CRM Secrets: A Ghost Story for Agency Buyers!

Every lettings agency has a CRM. Not every lettings agency has a CRM anyone would actually want to inherit.

Here's a story we tell a lot, because it keeps happening.It starts well.The buyer logs in for the first time and everything looks fine.

• The properties are listed.

• The tenants have names.The landlords have phone numbers, some of them even current.

For about a week, all is well in the kingdom.Then the arrears report won't run and not because there's a bug.

Because half the tenancy start dates were entered by three different people over nine years, using three different formats, and the system genuinely does not know which tenancies are current.

Then someone finds the duplicates, there are forty-one records for landlords who are, on closer inspection, the same eleven landlords. One of them exists under three different spellings of his own surname and nobody currently employed knows why.

Then someone finds Gary's spreadsheet.There's always a Gary, who left the business two years ago and kept a personal spreadsheet of “the tenancies that don't quite fit,” which turns out to be two years of data that was never actually migrated intothe CRM at all. It's labelled “DO NOT DELETE.” and nobody currently employed will open it, as they are too scared to!

Why this is a due diligence issue, not just an IT headache.

• A CRM that's broken isn't a cosmetic problem you fix after completion.

• It's compliance records you can't fully trust,

• Arrears you can't accurately report on,

• Landlord history you're supposed to already know when you pick up the phone on day one.

You inherited the data and you also inherited every mistake made entering it.

The good news.

This is the kind of thing that's checkable before you buy, not just fixable after.

A proper look at the database, not just a demo login, tells you whether you're inheriting a working system or a horror movie with a login screen.

Ask for a real look at the data before you commit, not just the demo, the actual database.

That's what we do at Russou.