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Guru Solutions is a real estate software development company for back-office systems.

Platforms: browser Ideal for: brokers, team leaders, office admins

Top selling points: Improves recruiting Dynamic forms automation 12-month internal follow-up Provides competitive advantage Integrates back-office accounting Top concerns:

Custom software solutions are often more effective and better investments, but a harder sell to brokers, especially in the back-office environment.

What you should know

I jumped at the chance to have a look at this software — for a couple of reasons.

First, I used to work for a company that provided similar onboarding solutions, but in the fast-growing assisted living industry. So I understand the value of streamlining critical business processes. The second reason? It wasn’t another CRM.

Guru Solutions is a small, Virginia-based software development shop that’s been in the game since 1999. A coding team of 10 people must be doing something right to make it through the industry turmoil of the last 20 years and still be punching away.

The company’s onboarding system (they build multiple custom back-office solutions) is a very good way to engage new agents because it greatly reduces the “tax form” tedium of hiring and integrates other brokerage roles, such as accounting and IT. It also makes a warm and tech-savvy first impression, ameliorates the stress of a new workplace, and can be adapted to streamline any existing workflow.

The Society for Human Resources Management found that “[..] organizations with a standard onboarding process experience 50 percent greater new-hire productivity,” and “69 percent of employees are more likely to stay with a company for three years if they experienced great onboarding.”

So, why risk losing the potential of a top producer with an antiquated, paper-based processes? Brokers need to sell more than their marketing and splits to recruits. It’s critical to show them how their work-life balance will be better under your awning.

And lastly, who spends time and money on recruiting only to embarrass themselves with a new-hire process that’s been around since it was cool to use incense at an open house?

Any forms or processes your independent brokerage or franchise uses can be made better for the recruit when stripped away of all the superfluous legalese and unrelated or outdated information, and boiled down to only the most critical data points. This is what’s at the heart of Guru’s contextually-driven interface — making the point of engagement less stressful for the hire.

The user isn’t filling in scanned or electronic versions of hiring documents, they’re interacting with drop-downs, text fields and digital document fields. Everything they enter gets dispersed to the appropriate department of stakeholder, from email addresses for IT to agreed-upon splits and pay plans to accounting. Checking accounts and credit cards are part of it, too.

The agent’s role in lead assignment and routing can also be made a part of it.

Guru Solutions didn’t build a linear user experience; it’s “cascading.” This means that every field presented is dictated by the one before it so the user isn’t presented fields that don’t apply to them, nor is the process bogged down by redundant data.

This also makes it much easier for the staff who oversees hiring, whether they are down the hall or five states away, because it’s agent-centric, not boilerplate fluff.

The process can be customized to recruiting source, helping the broker understand what works best and offering a track record of each agent’s origin.

Perhaps most valuable is Guru’s understanding of how new agents need to be handled. The software deploys a 12-month engagement campaign that sends emails, alerts and reminders to recent hires about continuing education, office events or relevant training.

The software also keeps hiring and office staff on their toes with hiring responsibility checklists and tasks. Making someone feel welcome is all about the little things. The invitation is only the beginning, a person needs to feel like you want them there.

Forgetting to set up their company email address or not asking about business cards can make a new agent feel like just another butt-in-a-seat. And while that model may make money, it rarely makes good real estate agents.

Have a technology product you would like to discuss? Email Craig Rowe

Craig C. Rowe started in commercial real estate at the dawn of the dot-com boom, helping an array of commercial real estate companies fortify their online presence and analyze internal software decisions. He now helps agents with technology decisions and marketing through reviewing software and tech for Inman.

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