check, do an audit trail on tasks to make sure that the tasks have been completed correctly in SweetProcess. So it allows us to check from both ends.”
Practical Advice for Streamlining Your Operations
Perry has firsthand experience of working with business operations that aren’t streamlined and those that are streamlined. If he had to advise anyone, he’d advise them to take the streamlining route.
As one who has benefited immensely from implementing SweetProcess in his business, Perry advises that you do the same.
“If you’re working in a procedural-based business, have a look at SweetProcess. Have a look at the procedures and policies within SweetProcess and see how you could create those sorts of systems in SweetProcess.”
Take Charge of Your Business Operations
When things aren’t working out, you can change them for the better. Perry took it upon himself to streamline his business operations by seeking SweetProcess. Today, he’s reaping the benefits of his decision.Do you want to improve your business operations? If the answer is yes, sign up for a 14-day free trial of SweetProcess. You don’t need a credit card for the trial. If you aren’t impressed with the software at the end of your trial, you can simply walk away.