Andrew Schofield, Operations Director at Karl Tatler Estate Agents, explains why DataWarehouse is absolutely fundamental to their agency and its growth strategy. He also tells us about his favourite Reapit feature – the power organiser – and how he thinks technology will change estate agencies in the future.
“...the need for us to have accurate data on an almost real-time basis is critically important.” - Andrew Schofield, Karl Tatler Estate Agents
Tell us about your agency
Hi, I’m Andrew Schofield, Operations Director at Karl Tatler Estate Agents. We’re a multi-branch agency on the Wirral, currently with eight high street offices, a lettings department and a land and new homes department.
Why did you decide to invest in DataWarehouse?
Our company has been on a data journey for the best part of the last decade. Data is incredibly important to what we do and the decisions we make. We use a software product called Tableau and have run our data through that for a number of years. However, there are limitations to how we’ve been pulling data into that product. DataWarehouse offers us the ability to display our data in a real-time and 100% accurate way.
What did your previous reporting process look like?
It looked very manual. There was a lot of data entry into Google documents and control sheets, a lot of reports being pulled directly from AgencyCloud and our telephone system, and essentially it meant that we were unable to get all of the fields that we wanted, so there were black holes in our reporting. It meant that we didn’t have our results in real-time, and it also meant that it was prone to human error. As the business has scaled, those issues have become more apparent.
We’ve gone from about 40 – 45 staff and 5 offices pre-Covid to where we are now, two and a bit years later with 110 staff and three additional offices. As a result, the volume of data that we’re dealing with has gone through the roof as you can imagine, so the need for us to have accurate data on an almost real-time basis is critically important.
We believe that the data that we have access to is responsible for millions of pounds worth of revenue every single year, it’s that important to us. So where we’ve had documents that are unable to load in real-time, we’re waiting for refresh schedules to come in to make those decisions to get that data. As the business has grown, and we’re at the forefront of that, that’s not acceptable for us any longer, we’re too big and there’s too much at stake to wait for a day or a week for that document to update.
Equally, as we’ve grown the business, and we’ve scaled the business, there are elements of our reporting that we’ve wanted to develop, we call them EBI’s, even better if’s. So, it would be great if we could have that piece of information. It would be great if we could interrogate the data in this way as we used to do it directly through AgencyCloud. We were unable to get all of that data, whereas DataWarehouse offers us the ability to get all of the data that we need, in the format that we need, when we need it.
“DataWarehouse offers us the ability to get all of the data that we need, in the format that we need, when we need it.”
How was the onboarding process?
It’s been really straightforward so far. The guys at Reapit have been incredibly supportive of us and where we have wanted changes to the data that we’re getting, where we have needed support in finding some of the data that we need, they’ve been very helpful in doing that. It’s been a very two-way process. An ongoing process where we’ve been in constant contact with the guys to get the outcome that we want.
What do you use DataWarehouse for?
We would like to use it for everything, that’s our ultimate goal. That all of our reports, and we have in excess of 100 documents that we have data driving into, we would like to move them all to DataWarehouse so that essentially 100% of our data is pulled via DataWarehouse, so that essentially everything that we do will be through Data Warehouse and able to power the reports we have.
Data and our use of it has become critically important in how we manage our business. That’s all the way from our staff at an individual level for performance management, to strategic business decisions that we make. I think perhaps the most relevant example through Data Warehouse, and the improvements that we’ve been able to make, is how we track market appraisals that we’ve been to.
Historically, we would look at market appraisals and we would be able to track whether we’d won them or lost them. Then we started being able to pull data to establish, has that market appraisal become a listing with us or with any other agency, and so we’re able to take that reporting to the next level, but that’s where it stopped. Now, with DataWarehouse, we’re able to track whether that listing has gone on to sell and pull that information into our reporting, enabling us to analyse at what price point that listing sold.
A great example of this is that we can now look to our valuers and understand whether their pricing was correct on appointments. It’s often a criticism of valuers that they will tell you they’ve lost an instruction because it’s been overvalued by another agency.
I don’t have the ability to have that level of in-depth knowledge across all of our postcodes and towns, whereas the data now tells me whether what they say is true or not and I can show it to them and, in a case that we had recently, say your pricing is around £25,000 lighter than your competition, and they are going on to sell. That’s enabled us to speak to that valuer, change their pricing model, and that is worth tens if not hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of income to us over a calendar year.
“That's enabled us to speak to that valuer, change their pricing model, and that is worth tens if not hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of income to us over a calendar year.”
How does your reporting engage with DataWarehouse?
Our reporting engages with DataWarehouse on a daily basis and we have 100% of our staff looking at our reporting through Tableau. Whether that be their own individual performance, branch, or performance changes in the markets, everybody is totally engaged in that data.
So it’s critically important to us that the data is accurate and present in real-time. That means we can analyse what a particular market is doing and make the necessary adjustments in our approach to that market. It means I can analyse what my staff are doing in real-time and make quick changes to how they’re performing or where their focus needs to be.
