RPA in real estate: 10 use cases and best practices
December 26, 2022
What is RPA in real estate?
RPA in real estate involves the deployment of software robots to replicate typical human actions and therefore automate a wide range of repetitive and high-volume tasks encompassing property management, finance and accounting, as well as marketing and sales.
Itransition’s experts deliver end-to-end robotic process automation services and leverage RPA robots to support real estate specialists in dealing with tedious and time-consuming duties.
10 RPA use cases in real estate
From property and facility management to accounting and marketing, RPA in real estate can be deployed in a variety of key business functions. Here's a brief rundown of popular RPA use cases in this industry.
Tax billing and reporting
Real estate agencies can manage numerous properties subject to taxation, not to mention corporate taxes such as the CIT. Therefore, tax billing and reporting is another process worth automating via RPA. Bots can extract information from different sources, prepare property tax invoices for tenants, and compile all due fiscal documentation for competent authorities faster and more accurately than humans.
Scheme title: Example of property tax billing automation.
Data source: deloitte.com—Corporate Real Estate and Facilities Management in the digital world.
Bot interfaces with tax management system
Bot extracts data to spreadsheet
Bot manipulates data and populates monthly filings
Bot validates customers’ eligibility, status and equipment list
Bot creates invoice within customers’ ERP systems
Bot captures invoices submission confirmation details
Bot generates monthly report and distributes to team
Automate your processes with an RPA solution by Itransition
Benefits of RPA in real estate
Implementing RPA bots in your real estate business processes will help you achieve the following pay-offs.
Cost efficiency
Bots perform their duties 24/7 in a fraction of the time taken by humans. Based on the case studies reported by Deloitte in the 2019 Corporate real estate and facilities management in the digital world study, organizations can cut their cross-functional departments’ costs by 10-40% in their 1st generation RPA deployments.
Accuracy
While physical operators can easily get distracted after repeating yet another operation and, as a result, make mistakes, RPA robots are tireless and almost foolproof workers when carrying out straightforward tasks. Their involvement can increase reporting consistency and accuracy by about 80%, according to Deloitte’s case study.
Compliance
The greater accuracy achieved by bots in managing administrative practices is an important catalyst for regulatory compliance, both in terms of personal data management and tax legislation. It can significantly reduce one of the main business risks, namely the likelihood of fraud and human error.
Scalability
RPA solutions can scale up by increasing the deployment of bots in various business processes, and are relatively simple and inexpensive to implement. Unlike more intrusive tools, RPA robots can operate with legacy IT systems on the front-end without the need to replace previous configurations.
Integration catalyst
RPA’s ease of integration with existing software makes this technology ideal for connecting multiple IT systems. For example, a bot can move data from an email client to a real estate ERP system, replacing employees that should manually extract the required information from incoming emails and upload it to the ERP.
Better customer experience
Every minute saved on fully automated clerical tasks can be redirected to client-facing operations and improve the customer experience. In this regard, Deloitte reported that an organization implementing RPA was able to automate 20% of full-time equivalent (FTE) capacity of their employees in less than 12 months.
Real-life examples of RPA in real estate
- 30%
processing times
Sunway Group
One of the top Malaysian real estate companies, Sunway Group, significantly reduced processing times across 35 business operations with an AI-powered RPA solution.
$1m
in savings
WAM Group
The Brazilian leader in the fractional ownership market deployed a cloud-based RPA solution to enhance the processes of its finance, tax, and research departments.
45h > 1h
reporting time
Deloitte
Deloitte assisted a real estate multinational in implementing RPA bots to speed up its tax billing and maintenance tasks, including reporting, data extraction, and data manipulation.
700h > 400h
processing
Hoas
The Foundation for Student Housing in the Helsinki Region almost halved the processing time required to handle 8,400 housing applications after adopting RPA software robots.
Best RPA platforms for real estate
While some real estate companies invest in custom RPA software development from scratch, organizations prioritizing faster RPA implementation and lower upfront costs may build their solution on top of an RPA platform provided by a third-party vendor. According to Gartner's 2021 Magic Quadrant for Robotic Process Automation, these are the four RPA market leaders.
Pros
UiPath offers solid governance features, a low-code UX app builder, and extensive integration capabilities.
