That fandangled thing called “the internet” really revolutionized a lot of industries when it was invented, but even in 2020 many businesses still have trouble adapting to technology. In fact, it’s reported that 55% of social media users look up a business on social media before doing business, and yet around 40% of small businesses have no social media presence, or do the bare minimum of social media posting to advertise themselves. That’s a great way for a small business to remain small!

It’s not only about social media though, as companies that do try to embrace online technology may have trouble adapting to all the project management platforms out there. Combine this with the fact that due to the global pandemic in 2020, around 68% of the US workforce now works remotely.

In this article, we’re going to highlight 4 ways that real estate companies can easily adapt to technology and boost productivity while working from home.

Communication Software Streamlines Everything

There’s a reason so many online agencies have been using team communication platforms for years – they allow a business to streamline nearly everything. Team chatting may be the primary usage of software like Slack or Fleep, making email pretty much a thing of the past, but they have many other benefits as well.

According to Follow Up Boss, some industries like real estate rely heavily on quick communication and follow-ups, as delays in communication can lead to lost sales opportunities, and lost commissions for employees.

Team apps like Slack have tons of third-party plugins that can connect with nearly every other kind of popular project management software out there. So for example, if a task is assigned to a worker in Trello or Wrike, Slack will automatically send a message to that user within the chat to notify them. You can do the same thing for emails, accounting apps, and more.

Furthermore, most team communication apps let you pin important notes and files to group chats, so your team can always find the latest documentations, advisories, or important files. This is also useful for on-boarding new workers, where you simply create a channel and pin the necessary training documents or things like NDA agreements for them to download and sign.

Need apps to communicate? There’s probably a Zap for that

Your company might use a combination of different platforms for projects. Trello for assigning tasks, Google Sheets for spreads, ActiveCampaign for tracking email marketing campaigns, etc.

But you can also run into the problem of having to check too many different platforms. Wouldn’t it be much better if, for example, ActiveCampaign could automatically send a list of referrals to Google Sheets, and then Google Sheets automatically assign that list to a worker in Trello?

Zapier can do that for you, easily. You simply choose the apps you want to integrate together, create a few “if X happens, do Y” routines, and all your project management portals will begin communicating with each other.

Take Advantage of Cloud Sharing

Isn’t it a headache waiting for someone to send you an important work file that needs review? Or being asked to “quickly send” a worker a file they need, interrupting your current task and causing you to need to search for the file?

Cloud sharing eliminates that. With platforms like Google Drive or Cloudbox, important files can just be uploaded to a shared storage, so everyone has access to the files they need.

Workers sometimes forget to upload files to the cloud drive? No problem, just have them enable automatic cloud syncing on their desktop, so that files in a work folder on their computer will just automatically be uploaded to the shared cloud. It’s that easy.

Eliminate Lost or Stolen Passwords and Data Breaches

Let’s be honest, employees have a habit of choosing some really questionable passwords. They can’t be entirely blamed if the nature of their job has them needing to remember 20 different passwords to bunches of different work apps, so it’s natural people will just try to use simple passwords like “1234567890”.

Password managers are an excellent way of making sure employees have strong, encrypted passwords that can’t be stolen. A good password manager will randomly generate complex passwords, then lock them in an encrypted vault and automatically log into the necessary apps.

If your remote workers also like to work at public places, like using a coffee shop’s WiFi, make sure they have access to a good, secure VPN service that will encrypt their traffic.