At an individual level, they’re also tracking their own performance, whether that be their bonus scheme, which is run through DataWarehouse, whether it be through their daily KPI’s, they can see exactly where they’re up to where they need to be, and react accordingly.
How does DataWarehouse bring value to your agency?
So it brings value in the sense that every element of our business is monitored. Whether that’s the number of market appraisals we’re booking, the number of listings we’re winning and the price points at which we’re winning them and the fee value we win them at – as a result, it means that we’re tracking the data in a real-time way. That means that if something drops from the levels that we expect it to be at, we can react accordingly. So that data is worth millions of pounds to us, and Data Warehouse is helping us to achieve those goals.
How does DataWarehouse help you save time?
It helps us save time in the sense that in the previous format there was a lot of manual data entry to the point that we had one person employed almost full-time just to enter data onto a spreadsheet. Additionally, we had negotiators right across the business who were manually entering data onto control sheets and spreadsheets. DataWarehouse has helped us to take all of that out of their daily workload, freeing them up to focus on front-end activities.
Why is DataWarehouse so exciting for Karl Tatler?
It’s really exciting because from what we can see it’s limitless. We’re only limited by our own imagination as to what documents we can create and what value we can get out of those. Data Warehouse is giving us access in real-time to all of our data, and therefore, as I say, the sky is the limit in terms of how we use that.
We see it being integral to how we grow our data analytics departments. It’s very much a fundamental tool and all of the documents that we intend to create moving forward, as well as the ones that we currently operate, we want to base them all within DataWarehouse. So it’s an absolute fundamental for our business and our business growth that we use DataWarehouse.
“It's an absolute fundamental for our business and our business growth that we use DataWarehouse.”
What’s your favourite Reapit feature?
Has to be Power Organiser. That for me is a huge leap forward on the legacy organiser that we used previously. The reason I say that is it gives me the ability to have 8-9 or 10 panels across my screen or with multiple reports that are refreshing. I can therefore see right across the business what each of my branches are doing, which gives me the ability to identify areas where we’re not performing at the level we should be, I can pick up the phone and go and make a difference in that area. Without that, I’d have to go ferreting for the data. So for me, Power Organiser is my favourite tool.
How does Reapit bring value to your agency?
It brings huge value to our agency, in many different ways, primarily from a reporting point of view. As I say, power organiser gives me the ability to have that company-wide overview, but it goes so much deeper than that. We are an agency that is constantly trying to push the envelope, constantly trying to evolve what we do and Reapit’s support gives us the ability to do that.
We’re able to create new reports to see different pieces of information. We’re able to have the element where our negotiators can see in very clear detail what is happening on an applicant card, what is happening on a property card, and that allows us to be super-efficient in what we do and deliver a great level of customer service, because all the information is there at our fingertips and it’s very readily accessible.
How has Reapit helped you to grow your business?
Reapit has helped us to scale our business primarily because, as I see it, it’s very process-driven. That’s great for me in my role, and it doesn’t matter whether we’ve got five offices, six offices, ten offices or more, Reapit is a very standardised, process-based system that enables us to scale the business because we’re just dropping new offices and new employees in, the process remains the same, what good looks like for us remains the same, where they access information, how they input information, remains the same. The standardisation of Reapit, coupled with the ability to bespoke it has helped us to scale the business.
“Reapit is a very standardised, process-based system that enables us to scale the business because we're just dropping new offices and new employees in, the process remains the same...”
How do you use technology to enhance your business?
We’ve always been the innovator. I can go all the way back to 1997 when the company first started. We were the first agency with a website, we were the first agency to use digital photography and that ethos, that base in technology has remained true now 25 years later.
We’re constantly looking at evolving. We’re constantly looking at that piece of technology that makes our customers’ lives easier, makes us a more efficient business, and in the current world of mass PropTech, there are several pieces out there that help us to achieve that.
How do you think technology is going to change estate agencies?
Two ways. My hope initially is that it enables us to communicate much better, much more efficiently with our client base. We’re seeing the millennials come through now, gone are Gen X and Gen Y, we’ve got to communicate in a way that these guys want to communicate, that’s technology.
I would never want estate agency to move away from that face-to-face, it’s very much what we believe in, building trusted relationships. However, I think there is a real place for technology to help develop the way in which agencies engage with customers, whether that’s WhatsApp or Tik Tok or Snapchat, I think a lot of our clients, or certainly our clients of the future, will want and will almost expect us to communicate via those mediums rather than old fashioned picking up the phone or e-mail as we currently use.
Secondly, I think the industry has a huge challenge around sales progression and conveyancing, and I think there’s a huge space for a PropTech firm to really get hold of that conveyancing process that aligns all of the stakeholders: the clients, the agents, the solicitors, the mortgage advisors. We’ve all got the same vested interest. We all want the same outcome, and I think there’s a huge space for someone to really grab hold of that and pull it all together.
“I think there is a real place for technology to help develop the way in which agencies engage with customers...”
