Not too long ago we were chosen by Sutton Realty to rebuild Homebase, the digital productivity centre that provides their brokers and real estate agents with the tools and data they need to be successful.
Sutton Québec, a regional franchisor–while Sutton Canada is the national franchisor–is the organization responsible for supporting brokers and agents in Quebec and the Ottawa area and is largely independent from Sutton Canada.
When Julie Gaucher, COO of Sutton Québec, learned how progressive and forward thinking Homebase is, she made the smart decision to have Sutton UP, their previous intranet, migrated to Homebase.
We had the pleasure of executing on the development work needed for Sutton UP to enhance their offerings to brokers and agents. While there was a lot of work that went into the project, we thought we’d share a few of the key features we worked on.
Homebase has a number of widgets that allow agents to access internal apps such as webmail, the Brand & Resources Centre where users can find marketing material, logos, forms, etc. and Sutton University, where agents can sharpen their competencies and up their game. It also includes widgets that connect external apps such as printing partners where they can order lawn signs, marketing tools, etc.
In addition, because Sutton and Sutton Québec have different apps due to their independence of each other, it makes it even harder to find the right app or widget, fast. We worked to ensure that widgets are presented in a contextual manner eliminating the headache and time needed to find the appropriate app.
We also made adjustments to the setting of Homebase to support full bilingual capabilities. Realtors and agents can now choose and set their default language.
We made it easy for Agents to access activity reports so they can present them to their clients in a timely manner.
These reports include the various initiatives that they’ve accomplished in order to sell a given property. Prior to the migration, these reports were not only sub-optimal in the way they presented the data but they had to be exported via PDF which made them difficult to access on mobile devices.
In this mobile-first world, realtors on the go need to be able to access documents, anywhere and anytime. Same for their clients. We made that happen. The new reports are web based, responsive and a lot more engaging.
While Sutton and Sutton Quebec share a lot of resources and complimentary online tools, they don’t share everything. This includes content.
We set up segmentation so that the proper content is distributed to the right channel and that bilingual interface is an option.
Having worked with Sutton for the last couple years put us in a unique position when working with Sutton Quebec as we had already worked with the unique technology we’d set up for Sutton. This allowed us to to quickly grasp the business challenge and opportunities of this project with Sutton Quebec.
After quickly launching the website for the Quebec and Ottawa users, we realized that their usage of Homebase was very different than that of the other agents. We had to react fast and make changes to accommodate usage patterns and tackle edge cases.
While it is yet too early to really quantify the impact this migration to Homebase will have on the business, it is fair to say that this new technology enables Sutton Quebec to be a strong competitor in a highly competitive space.
They’re now able to offer realtors and agents access to valuable tools and data that can help them to land clients and sell more. We’re excited to see what the future has in store for Sutton and will continue to help them innovate every step of the way.
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