 So for someone who is in the property industry, what are those things that you guys could say have changed because of technology? Okay. I think one of the tools that I'll just zone into a bit is obviously the company that I'm a part of which is PropTinspect. Welcome to the Private Property Podcast. My name is Dume and if you are seeing my face for the first time then welcome to the podcast that brings you everything property related. We are talking investing, we are talking buying, selling and whatever it is in the property industry that you need, we bring you experts who are going to give us underpass information that will help you make decisions to ultimately grow your property portfolio. Tonight we are talking new opportunities that are taking place in the property technology space and I'm joined by Brian Sango who's going to be taking us through this. Brian is the strategic partnerships and sales manager in PropTinspect. Brian, good evening and welcome. Hi, good evening. Hi, how are you? Thank you so much for having me. It is an ultimate pleasure. Thank you so much for agreeing to talk to us tonight. Can you hear me? Yes, I can hear you. Can you hear me? I can hear you clearly. Awesome. So kicking off our conversation tonight, technology is one of those things that is just really accelerating globalization and the way the world does its things. It's changed so much for us and I just want to know from your perspective, for someone who is in strategic partnerships and really sales, how has technology changed your day to day operations? Okay. You're absolutely right. Technology is a topic that's been doing the rounds for quite some time. It's certainly changed quite a lot because one thing technology does especially generally as well as in the property space is technology helps streamline a number of operations, helps automate systems and essentially helps save a lot of time. So people are starting to really move away from manual processes that they were using before and adopting more of your paperless solutions or mobile app driven applications that they can use within the property space to perform various roles. And especially during when we went into COVID and a number of people had limitations around movement and interactions with other people with colleagues, they definitely then saw the importance of such platforms and tools to use. So yeah, it's been a good time for us as a company and I think it's just been a good time for the industry as a whole in terms of migrating from how we're doing things to this new way of doing things for a number of times. Yeah. Cool. So for the benefit of our family watching, our private property family watching, just talk to us about some of those processes that you guys have migrated onto the technology space. Just a couple of days ago, we spoke about how the pandemic changed the property auction spaces. And one of the biggest things was that now they can do things online, they can move the auctions online. So for someone who is in the property industry, what are those things that you guys could say have changed because of technology? Okay. I think one of the tools that I'll just zone into a bit is obviously the company that I'm a part of, which is property inspect. And what we are, it's a mobile application and software that any entity that does property inspections would use. So you name it from valuations to rental agents that do move in about inspections. Now with the Property Practitioners Act that is coming to play, you have certain inspections that you need to do or to carry out your due diligence when you're filling out your disclosure form, just before you sign a rental mandate or just before a property is sold. And as opposed to walking into a property like a number of people would do for many, many years with the pen and paper, clipboard and file, someone's just ticking things and then they take photos, they get back to the office, they have to put all that, consolidate all that information into an Excel spreadsheet. We've done away completely with that. All you simply walk into the property with is your mobile device, which is customized, depending on whatever inspection that it is that you are carrying out. And you're taking photos and it enables you to take photos, it enables you to take videos, you've got a voice to text functionality, it works fully offline, so connectivity is never an issue. And it allows for any parties, be it the tenant, the owner, the landlord, they can sign digitally using their finger. And at the click of a button, those reports are automatically created and distributed to intended recipients. So that's really a game changer globally because now that just enables people to be able to carry out inspections much quicker. For banks that are using us, it means the turnaround time for them to be able to grant finance for various mortgage applications is much shorter as well because they're getting the necessary data sent back to them timeously. So yeah, that's just one. And then you've obviously got a number of other tools, like for any signing of documents, we've got Hello Sign, we've got DocuSign that a number of people in the industry use. This was also very widely used, especially during lockdown, where people could not necessarily meet for signing of offer to purchases or lease agreements and so forth. We've got automated platforms, the likes, there's a company out there called Rios, they're a payment platform and a property management platform that has also come into play to just streamline how the payment process happens between tenants and landlords receiving and vice versa when they have to pay back deposits and so forth. So that's another big one that's in the space. We've got Flow Living which is just bridging the gap between social media advertising and how the traditional advertising model for real estate agencies was working. And they've been doing a lot in terms of automating that and that helps towards lead generation. And I think lastly, another one that I will mention now, I mean, there are lots and I'm so glad to say this because it's very encouraging for us who are part of the industry to see so many startups and so many companies thriving in the public tech space. But the last one is around tenant issue reporting and maintenance ticketing. So now I'm the tenant, I'm sitting here in my property, I have an issue, my gizzards burst, I don't have to pick up the phone or send an email. All I simply do is go on to my phone, I log that query, which will automatically shoot off to my property management company that handles this property. And once it's received, it will create a maintenance ticket, which will again be automatically assigned to the contractor who's responsible for that. So a water issue will go to the plumber, an electrical issue will straight away go to the electrician and it triggers me to also be able to then put together a quotation that they sent back to the agent, allowing them to approve or decline. So that whole process has become much, much easier than it used to be before. You would sit two months waiting for your landlord to address an issue that's happened in your property. Yeah. Nice. I like the fact that you said game changes because from how you're explaining them, they really do sound like game changes and sound like something that would really elevate the industry and just put it on a different whole