At a Glance
Company: Global Trust Realty
Location: Long Beach, CA
Industry: Real Estate
Challenges:
| » | Needed to eliminate office spam |
| » | Needed to capture information being lost in phone conversations. |
| » | Needed a way to get new agents trained faster |
| » | Needed a system to manage growing standard documentation library |
Results with BrainKeeper:
| » | Cut Internal Email Traffic by 63% |
| » | Important information was read much sooner |
| » | New agents can sell their first home 20% faster (estimated) |
| » | 4 hours of admin time saved per week |
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"We are a small, growing company. BrainKeeper helps us get the most out of every resource we have, which allows us to grow our business faster."
- James Bridges, CEO
The Bottom Line
By using BrainKeeper to store important information that used to be delivered through email, Global Trust Homes was able to eliminate 63% of their internal email. This information was then much easier for the staff to find, and is now available for all new employees.
Once the agents saw that they were only receiving essential messages, email was checked much more often. This resulted in important information being read and understood much earlier than before- so the staff could count on email being read when it needed to be.
The growing knowledge base proved to be excellent training material for new agents. Since the information in BrainKeeper is actively maintained by everyone in the organization, the knowledge is always timely and relevant. This saves training time for existing agents and allows new agents to be ready to sell homes an estimated 20% earlier.
The administration staff was able to save 4 hours per week by managing the large number of business, listing and legal documents within BrainKeeper. Using the template and attachment features in the BrainKeeper system, administrators are able to keep documents up to date and distribute new versions automatically.
Overall, BrainKeeper saves Global Trust time and money, which allows the agents and staff to serve their customers better.
See how BrainKeeper made this happen
The Challenge
The agents working for Global Trust needed a better way to communicate with their distributed work force, which was always away from the main office. They had been relying on email and voicemail to discuss listings, contracts, and everything related to the operation of the business. However, email became cluttered with "FYI" messages, which everyone had to read and then remember when the information became useful.
Though it was time consuming, email could be searched to find relevant messages, but information in voicemails was lost. As the company grew, more and more time was spent duplicating and clarifying communication. It became apparent that Global Trust needed something more functional than email and more permanent than voice conversations to accommodate the growth of the company.
Another aspect of the business that took a great deal of time was training new agents and administrative staff. "Competition for excellent employees is fierce in Southern California, and some of the best talent may need additional training to be brought up to the high level of performance that we demand," James says. This is as true for the agents as it is for the administrative staff, who have to make sure that the agents have everything they need to do their jobs.
In order to take the next step toward handling the growth of the company, Global Trust needed a system to manage an increasingly large set of policies and best practices documentation. The more people there are to coordinate, the more robust and specific the documentation has to be, but it had grown to be a job that could not be done by a single person well enough.
The Solution
The executives at Global Trust realized that they needed an internal communication system that would give the entire company the responsibility for capturing and maintaining knowledge.
By implementing BrainKeeper, the agents and other staff were able to manage their team collaboration much more efficiently. Significant time savings were realized by:
- Eliminating the need to send and read emails for minor updates, comments or notifications. This information is available within BrainKeeper when it is needed, and can be updated at any time.
- Not having to depend on a network of cell phones to deliver information throughout the organization. Content changes could be made from the field and be instantly available to the entire company.
- Not having to clarify email or voicemail messages. This communication was instead entered into BrainKeeper, where any gaps or ambiguity could be easily addressed by anyone.
A competitive advantage was gained by creating knowledge repositories for a number of key areas:
- Capturing demographic information about visited neighborhoods give agents a better idea of what homes are the best fit for their clients.
- Answers regarding how to handle situations that are difficult to manage, such as: how to handle competitive bidding, resolving property disputes, or changing a contract.
- Creating a contractor database that outlines skills and rates in case a homeowner needs to have work done on a home to get a better selling price.
By offering online training documentation, James estimates that a new agent will be able to sell their first home 20% faster than before. James identifies the reason by saying that, "ramp up time is greatly reduced because our collective knowledge of real estate and how we do business is captured in BrainKeeper." The real estate market in Southern California is very competitive, but having BrainKeeper allows Global Trust to recruit new agents with a promise to improve their skills in selling homes.
BrainKeeper allowed the Office Administrator to automate the management of forms and documents, as well as the communication of updates. Before BrainKeeper, everyone had their own copies of standard legal and business paperwork, and it was a struggle to make sure everyone had the correct version. Now, the management of those documents is distributed among the team, and everyone always has the most current copy.
"BrainKeeper has allowed us to focus more on our clients," says James, "I can't see us doing business without it."
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