Arun ShankarMAG Lifestyle Development is part of the Moafaq Ahmad Al Gaddah Group, which is a multinational conglomerate based in the UAE. With a 40 year old legacy, MAG Group is one of the largest corporations in the region, maintaining a highly prominent position of leadership among its peers, across real estate, contracting, engineering, industrial and commercial trading, freight services, and hospitality sectors. MAG Lifestyle Development’s interests range from affordable housing initiatives and high-end luxury developments to bringing wellness-focused living to the UAE.
Ramesh Reddy, Head of Information Technology at MAG Lifestyle Development, gives an overview of the IT functions to GEC Media Group’s Editor, Arun Shankar. Reddy describes the pain points and reasons for implementation of cloud based Salesforce CRM. Inside MAG Lifestyle Development, Salesforce, Oracle and Microsoft Cloud platforms are being used to meet business expectations.
MAG Lifestyle Development uses multiple engagement channels to identify the requirements of the customers. The dynamics of the business are to sell the property in real time as well as engage with customers in real time, explains Reddy. Since there are 50 sales advisors as well as brokers and agents, the status of the property inventory needs to be managed in real time. If the inventory of the property is not managed in real-time, sales of the property will be affected.
Therefore any application selected by MAG Lifestyle Development, must meet multiple criteria to remove the pain points experienced by business. This includes, ability to maintain real-time inventory, inventory management, payment plans, property floor plans, customer sales criteria, price points, block and hold of property, selection of property. These criteria and expectations of business are met by Salesforce.
Another challenge faced by Reddy’s IT department is to manage the property plans with flexible pricing options. Says Reddy: Because the market is so dynamic, you need to win the competition in your area. Flexible payment plans need to be available to attract customers and sell units. Maintaining multiple payment plans for the units and managing those plans with discount offers is challenging, but is available in Salesforce, says Reddy.
Another requirement is to provide property agents and brokers, access to MAG Lifestyle Development’s pricing and inventory. Majority of the property sales in the region is through brokers, says Reddy. Hence, brokers need to be provided access through an application that they can rely on, for them to effectively boost property sales.
Majority of the property sales in this region is through brokers. Brokers need to be supported by providing them a tool that they can rely on. Processing of their commission needs to be as fast as possible, otherwise sales will come down, since majority of sales is through agencies.
MAG Lifestyle Development has selected Sales cloud, Service cloud, Pardot Marketing cloud, and Community cloud, from the Salesforce Cloud Suite. Says Reddy: Our agenda is to maintain real time sales and serve the customers using service cloud and interact with the customers and agents using community cloud.
For the management of MAG Lifestyle Development, the ability to sell the properties and provide sales engagement and sales interactions in real time, is a dream come true. Applying and making available inventory in real time, is a very good approach and one of the best benefits that has been enabled by Salesforce.