benchmark together, even for the country. So zooming into now adoption, let's talk about adoption. How does that adoption rate look for these different apps that you're talking about? Some of them that you mentioned, I'm quite familiar with them. I've seen them maybe when I was moving from one place to the other. But let's talk about overall adoption because this industry also has a vast majority of people. And when I mean majority of people, in terms of the people, it legit looks even like silos because you either have people who've been in the industry for over 30, 40 years who still believe in doing things traditionally. But you now have the younger generation that's coming in and even the people who are in the middle have adopted the traditional way of doing things. So how does that adoption look and what are those tactics that you guys are currently using? And when I mean you guys, I mean the people in the industry too, to start reeling everybody in, to start showing them this new way of doing things and digitizing. No, adoption has certainly been a challenge in a way or rather challenge is negative. It's been quite interesting to note how their adoption takes place. So I guess from my expertise, being part of a global offering because we actually in 44 countries worldwide already. And when you look into the African market and then obviously closer to home when you look at South Africa, I think adoption is always strongly influenced by our price sensitivity. So we're obviously an economy that has a bit of challenges here in the a number of people, the general consensus is always I need to keep my running or operational costs at the bare minimum without necessarily compromising what it is that I need to do. And what they normally now do is they've got this hierarchy of offerings that they would in an ideal world want to jump on, but anything that falls lower on the list, they'll normally just find an manual way of doing it. So certain applications or certain systems where they feel, you know what my Excel spreadsheet is still the best way to do my accounting, then they've done away with that. So convincing people to obviously convincing a price sensitive market for them to not look at it as a cost, but look at it as a value that they're adding to their business is still a challenge that a number of companies are obviously trying to navigate around. That's one. The other big thing I like the fact that you mentioned that our industry is made up of some people who've been in the game for quite some time and a fair mix of some millennials. I think our peers and millennials generally do them that. We have TikTok, we have Facebook, we understood Facebook way before a number of other guys. And so with them or with us rather, we embrace technology far, far better than our other fellow people within the industry. And so price sensitivity and trying to get people that have been doing things a certain way for decades to say, listen, what you've known for 40 years and what you've perfected, do away with that. Here's an easier solution that's going to cost you a bit that you need to move to. So doing that is not easy. And it's always you need to come in with a value proposition as opposed to just coming and saying, this is what we have. Because once they see the value in it, once they see the benefits of migrating from a manual system onto a technological platform or technological offering, then they'll at least open up their eyes and start to appreciate what it is that you're trying to bring into the equation. No, definitely. And my next question is that with digitization, people already start thinking this is going to be costly, this is going to be expensive. How feasible is it in terms of cost, in terms of efficiency and productivity? Because they might be downtime because people don't really understand these technologies and can use them properly. So what is your view in terms of us bringing these in? How feasible are they in terms of the property industry? I think one major aspect that normally is a key driver is obviously informing as best as possible your target client or what it is that you have to offer. Taking them through a demo of what it looks like, maybe as much as giving them a free trial so they can walk the walk themselves and actually see what the whole process entails. And then once you've done that, it's holding their hand throughout the process. So and by holding their hand, what I mean by that is just being able to be there to support them. So it will be definitely difficult to encourage the market to buy something off the shelf and say, here's a system, take it, run with it and go out there and teach yourself, show yourself the ropes and so forth. But if you are actually holding their hand, you've got 24-7 supports that you're offering them, maybe you've got like a helpline or a little chat bot that can respond to their queries on time, that will definitely help as well because you want them to know that they've got the necessary support that they need and that they deserve, which is why a number of products like in Australia and the US that sell their offerings to the South African market, they're not well received in South Africa, especially because most of those either have only representation in the country of origin. So now you have to wait for them to respond to your email because calling there might be a bit too costly, etc. But now for companies that are within South Africa, where they have someone you can sit down with face to face, or you can pick up a phone and know that Brian's going to be on the other end of the call, that's easier for people to trust, that's easier. It just nudges people a bit more for them to say, oh, okay, these guys are going to hold my hand, therefore these guys are going to help me prove this concept because they are there all the time. So subscription-based systems will obviously work better as opposed to a once-off. And now when you're subscription-based and you're paying monthly, it means there has to be some form of involvement from whatever the service provider is, and it justifies them also being able to be there to support you throughout the way. Definitely, definitely. Thank you so much for that. And as you said earlier, it's in us following that same approach that we see that technology is really here to help us and really here to grow whatever we are currently busy with. And in this case, it is the property industry and making sure that those property portfolios grow, those sales keep coming in, and we just strengthen our processes, and each and every single thing that we are currently doing in that space. Brian, thank you so much for joining us. The reviews on social media, everybody's already saying this information is really necessary, and that technology, they actually really share your same sentiment. So thank you so much for coming through, and we really appreciate it. Have a good evening. Thank you so much for having me, and yes, a good evening to you too. Thank you. So that brings us to the end of today's episode. Thank you so, so much for getting to this part of the live broadcast, and if you are joining us on the Twitter Spaces, do ensure that you keep coming back every weekday at 7 p.m. so that you can hear the on-the-pass information around the property industry. My name is Dhumi WMJ, and thank you so much for joining us tonight. Have a good one.