The online Intranet is one technology tool that is woefully under-utilized in our business. What's an Intranet? It is a network setup that resides not on a computer in our office, but on the Internet. It allows us to network our employees, agents and management via any Internet computer, no matter where they choose to work. There's a lot you can do with an Intranet, including involving your customers, clients and transaction vendors. Let's look at some of the capabilities that I've actually constructed as custom functions of a real estate brokerage Intranet:
- Contact & Prospect Management - A complete and highly customizable set of databases for managing all contacts and prospects, with the ability to segregate them by agent, branch or other variables.
- Listings Management - Manage listings information, tasks, ongoing records of activities, seller communications and more.
- Transaction Management - Manage all transactions by type, with tasks tracked by agent, transaction type, branch, or any other variable.
- Lead Management - Assign and manage leads, while monitoring the activity of the agent in working the leads.
- Document Archiving & Management - Store all documents for the company and transactions securely, with access assigned for total control.
- Company Management & Training - Place training and policy documents online for secure permitted access.
- Extensive Reporting - Every database and module provides customized reports output and design.
- Company wide Task Sharing - Manage tasks by person, group or department, with the ability to maintain private, public and group viewing.
- Brokerage Wide Calendar - Same as with tasks, the brokerage can have individual agent and personnel calendars feeding a full company calendar, with private, public and group permissions.
You can accomplish complete and efficient brokerage management, including access by agents from remote locations, with an online Intranet. You don't have to buy special servers, software or hardware of any kind. All you need is reliable, preferably high speed, Internet access.
What does it cost? I've researched and heavily used one company, due to the ability to build the custom databases I needed. It is WebOffice, and they charge by the user. Here's their pricing page. As you can see, you can start with just management staff for a very low cost. Once you've built out your infrastructure, you can add your agents.
