In this 3-minute read, we look at how ditching paper and going digital can protect your agency’s reputation and boost its profits.

Cast your minds back ten or so years ago.

Back then, we were all told the offices of the future would be proudly paperless.

And while digitalisation has marched relentlessly into everyday working life, many businesses still haven’t embraced the benefits binning paper brings (using the recycling bin of course).

What’s so great about going paperless we hear you ask? That’s a fair question and here are six reasons why it can protect your agency and power up your profits.

Protect – How devastating would a fire in your office be? Anything not stored electronically would be wiped out. That was the case in 2008 when a blaze in a building owned by Universal Studios destroyed millions of pounds worth of music master tapes from some of the biggest names in the industry. Ouch.

Profits – Lower your print, copying and paper costs. Businesses that take the time to do a paper audit are often stunned how much it costs them compared to the digital alternatives.

Protect – As above, you are also protecting the planet, in your own little yet significant way, for future generations to enjoy. Small changes can make substantial impacts.

Profits – Going paperless will mean you never have to buy those clunky looking filing cabinets or that big office cupboard where everything gets dumped and forgotten about.

Protect – With GDPR still casting a long scary shadow, estate and lettings agencies need to be far more mindful of how they look after people’s data. Those lever arch files in the back office containing people’s details could get lost, stolen or destroyed.

By digitalising client data, you add another layer of protection and make it less likely for something terrible to happen to it. And you can see how and when your database is accessed.

Note: Review and change your passwords regularly – make it harder for hackers by having different passwords for different software accounts.

Profits: Time is money in any business, especially estate and letting agency. Using software such as DocuSign speeds up the signing, return and actioning of contracts and removes any uncertainty around whether a letter or document has been received and returned.

Protect AND Profits: By getting your team into the habit of inputting data straight into your system, you reduce the risk of details getting lost and potential opportunities vanishing. Plus, this approach of entering the data as the information is taken reduces duplicating tasks, saving time and money.

Some of the best performing estate and lettings agencies in the property business have gone paperless.

And while we know it’s not as easy as it sounds and requires some thought and planning to achieve, it seems pursuing a paperless office is the way forward for agencies in the future.

This article was brought to you by Chris Reile and Veco. Our software helps estate and lettings agents make more money, have more time and build better businesses.

Thanks for reading and if you want to find out more about how we help many of the leading companies in the property industry, please get in touch.