PropTech Today: 5 things you must do in 2023 to get the most from your tech

Why is it that some agents report seeing little impact/improvement from adopting a PropTech solution when another (similar) agent reports transformational results? More often than not, it's not about the product, but the way in which it is adopted, used and benchmarked.

These are the five biggest things I have learned delivering PropTech to agents over the last three years. As an agent, I will readily admit that I don't yet do these five things successfully, but that's my goals for 2023:

Training

If you buy an Aston Martin, but never take it out of 1st gear, then you'll never make use of its incredible performance capability. If you attempt to swim the channel, but only train for it in your kids' inflatable paddling pool, then you're unlikely to get very far. Likewise, if you use a platform but never invest the time (and possibly money) in regular training, then the performance of the product will decrease as your team's knowledge and understanding stalls and, with staff changes, actually shrinks.

With The Depositary, we quickly learned that training and educating users, not just on core features and functionality but on best practices, is essential to the success of our agents. We can only succeed if we are helping our agents succeed. As soon as we understood this, we instantly made all of our training free - forever!

We now run two open training sessions every month and clients can also schedule quarterly in-house training with bespoke objectives. Needless to say, there is a direct correlation between the agents who regularly attend and schedule training sessions with us and the most impressive results achieved.

Objectives

If you don't know where you're going, how do you know when you've arrived or if you've gotten lost for that matter? All too often, agents adopt tech without a clear idea of what problem they are trying to solve or what 'success' looks like. Setting clear objectives will ensure that this issue does not affect your business.

By having clear objectives, you and your team know what they are trying to achieve. Sharing these with your PropTech partners will enable them to guide, advise and train you to ensure you are on the right path to your own idea of success. As you achieve core objectives, you can introduce new ones to ensure you are always evolving and improving and getting every ounce of value from the amazing tools you and your team have access to.

Analysis

We all know that data is valuable, but all too often we get overwhelmed by the fact there is just so much of it. By setting yourself clear objectives, you can then hone in on the data sets that are relevant to achieving these. This, in turn, enables you to tune out the noise and focus on the data that is relevant to you and your team.

If there is one thing your PropTech should enable you to do, it's to easily be able to access, understand and take action based on your data. At The Depositary, we have spent a lot of time and resources this year understanding the data important to our array of clients and how to make this readily accessible, digestible and actionable.

Talk to your PropTech partners, they want you to succeed, they want you to get the most from their product, and they want to empower and enable you and your team with the tools and data to achieve your objectives. Help them understand what data you need access to, how and in what formats. Accessing and using this data then becomes an important part of your training- both delivered externally and internally.

KPIs

If you ensure your team are well-trained, have clear objectives and have access to relevant and digestible data, it's important that you accompany these with KPIs or targets. Whether you tie these to performance reviews, bonuses or prizes/awards, you are focusing each team member on their role in delivering your core objectives.

By gamifying the process, you embed the very lifeblood of good agency - healthy competition. Teams always perform their best when they have a clear goal to achieve. You owe it to your team to benchmark, and then reward, quality performances. So give your team the skills and data they need and some clear targets and get out of their way!

Hive mind

Talk to other agents. You won't be the only agent using a product, and the likelihood is you won't be facing unique challenges in getting the results you hoped for. Why not have a quarterly meet-up with agents you know and get on with (be that online, in person or maybe taking turns to visit each other's operations) and share the wins, failings and takeaways of things you have tried over the previous three months?

What's worked, what's not and what you're going to try next. If you don't have any specific agents in mind, why not ask your supplier if they can recommend and introduce you to other agents with similar objectives and operational structures?

Any supplier should leap at this as it effectively enables them to 'outsource' part of their training to their client base - and you get tips and advice from other agents just like you.

So there you have it - five clear things to implement to ensure you get the greatest value from your PropTech. I'd love to hear how any of you getting on implementing these and I will try and share our experience and results doing so with base over the course of next year.

*Kristjan Byfield is co-founder of base property specialists and the founder of PropTech solution The Depositary.