Picture this, a sales meeting taking place and customer asking specific information about inventory availability. Specifics can be a particular floor, specific wing or perhaps more.

These queries generally leave the sales team flustered and running helter skelter searching for information or inventory details , sales guys generally end up eating the customers time as they search through spread sheets and silos of information scattered everywhere.

But what if all the Inventory details were available to the Sales guy at finger tips,i.e on mobile phone, tabs or even your desktops.

A centralized repository where inventory information can be pulled, filtered and shown to customer on the fly.

Having the correct CRM will help the real estate professionals do just that!! Salesforce can help achieve this with easy customization and point and click technology!

CRM with Inventory Management will help the Real estate professionals manage multiple projects , buildings , floors and units from anywhere in the world.

Following are some of the must have features to implement a comprehensive E2E Inventory management solutions.

Inventory structure

Categorizing Inventory details appropriately and accurately is the first step towards implementing an Inventory Management solution. This will ensure that important information needed for each stakeholder is stored and available centrally.

Following are some of the important features of inventory that needs to be tracked and managed

• Project name – with multiple projects getting executed by real estate professionals at any point of time, project name and inventory needs to go hand in hand.
• Floor plan – detailed floor plan of the inventory so that it can be made visible to customers and also be used for printing brochures.
• Size and floor area – information regarding the floor size plays a very vital role in sale decision making. Making it available against each inventory will help customers take the correct decision while purchasing.
• Wing /tower – with so many huge scale projects it is imperative to tag an inventory to the wing or tower which it belongs to.
• Inventory status – Inventory status can be categorized under various categories like Sold, Booked, Blocked and Overdue. It enables us to access complete information about each unit of the scheme in a single click with comprehensive flexibility.

It is important to have Inventory Creation Unique No. generated for each inventory with tagging of Block, Tower, Floor, Inventory Type, and Area

Bulk inventory creation

Creating inventory for big projects can be quite a big task for the Back office user, tagging similar inventory together will help automate the creation of inventory in one go.Inventory with similar properties and features can then be looked up and filtered at any point in time.

Inventory panoramic view

Actually looking at the inventory to be purchased plays a very big role in customer’s decision making to lock and seal a property deal. What if the customer is unable to visit the site of the inventory, providing a 3-D view of the property on both the website and B2B portals will overcome this hurdle.

Detailed View of Property in a more user friendly – Mobile app

Get property attributes, images and features at one place and also on your mobile. Get complete visibility on property inventory with details such as availability, on hold, offers received. Get real time information on booking, drill down to payment details, activity and interaction history, pricing and payment information. All of this can be easily made available using the Salesforce1 Mobile App.

Inventory reports and Dashboards

Comprehensive reporting and dashboards with graphical representations on the stock of the inventory will help management as well as sales-marketing team take corrective decisions on marketing strategy to focus on which inventory  actually clicks with the customer. It will give a bird eyes view of the stock of unsold and sold inventory to key stakeholders.

Inventory allotment and release tracking

Centralizing inventory allotment and release tracking will ensure the Sales and Marketing team can pitch the right inventory to the client and make sales faster.

Integration with ERP/SAP/third party Accounting system

Integrate with the existing payment systems like ERP or SAP to track the payment cycle and status of the inventory. Status of the inventory can range from blocked, booked, due for payment, payment on first slab, down payment done etc depending on which stage of payment cycle the inventory is in.

 

Salesforce provides the right CRM platform which is easily customizable and extensible for the real estate industry.

 

References

• http://www.cloudsteer.com/
• http://www.crecloudsolutions.com/
• http://www.abcinfosoft.com/inventory-real-estate.htm
• http://www.daebuild.com/
• http://www.ileadco.com/blog/real-estate-inventory-management-system/