Intelligent automation as a real estate growth strategy

Real estate professionals generally agree that real estate lags behind other industries in terms of its reliance on technological advancement. However, in recent years more real estate organizations are beginning to understand the value of automation technology. As a result, these organizations are starting to see a considerable return on their investment.

Baker Tilly Director Claudio Garcia recently spoke about process automation technology at a virtual conference sponsored by the National Association of Real Estate Companies (NAREC). Their focus, more specifically, was on the use of intelligent automation as a growth strategy for real estate organizations.

Automation technology: an overview

Automation technology is a broad term that describes the replacement of any work task or business process by software or technology. Intelligent automation occurs when the new programming or technology tools enhance the automation solution, allowing it to become more sophisticated beyond a simple if-then functionality.

There are three types of intelligent automation: Task automation, flow automation and finally, decision automation, which advances the functionality and sophistication of the other two types.

• Task automation is the development of an automation solution that addresses a discreet task. Oftentimes, this type of automation, which includes robotic process automation (RPA), is aimed at saving labor time and cost and replacing simple, routine, and mundane work.
• Flow automation (or workflow automation), by contrast, is aimed at automating an end-to-end process. Flow automation optimizes an entire process, and delivers more advanced process efficiency benefits to any organization.  Generally speaking, the implementation of flow automation represents a higher cost/investment vs. the more basic task automation technology.
• Decision automation leverages data, analytics, and artificial intelligence tools to create a more sophisticated automation solution. This approach often involves externalizing the ‘decision logic’ associated with the automation. The benefits of externalizing the automation logic is to create a more efficient solution which optimizes the cost of development, licensing, and maintenance.