Every time a brokerage adds or removes an agent, there are about 22 action items, and each action item has multiple steps. Let’s look at one simple example: the agent profile on the broker website. It is one of those 22 action items.
As you can see through this illustration, the steps involve uploading the headshot, adding first name, last name, website address, phone number, email, Facebook, Instagram, and a bio. A swift admin can do this in about 15 minutes if they have all of the information, which is painful, but necessary to collect during onboarding. The set of data needed for the broker website is one piece of information for one of the 22 action items. One down, 21 more to go - at 15 minutes per action item. If the admin is on top of it, and they work really hard without any interruptions, they can onboard an agent in a little more than five hours!
It might be fine for a small firm without a lot of agent turnover to do this manually, but if you want to grow and scale your business, onboarding agents needs to be instant. We have developed the most extensive roster and identity management solution for brokers in real estate. For our clients, this becomes a superpower that not only supports the recruiting efforts and merger efforts with onboarding, but we also handle turning everything off when an agent exits the brokerage.
The ability to serve the correct information to the individual agent at the brokerage begins with roster management and access control. Very few brokers have developed this component of their tech platform. Onboarding an agent is done by adding them to the roster - creating their identity, then selecting the permission levels that determine what they can access in the intranet.
Most firms onboard and offboard agents poorly because the process is manual and time consuming, as illustrated above. Moreover, they are not collecting the full sum of information needed to onboard the agent onto all of the software systems across the enterprise. A clear example of this is the agent's headshot and bio. Nearly every bit of software used by an agent today is branded to the firm and the agent. When a gray skull represents the agent’s headshot in software, it’s unappealing. Just look at the number of incomplete headshots and bios on broker websites, CRMs, CMAs, Flyers, and more.
Our system creates one record per human, not one record per login. We have the ability to set permissions for each person - the CEO has certain access to systems, and regional managers, office managers, teams, agents and staff are all configured exactly as you would prefer. (By the way - this system is also tied to our intranet chat groups, too (hyperlink). The record creates a source of truth for every application that they can access, and permissions that access dynamically through API connections. Today, we have over 130 commonly used technology products connected to our hub. Chances are, we have already wired up every product connected to your brokerage.
Because we specialize in solving problems for large enterprise firms (and even some very large MLSs with more than 60,000 users), we have also built some unique connections that every firm size can benefit from. For example, we can pull license data, CE class checks, and license check alerts for the broker.
When the brokerage makes a change in the identity management tool to a person’s record, that change is instantly conveyed to every software application within seconds. Adding an agent does not take five hours per agent, when the onboarding process is measured in minutes. Do you need to remove an agent, staff member, team, etc.? Simply log in and change their status - everything is instantly shut off - their email, software, everything.
To close on a note for our more technical CTO types, we do not use a third-party identity service like AuthO providers. This allows us to create any custom field that you need to support every application. We support full passkey enablement, and single passkey with biometric authentication to improve security.
If you want to see this system in action, give us a call. We are extremely proud of the work our developers have done and happy to show it off.