It is time to update you again on where we are heading with the Radar Front Office suite, our new web-based application for residential sales and lettings front-office staff. Radar Front Office also integrates with the latest version of our residential property management and accounting product, ‘Agency Accounting’. This version of Agency Accounting will be re-branded ‘Radar Back Office’ when provided in tandem with the Radar Front Office suite.
So, what has been happening in the world of Radar since we last updated you? Well, we have now taken the product live at its first client, Acorn, with fifteen branches in London. Training and feedback sessions were held throughout late October / early November last year, with data migration and go-live for all 15 branches in the middle of November. All sales staff are using the application as you read this. We will also be migrating all lettings staff to Radar Front & Back Office throughout January and February this year, meaning that there will be around 150 sales & lettings, property management and accounts staff using Radar – Acorn may be the first ever residential estate agency in the UK where all front and back office functions are completely integrated and working as one across all disciplines and business lines!
This major milestone could not have been achieved were it not for a great deal of hard work and dedication from the technical and project management team at CML, but also with a great deal of assistance and constructive feedback from our friends at Acorn, who’s support we greatly appreciate. They have been putting Radar through its paces and together this partnership is yielding very exciting results which shows the potential for significant productivity improvements to be had from combining sales and lettings data together on one integrated platform.
Neil Louth, Managing Director at Acorn, comments: “We are thrilled to be taking this technology leap forward with Radar. As more and more of the agency business, and in particular the marketing, moves online we are taking advantage of the powerful new CRM features that Radar has to offer. Our negotiators are able to create virtual marketing campaigns by sending out high quality branded PDF brochures and HTML emails containing details of multiple properties to groups of many applicants at once, which gives us the power to communicate with our clients in way that was previously out of reach. “
“The Radar user interface is simple to use and easy to pick up even for inexperienced and new staff, and CML’s team have supported us closely through the process and responded quickly to issues. We have also found it to be stable and reliable... given that we are the first company to ever use the software we were expecting some significant downtime especially at the start, however there has been no outages since we went live which has been a pleasant surprise.”
“We very much look forward to continuing this journey through to its ultimate conclusion, the ‘joined up estate agency’ of the future is here now!”
The list of people to thank would not be complete without mentioning the plethora of very varied comments and suggestions made during the course of this year when we have demonstrated Radar at length to existing clients and prospects alike. We continue to invest heavily in the development of the software and many of the changes we are making reflect market sentiment expressed to us during our ‘grand tour’. All in all we are very excited by the possibilities and prospects that Radar presents.
In terms of functionality whilst it would take up too much space to explain every amendment that has happened recently, we have listed below some of the major developments that have changed the product for the better:
• Task Management – this functionality has been extended to make it much closer to the “co-ordinator” familiar to users of current CML software packages. In the same vein Radar’s file notes have been brought into line with our other products, including the ability to attach files and emails and send file notes out as emails.
• Letter Points – Radar will automatically prompt users to print specific letter types triggered by certain events, such as to confirm an appraisal appointment, to follow-up after an appraisal, to confirm receipt of an instruction, changes of listing price, offers made/accepted/rejected, change of solicitor details, contract exchange etc.
• Email & SMS Reminders – Radar will send out automatic email and/or SMS reminders for market appraisals and viewings at specified time periods.
• Portal Leads – leads that come in to each branch from portals such as Rightmove will appear automatically in a holding area of Radar to be reviewed and registered/discarded as appropriate.
• Instruction Log – this allows the user to list major events relating to properties (such as price changes, changes to property descriptions or photos, instruction becoming available or withdrawn, going under offer, put back on the market, etc). These events can be listed between time periods and for selected branches, so that any changes can be reviewed with a view to printing out new sets of details as required.
• Checklist / File Note Integration for Contract Progression – this allows users to use a combination of checklists and file notes together for contract progression through one single, simple to use user interface.
I hope that you have found this update interesting, and I would be delighted to come and show you how Radar has progressed in person.
Al Chetwode
alchetwode@cmlsoftware.com
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