It enjoys high ratings for scalability, customization and ease of deployment.
Cons
The price is high and not suitable for small automatization projects.
The pricing policy and service/product offering is rather complex, requiring workshops and explanations.
Pricing
Price on request
Looking for a consulting partner to implement RPA?
RPA in real estate implementation guidelines
Consider the following best practices to maximize the benefits of investing in RPA technology and streamline its adoption across your real estate organization.
Select appropriate use cases
To ensure a fast and consistent ROI, you should identify the most suitable RPA use cases, possibly with proper BPM solutions. We highlighted the link between these two disciplines in our BPM vs RPA analysis. Consider prioritizing repetitive, high volume, and well-structured business processes manageable by RPA bots that will benefit from increased scalability.
Chart 1: Automation opportunities in real estate
Data source: deloitte.com—Corporate Real Estate and Facilities Management in the digital world.
High
Level of value created
Low
High
Level of effort
Low
Secondary candidates for RPA
Manage bidding process for capital projects
Maintain space and occupancy data
Execute cost allocation methodology
Likely candidates for RPA
Manage real estate-related on-boarding activities for new employees
Manage utility payments and track energy consumption
Maintain up-to-date IWMS data
Do not automate
Monitor operational risk and compliance
Perform project
close-out
Develop capital program plan
Secondary candidates for RPA
Assemble and organize performance management data
Manage service requests
Maintain up-to-date customer and vendor data
Set up a comprehensive adoption roadmap
RPA implementation is a complex, multifaceted process encompassing several key phases:
1
Planning
Identify automation opportunities, evaluate costs and benefits, and design functional and technical aspects of your solution.
2
Configuration
Mobilize human and tech resources, develop the RPA solution according to requirements and assess it in a test environment to identify gaps.
3
Deployment
Integrate RPA bots into your workflows, track performance via KPIs, and fine-tune your solution with the ongoing process and coding improvement.
Define a change management strategy
RPA bots can radically change your corporate workflows and business functions. Preparing the ground for this transformation will require proper measures. These generally include ongoing training and support to help employees familiarize themselves with RPA technology and proactive communication of the adoption objectives. The transformation may also involve several workflow adjustments to harmonize your processes in light of future interactions with bots while avoiding new bottlenecks.
Challenges of RPA in real estate
Similar to predictive analytics technologies in real estate, RPA has immense potential but entails some challenges and should be implemented wisely.
Issue
Solution
Handling exceptions
Issue
Solution
Especially in their "basic" version, RPA bots are limited to effectively managing standardized, rule-based activities and recurring scenarios since they follow pre-established instructions, but they may struggle when facing any exceptions to these rules.
A common trend is to enhance RPA solutions with AI-related technologies, such as machine learning and computer vision. It is known as intelligent process automation (IPA). Machine learning is becoming a staple of most RPA solutions and platforms for real estate, such as UiPath and Automation Anywhere.
Staff concerns
Issue
Solution
When it comes to delegating an increasing number of tasks to robots, a widespread fear among professionals is massive job displacement. According to data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the percentage of automatable jobs in the real estate sector could reach 40% of the total industry.
To avoid this negative effect, employees can get proper retraining focused on improving non-replaceable human skills, such as strategic planning, data-driven decision-making, creativity, and public relations.
Conservative industry mindset
Issue
Solution
Compared to other sectors, real estate has traditionally shown a limited propensity for change because interpersonal relationships between agents and customers are still perceived as a crucial point. According to estimates by the National Association of Realtors, 41% of sellers who turned to real estate agents found them through the recommendation of friends and family.
Reshaping an obsolete corporate culture from the ground up is not a simple task. However, promoting digital literacy through targeted training initiatives and incentives and enticing stakeholders with small-scale, fast achievements will facilitate the shift.
Driving innovation in real estate
Relatively easy deployment and remarkable automation capabilities make RPA an ideal candidate to foster digitalization in a conservative industry like real estate. At the same time, forward-thinking companies should consider the relative backwardness of this sector as a potential benefit. Even if the real estate industry is a couple of steps behind others in terms of automation, it means early adopters could benefit more from RPA implementation. If you intend to position your organization among the real estate innovation leaders, consider relying on Itransition's expertise in RPA consulting and development.
