At Assetsoft, we specialize in breaking down these silos by integrating expense management software with your ERP, enabling seamless data flow between systems. Here’s how our integration solutions add value:

-  Automatic Expense Allocation: We ensure that corporate credit card expenses are automatically mapped to the suitable projects, properties, or cost centers in your ERP, reducing manual entry and errors.

-  Improved Financial Visibility: By integrating expense data with your ERP, you can gain real-time insights into your project costs and overall financial health, empowering you to make informed decisions.

So, what are the best real estate ERP system features that your business must have? Not every feature is relevant to this industry. That is why we have below a list of the features that are the most essential for all real estate companies.  

1. Automated follow-ups with customers/vendors/employees 

A lot of the real estate business is all about getting in touch with customers/vendors/employees to coordinate and follow up on sales and work. That is where ERP-based automation comes into play. The right CRM software helps send automated notifications and reminders to all stakeholders. From rending people about meetings, payments, rent collection, sales, inventory, and more are all automated by this system.  

This system will allow you to set up and schedule reminders. Even if you forget to send periodic reminders, the right selection of technology will remember and do it on your behalf. There should also be a preferred means of communication that the software supports, like chat, email, calls, or more.  

2. Detailed contact storage and segregation  

   
   

A property management ERP program acts as a centralized point to store all details about all your connections. In case you have to track these contacts through an excel sheet or physical phone diaries, it can become a nightmare to find important information.  Therefore, it's critical that the app be able to access all the data at any time and keep it in a way that is both simple and structured. 

Customer identity, phone numbers, email addresses, birthdays, other important dates, and residential addresses should all be provided for clients. Additionally, there should be a simple data modification feature and a way to import and upload documents in accessible mediums (like contracts or property photos). This software should also have options to sort out contact details and separate them according to priority, area, age, sale potential, and other categories you want to create. 

3. Property management  

   
   

Technology implementation with the right ERP will also help you manage all your properties with better efficiency. Things like rent collection, reporting customer grievances, asset management, keeping track of lease management, and more. If you have a vast business it may be very hard to individually manage these properties and visit them very often. 

That is where an ERP system can help. You can now remotely manage your property with software options like Yardi, MRI, and others. Even things like risk management, market research, and analytics can be simplified with the right tools.  

4. Inventory management  

   
   

Staying updated about your own business inventory is crucial to make sales and providing relevant information to your leads. This also helps manage your leads better, and keep them satisfied to convert them into customers. Your ERP software must have this feature which lets you manage your inventory. 

You can update your sales information in no time and update all your employees about current situations. No one has to physically visit the office, make new logs about the inventory, and then update the information. You will also save a lot of valuable time doing this.  

5. Back office account optimization  

   
   

Your ERP system should also be responsible for running a variety of back office accounting procedures, such as billing, making reports, and sending reminders for tax payments. The things that are crucial for the smooth functioning of the automated accounting system with the right ERP system. Simple and rapid bill generation should become easy along with automated statement generation and client communication.  

6. Built-in analytics tools 

   
   

Every major business decision in real estate is based on data. But analyzing bulk data can be very hard and takes up a lot of time. That is why automated data analytics is a crucial feature of real estate ERP. Without proper data analysis, you will not be able to understand the market of your business.  In order to grasp the condition of your company, revenue trends, customer response, and other crucial elements of real estate management, you will require analytics and transparent reporting. 

Consequently, a quality property management program ought to have a strong reporting system, which includes: 

• Using cutting-edge analytics, you may monitor your managers' performance and track sales. This helps you provide better sales and marketing plans for further growth.  

• Competition and market analysis. 

• Graphs, charts, or other illustrations to demonstrate the analytical reports in a comprehensible fashion.  

• User-friendly dashboards with easy-to-use features.  

The first step for data overload prevention is to prepare the data. This helps you identify the problem areas and analyze data based on priority. Some steps to prepare your data are:  

Identifying where your data is coming from is crucial to filter out bad data. This data can be anything from emails and contact information to market analysis and tenant messages. Typically, this data comes from social communication tools, websites, or other data capturing software. If a particular source is constantly sending bad data, you can block it at the source and reduce the amount of data collected.

When using ERP software, the quality of your data matters. According to Garter, organizations lost an average of $15 million in revenue due to poor quality data. Bad data is anything incomplete, inaccurate, irrelevant, or duplicate. Such data occupies more space without providing any value. Remember, for ERP systems, quality matters more than quantity. You can filter out bad data by analyzing all information and rejecting or deleting irrelevant data. Early elimination of bad data can prevent further complications such as lower productivity and increased expenses.  

Data migration is not as simple as copy-pasting information from one place to another. Depending on your original data storage, your data needs modifications to be compatible with the new storage solution. You can opt for step-by-step data migration or move all the data at once.  

Once your data is ready, you can automate your data management through ERP software. Depending on your requirements you can decide on the ERP implementation solution. Certain platforms have pre-made templates for various businesses. Your ERP solution should adapt to the company’s data management requirements. You can either train your in-house team or hire an outsourcing company to migrate data on your new ERP software. For smooth data management, you can take the following steps: 

Automating is easier when done in steps. Start by dividing your data based on priority. If tenant data is more important than anything else, migrate it first. Automation isn’t an instant process. It can stretch from days to months. Planning your automation strategy beforehand can ease the actual process.  

Every company has different goals and requirements. Off-the-shelf software does not have custom features that suit your business. Through RPA tools, you can integrate various features to build custom software for your company. Platforms like UiPath make integrations easier through their various tools.  

There are different ERP modules you can utilize to automate real estate processes. By combining all the modules, you can streamline your data management and prevent data overload. 

A task manager lets you organize your real estate tasks using a single platform. Through this tool, you can view and assign tasks to your employees. You can view all your tasks on the dashboard which makes it easier to plan them. The software keeps track of all the tasks and stores the data in its own backup. 

Data management has become easier and more accurate with AI. A PwC report states that artificial intelligence will change the real estate decision-making process. Using artificial intelligence, you can easily reduce the amount of bad data in your storage. The AI will analyze all the information and filter out irrelevant or duplicate data. It will also organize the data so you can access it easily. 

Local storage can hold only a limited amount of data. Moving to the cloud gives you a larger storage space that is also more secure. Moreover, you can remotely access the data through a connectible device. Sharing the data with your employees and clients also becomes easier.  

Instead of the bulky analysis reports, AI can display the same through simple visual representations. Using pie charts and line graphs, it can show you all relevant information. This helps in easier understanding, comparison, and storage. These reports can also be conveniently shared with clients. This eliminates unnecessary analysis data, while still keeping the important information. 

The importance of testing in ERP go-live cannot be stressed enough. Testing brings out the problems in your software by subjecting it to various situations. This is to avoid future mishaps under similar scenarios. Testing involves several aspects: 

• Workflow: Since the software will deal with varying amounts of data, testing workflow is very important. How much data does the system handle smoothly? Can it process large amounts of data simultaneously? These are some of the criteria against which the software is tested.  

• Backup: Backups save all your data in case the ERP system fails. While testing the software, it is also important to test the backup. Other than ensuring the backup runs smoothly, you also get an estimate of the resources you will need.  

• Hardware: Along with software testing, you also need to test the hardware and network connections. These are also an integral part of ERP implementation.