Property People are ready to improve profitability with MRI Sales and Lettings
Founded in 2005, Property People estate agents has been growing steadily to become one of Belfast’s market leaders in the sales, rentals, and property management market.
Branching out to include student lettings, HMOs, and co-living properties, as well as sales and letting of agricultural land, farms, and development sites, the team at Property People are stepping into a new era for the business, as they overhaul their tech solution to drive efficiencies.
When their long-term property management solution was no longer supported, they opted for a different provider, but soon found their new system, dealing only with rentals, did not meet their needs.
“We’re not in love with it – some things are quite confusing,” explained Ciara Moran, director of Property People, in reference to their current solution. “We knew we needed a change as our current solution isn’t fit for purpose, but we were concerned that a new implementation would be too much upheaval.”
However, for the website integration, the team found themselves continually having to sync the solution with the website, and adding new properties was a time-consuming and complex task.
“We wanted to add a property sales management system, and the idea was once we were settled with it to change the rental system over too, but with the website issues we decided it was best to move both at once.”
After taking recommendations from other businesses in similar circumstances, and exploring other options, Ciara and the team opted for MRI Sales & Lettings, which will go live in November 2023.
“One other option was very good, but we felt that MRI was better. The fact that MRI integrates with practically everything quite easily was a huge thing for us.”
Seamless integration
Integration between much of Property People’s current tech stack and MRI Sales & Lettings will enable the team to streamline much of their everyday operations. For instance, the integration with Inventory Base, and the team’s adoption of Secure Sign, will allow for smoother, more joined up working.
Faster updates
Thanks to MRI’s ethos of being open and connected, linking the solution to the website will be much simpler. With their current solution, the team have a 2-hour update window, and experience frequent issues with syncing. However, with MRI’s integration, updates to the website will feed through instantly, allowing for accuracy in both the customer-facing website and the back office.
Phone system integration
With customer experience a top priority, the team at Property People are excited to implement an integrated phone system using a web based phone provider, which automatically brings up a client’s account details and note section when it recognises their incoming call. This integration capability was a gamechanger for Ciara, who explained, “I was ready to sign with another provider, but the phone system integration changed the conversation.”
Future ready
Property People’s goal is to continue to expand the business to new branches and further develop their existing portfolios, while building efficiencies and saving staff time to improve profitability. Ciara is excited to see what other efficiencies can be leveraged.
We were calling round other agents also working with MRI, and they were really happy. We got into the nitty gritty of all the integrations as we didn’t even realise how much MRI supported. It was lovely to see that TDS was there and I need to check to see if there are any others we can work with to save time as well!
Ciara Moran, Director of Property People
