Salesforce for REITs – new lease workflows

Real estate Investment Trusts (REITs) own and manage commercial or residential properties such as malls, apartments, office buildings, hotels, hospitals etc. These companies have several processes that are candidates for applying Salesforce technologies to. In this writeup, we will explore the workflows around new leases. This is the revenue side of the house, a process typically involving multiple departments, steps and approvals and is still very spreadsheet intensive or leveraging point solutions in most REITs. The area is ripe for modernization.

The business driver for the real estate firm in this area is to accelerate the leasing process. Improving the ‘time to lease’ and better tracking of deals and pushing them through the pipeline helps in achieving the bottom line results that the REIT is seeking – increased deals & renewals, sales, better tenant mix.

Campaigns and Lead Management, Account & Opportunity management features of Salesforce allow the Real Estate firm to better track deals and proactively plan and manage the process. The workflow is a process involving multiple departments, multiple approvals and is document heavy. The collaboration and knowledge sharing aspects of Salesforce Communities are relevant to this process.

Improving the visibility of deals in the pipeline, having dashboards with the classic reports around pipeline management such as Stuck Opportunities, Opportunity Stage Duration will equip the senior managers at the real estate firms to provide better and timely help to their staff, and to gather intelligence on the cycle times between a prospect viewing the property to signing the lease.