The Challenge

Gordon James Real Estate Services is a full-service real estate company based in Washington, DC, that serves the Capitol and surrounding areas. To further their goal of delivering excellent service, the company created customized pages and applications for their clients, partners, and employees using Visualforce. 

To build these tools and pages, the firm relied heavily on external developers, which was both expensive and time-consuming. If any issues came up post-deployment, making adjustments were difficult and costly, and the lack of control over the development process meant the company was struggling to adapt and respond quickly enough to user feedback and shifts in the market. 

Data management was yet another challenge. Key information was stored in a range of platforms, including Excel spreadsheets, Salesforce, Asana, and Google Docs, making it hard to access critical numbers quickly and introducing the possibility of serious data accuracy issues across these multiple systems. 

As a company that works with community associations, Gordon James Real Estate Services also managed a large volume of requests for resale packages. However, the approvals process was cumbersome and left the firm open to compliance issues. 

The Solution

As both the business and their Salesforce data structure became more and more complex, the Gordon James Real Estate Services team recognized a need for greater agility in their platform and app  development. So, they headed to the Salesforce AppExchange and began evaluating various solutions. 

What stood out about Skuid was its comprehensive feature set and its ability to quickly create and deploy customized pages while also connecting to external data sources. In addition, Skuid’s integration with Salesforce was a major differentiator. Other solutions the team considered weren’t native to the platform and often lagged during Salesforce updates. Skuid allowed them to operate within a single, integrated environment, minimizing the risk of integration problems and update delays.

Once the Skuid implementation process got underway, the team was impressed by how easy everything was to set up. An internal employee with little coding experience was able to manage the entire implementation process. As the team became adept at page creation, they began honing in on UX as well, particularly look-and-feel, and started building more streamlined and intuitive experiences. 

An early top priority was automating manual processes. By creating a custom dashboard for their internal accounting team, they eliminated manual spreadsheet consolidation and ensured all data stayed within the Salesforce system of record. The team was also able to automate their viewing scheduling process, an essential aspect of the real estate transaction. 

And all of those resale package requests? The company used Skuid to create a single platform where external users could make these results and where employees could easily manage them, ending their reliance on complicated and time-consuming approvals and decreasing potential compliance risks. 

The Result

Today, three internal employees manage all custom Visualforce app and page development. By reducing their reliance on external developers, the company has saved a significant amount of money and can now respond more quickly to both internal and external feedback. For simple pages, the team now saves weeks, while for more complex pages, they save months. Previously, they would need to wait a week for a developer to review changes and draft a proposal. Now, they can make changes internally in minutes.

Skuid’s intuitive platform has also allowed them to deliver more seamless design and UX. Because these applications and pages are so much easier to use, the company has seen increased adoption by clients, partners, and employees. That adoption has led to improved data accuracy (approaching 100%), data integrity, and more consistent data formatting. 

Overall, the organization estimates they’ve experienced a 60% increase in efficiency from using Skuid apps. For example, two of their main KPIs, customer response time and the number of completed tasks, have shown notable improvement, with their average response time improving by 48%.

By working within a single system (Salesforce), they’ve also been able to completely discontinue certain services, including Zapier, Asana, and Workato, and have greatly reduced their dependence on Google applications. The end result is a cost savings of $100K per year.