A decade back, real estate, just like other legacy sectors of the economy, had limited investment for, and adoption of, digitization. The focus revolved primarily around announcing launches, listing properties, sale transactions, and collections, with relatively less priority given to customer experience, transparency, and engagement across the purchase lifecycle.
According to Arvind Singh, then CTO & Product Officer at real-estate company Puravankara, the greatest hurdle in the real estate industry wasn’t about technology, it was about mindset. In a laggard historically traditional industry, getting people to believe that technology can solve immediate pain points (as opposed to being an isolated project) needed a lot of trust-building, buy-in, strategic realignment and ownership from business.
Meanwhile, the flow of information in the organization wasn’t very integrated and seamless. Teams often had to re-enter customer details and repeat the same queries at multiple stages, which slowed down response times, created inefficiencies and impacted customer experience badly. This is not a matter of implementation, but a structural problem.
“If the mindset to change and appreciation of transformation is not there, technology will never succeed and with missing ownership and stakeholder participation, it will never get adopted,” says Singh, now the CTO at BPTP.
Prior to COVID, a lot of historically traditional businesses hadn’t migrated to the cloud much, kept things local, and depended a lot on desktops. The crisis changed that almost overnight. “COVID forced every industry to get online. Transformation in such sectors often happens not by choice, but by circumstance,” says Singh.
Building Momentum
With the Puravankara leadership, Singh’s winning recipe was first to understand how technology can actually solve business problems, bring operational efficiency, enable seamless information availability across customer touch points for best customer engagement and experience, not talking IT or Digital transformation for just the technology’s sake.
“The whole idea is to ensure that people at their job should have access to right information when it’s needed and the customer is engaged better and benefited most,” Singh says.
He also believes that one should focus on alignment. Adoption could not be driven only from the top. Business teams had to see the value in the solution, active involvement and training had to be built into the conceptualization, execution and rollout plan from the beginning. “Bring people on board,” Singh says, explaining that implementation works best when teams understand that it’s solving their problem and appreciate the benefit of the outcome.
A prime success was in customer service enablement where the team created a 360 view of the entire customer purchase journey. Puravankara could see how many tickets were there, at which stage the tickets were, why the response was taking long, which of its functions were facing challenge or causing the delay, and how the response TAT could be improved, adding more transparency and accountability to the teams who were also enabled to make decisions at greater speed with accuracy.
“That success helped build confidence for larger efforts. Once the organization saw measurable results from a focused use case, it became easier to secure support for broader transformation projects,” recalls Singh. “Show the results faster. Start with low-hanging fruit, and people will begin to believe in the approach.”
Directions for Technology Leaders
Singh’s experience offers useful insights for IT decision makers in traditional sectors. Start with the business pain point, not the technology. Build a cross-functional case around the outcome you want to deliver. Deliver visible value early so that the organization can see the change on the ground.
Just as importantly, Singh believes technology programs should be phased. “First build the framework, then automate processes, and only then move toward AI-led transformation. This creates a stronger foundation for long-term adoption and reduces resistance across the business,” he says.
In the real estate space too, the buyer’s expectations have transformed. The buyer was now looking at receiving real-time updates, project visibility, and a better digital experience from search to handover.
Singh at BPTP, is now aiming at increased system integrations, enhanced customer experience, and AI for operating efficiency.
“Hybrid partnerships is the key and especially with startup firms which have capabilities in developing specific solutions for the real estate domain,” says Singh.
The vision is to upgrade not just the technology, but also boost conversions and the top line to build a more agile business.
