Romans Wows Property Management Clients with Docusign

08 July 2015 6159 Views

Leading UK property agency enhances auditing and reporting while providing a better client experience.

Company’s Top Objectives

Romans is a 19-branch network of estate agents in Berkshire, North Hampshire and Surrey. Romans opened its first office in Bracknell in 1987. With 25 years’ experience, Romans offers expert help with all property needs—ranging from a property valuation or rental valuation, to helping tenants or buyers find the perfect property. Using DocuSign, Romans successfully enhanced its auditing and reporting, improved contract tracking, and provide a better client experience.

Challenge

Romans are a leading UK property agency, with a reputation for providing high-quality service to their customers. As such Romans are innovators when it comes to new technology and services which they can provide to their clients.

“Property is a paper-heavy business. Whether it is lettings, sales, new homes or auctions, there is always something that needs to be signed off,” says Peter Loverdos, Group Operations Director, Romans. “When we saw a supplier using an electronic signature solution, we immediately saw the benefit such a service would provide to both our customers and to our staff internally—and we sought to implement it right away.”

An additional challenge Romans faced with paper was an ongoing need for rigorous audit trails and reporting on the status of contracts. As soon as paperwork left the building, staff were unable to track it until its return. Whilst this is traditionally how letting and estate agencies had been run, the team at Romans saw it as an opportunity to enhance service.

The Resolution

Romans decided to look for an electronic signature solution initially for their lettings department, specifically for contracts and renewals. After evaluating several eSignature providers, Romans chose DocuSign due to the un-paralleled level of security offered by the service and the affiliation in place with the National Association of REALTORS® in the United States.

“We did our research, we wanted to ensure we were purchasing a best-of-breed solution that would support our clients and improve the way we do business,” said Loverdos. “DocuSign was the solution that ticked all the boxes.”

The Key Benefits

Romans first implemented DocuSign in its lettings department for leases. “The plan was to go slowly to ensure adoption and make sure the Romans employees were comfortable with it,” said Loverdos. “For each new contract we were hand-holding the clients through the DocuSigning process. We soon realized this was not necessary, since DocuSign was so easy and intuitive every client had a consistently great experience.”

Romans found DocuSign quickly became a must-have for transactions with clients abroad. “All our clients, but especially overseas landlords, soon only wanted to deal with DocuSign documents. Word of the convenience of DocuSign spread quickly. Internally all the different departments across Romans started asking when they were getting DocuSign.”

Soon Romans rolled DocuSign out across the central service department, auctions, new homes, surveyors, sales and finally to the town planning team. According to Loverdos, “Adoption was more than we could have hoped for.” Loverdos concluded: “DocuSign has raised Romans’ reputation with our landlords. They see this kind of service as our way of making their lives easier. We are still on the phone talking to them, providing a personal service but they can quickly deal with the ‘boring’ but necessary paperwork with DocuSign—and get on with the rest of their business.”