Commercial real estate Cushman & Wakefield has boosted efficiency by automating property marketing brochure creation, leading to greater client and staff satisfaction.
In partnership with Nintex, its work cut brochure production time by 70 percent and increased data accuracy by 40 percent, according to APAC Salesforce training and change lead Brigitte Bennett.
The company has around 400 offices in 60 countries and 50,000 employees.
Speaking at an Agentforce World Tour Sydney event, Bennett said the firm’s digital transformation is enhancing business processes and helping “to better serve our clients.”
“We needed to streamline a lot of our processes and innovate the way that we work,” she said.
“We needed to stay ahead in our fast-paced real estate industry and we wanted to maintain that leadership position that we’ve got there as well.
“We were faced with manual processes, a stifled workforce and inconsistencies in our Salesforce data. All of these hindered our ability to be efficient and productive.”
Through its Nintex collaboration, the team was able “to create a smarter workforce, spending less time on administrative activities and tasks, driving strategic goals, driving revenue and delivering that global, scalable solution that our clients are used to.”
“Specifically, for us it was around the production of our property marketing brochures. We create brochures when we have a new property listing coming on, we send that out to our clients. They come and have an inspection.”
To achieve this, the organisation had to tackle three main pain points – manual processes, inconsistency of data in Salesforce and repetitive tasks.
“These inefficiencies and the resistance to change not only slowed us down, but also hindered our ability to deliver the best possible service to our clients and drive our revenue.
“We’ve been able to largely automate the entire property brochure production and achieve remarkable results as part of that,” Bennett said.
Staff efficiency
Outside of the reduction in brochure production time, Bennett said the team was able to unlock “time for themselves to upskill as well in our business.”
“Our previously admin-heavy process now became simple, really easy – a click here, an export there and it was done.”
Bennett added this “not only accelerated the production time, but it also significantly reduced the margin for errors, because we were pulling directly from our Salesforce platforms”.
“It allowed us to deliver high quality, brand-focused content is a fraction of the time that it previously took.”
Team members were also able to “change roles and move into analyst roles as part of the ability to be more strategic” and “develop different data modelling solutions.”
“They’re looking at property analysis and also some market exploration within the Sydney market”.
Bennett added, “This shift has not only enhanced job satisfaction within our people but also allowed them to further progress their careers within Cushman & Wakefield.”