Riding on the crest of an agency wave

Wilf Lewis' true love may be surfing, but he's determined to persuade a greater proportion of the agency market that there's much to be loved about IT providing you maximise its potential, as he explains to Clare Bettelley.

Dezrez managing director Wilf Lewis is suffering for the love of his sport. An avid surfer, Lewis (pictured) is recently back from a holiday in Cape Breton on the West Coast of France with an ear infection as a result of his surfer's ear. In a nutshell, the condition is the growth of lumps in the bony lining in the ear canal, medically known as exostoses and caused by the continual submergence of the ear in cold water when surfing. Unsurprisingly, Lewis is not particularly enthralled by the eventual cure - an operation to drill away of the lumps - and is keen to move on to one of his other favourite subjects, his employer, Dezrez.

Evolution

Dezrez of agency software developer that provides a one-stop-back-office-shop for estate and lettings agents. The Swansea-based firm claims to supply the web-based Application Service Provider software to over 15,000 clients and 15% of the independent agency market. By way of accolades, the firm was named the fastest growing software provider in the South West and Wales in The Deloitte Technology Fast 50 list in both 2007 and 2008.

Lewis has worked in every role across the firm since joining in 2001, when there were just four staff compared to over 40 today. A degree in project management and a Masters degree in Computer Science at Swansea were the perfect preparation for Lewis’ task of building a customer base for his friend’s firm that had been launched a year earlier in 2000. So it's fair to say that Lewis knows a thing or two about what works and what doesn’t for his agency clients.

Usage

Functionality is a case in point. “We come across agents who use IT in a range of different ways. For example, some agents will use 40% of the software while another portion of agents push the product forward and use 100% of our product.” Dezrez has most recently developed its ’Workflow’, product, which alerts agents to tasks they need to undertake, from instructing an employee to take photos of a new instruction and another to write up its specifications and another to deal with the floor plan. “Then at the end of the deal, they can set up reminders to contact clients when their mortgage deal expires to see if they want to renew it with them.”

But Lewis acknowledges that there remains a huge learning curve ahead for many clients, who still struggle with something as basic as a mail merge, which merges client details with marketing literature, such as flyers. “We understand that agents have a level that they reach where they don’t want to go any further, and that’s fine, but it’s important they get the most out of a product and get value for money by using its functionality to its full potential.” 

Support

The Dezrez support team receives a range of agency calls for help relating to a range of issues, including flashing red printer lights to complicated sales progressions. At the very least, Lewis says agents of any size should be ensuring they identify existing clients who haven’t viewed a property in the last three months, identifying opportunities for new applicants and organising a mail out for both parties, all with the help of their IT provider, whoever that may be. He warns agents to review and upgrade their IT systems according to its support in achieving these tasks, which doesn’t necessarily mean having to shell out their hard-earned cash in doing so.

Services

Dezrez has most recently overhauled its Home Information Pack offering and replaced a panel of local solicitors with the appointment of one solicitor who currently handles all of the firm’s packs under its ’Hipz’ umbrella. Dezrez charges £255 for its pack and offers agents referral fees of £100 per conveyancing referral under its HIP Legal service.

Lewis says the firm has lost 100 clients since the start of the downturn but insists it will return to pre-credit crunch levels by the end of the year, thanks to the return of agents launching their own firms. To those individuals, Lewis advises two basics - a PC and a good broadband connection and of course, to use their software system to its full potential, whatever that means for them.

• Don’t miss our IT Special in this week’s issue of the magazine, out today.

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