At the AICWA Conference back in July, our marketing & communications officer, Katelyn sat down with Ash from the WA Proptech Hub to talk about all things innovation, proptech in WA and, of course, Realtime Conveyancer.
In this episode of Proptech TV, we talk about the catch-22 facing business owners who are actively seeking ways to make their business more efficient but feel like they’re too busy to implement those changes. Users who’ve made the switch to Realtime have told us that once they committed to making the change, they now have all this time back in their day. They’re free to do other things in their business, like networking or spending more time with their family.
We also dived into the (in our opinion, very likely) prospect of WA becoming the Proptech Capital of Australia and the importance of surrounding yourself with like-minded people who are invested in growing together.
Watch the full episode now and read the transcript below.
Sarah: So we’re still here at the AICWA Future Focus conference and I’ve found Katelyn from Realtime Conveyancer. How are you Katelyn?
Katelyn: I’m good thanks, Sarah. How are you?
Sarah: How you feeling the vibe today?
Katelyn: It’s fantastic, everyone is just so excited to be here. I’ve been to I think 5 or 6 conferences now and the vibe is next level this year.
Sarah: It is, I had to just literally drag you away from the table. So Realtime Conveyancer being around now this is what their second conference?
Katelyn: Third conference.
Sarah: That’s exciting. It’s a game changer for WA.
Katelyn: It really is. I was thinking back to our first conference and you know we hadn’t really gone live. We’d done some beta testing but now we’re well and truly in the market. The feedback that we’re getting is phenomenal and the number of people that have come up today to chat to us and say like I need to do this. Now’s the time.
Sarah: Exciting and now big interviews with the Prop Tech Hub.
Katelyn: Absolutely, I’ve made it!
Sarah: You feeling okay big TV star?
Katelyn: Feeling all good!
Sarah: Your makeup’s done, you’re looking amazing.
Katelyn: Well no I’ll just say you didn’t give me any prior warning about this.
Sarah: You look absolutely beautiful. All right well let’s not hold you back let’s go see Ash. Thanks for joining us and look forward to hearing what you’ve got to say. Thanks Katelyn.
Ash: Back again, here with Katelyn from Realtime Conveyancer. Thank you for being on the show.
Katelyn: No worries.
Ash: So, we’re at the conference – Future Focus. What does future focus mean to you?
Katelyn: Well, we are all about taking traditionally quite a paper-based process of conveyancing and digitalising it and more than that actually taking it into the future. Future-proofing conveyancing businesses so making sure that they’ve got the tools and they’re empowered to actually run their business in a modern way.
Ash: Very relevant obviously to a conveyancing association right?
Katelyn: Yes, absolutely.
Ash: Because you’re streamlining that whole process. So, what are some of the challenges facing conveyancers right now?
Katelyn: I think a lot of it is the unknown. It’s quite daunting to be faced with the prospect of turning what you do day to day up on its head and completely changing the way that you run your business. It is a hard thing to do in baby steps, I guess. What we’re what we’re getting the best feedback is the firms that do just jump in head first but it takes a lot to get to that point. To be confident to do that.
Ash: Yeah and you know Innovation I guess with the conveyancers are they adopting it you know easily and willingly or does it take you know a while to get them on board and understanding and seeing you know what the benefits are for them?
Katelyn: The benefits are very apparent to everyone that we speak to straight away. The market is so busy at the moment so what we’re finding is that it’s just having the time to actually sit down and make those changes that is the biggest challenge at the minute. But once they do make those changes they get all this time back in their day and it frees them up to do other things in their business to make it even more efficient.
Ash: So over the next 12 months you know what’s important to you guys and what are you going to be trying to achieve?
Katelyn: We really just want to empower as many businesses as we can to work in modern ways. So give them the tools help them to succeed and grow their businesses.
Ash: So a conveyancer out there that’s watching this or someone in that space how do they actually contact Realtime and begin the process?
Katelyn: Yeah so you can just jump on our website so realtimeconveyancer.com.au and you can book a demo in and Alannah or one of our team will be able to come out and show you exactly what the platform can do for your business.
Ash: So you know Alannah or one of the team members comes out you know what does a business do? Do they set up an account and then how do they really you know get involved and actually get it to work for them?
Katelyn: So, once you’ve decided that this is what you want to do in your business you can apply to join Realtime. It’s just a form that you fill out on our website. We go through all of the setup with you. We’ll even, down to things like your email signatures – we’ll import those into the program for you. We’ll set up all your Integrations with PEXA and your ID services and things like that. And then you’re good to go! We’ll take you through some initial training but what we find is most people like to sit down and have a bit of a play and come back with some questions so we guide them over a series of you know four to six weeks. Checking in continuously, to make sure that you know everything’s OK.
Ash: So over the past sort of few years it’s been a bit of a property boom lots and lots and lots of transactions and all indications are that it’s going to slow down a little bit. I guess that’s going to give conveyancers a bit of time to breathe and try these new things but how is that going to you know affect your business moving forward?
Katelyn: For us it will really give us an opportunity to cement some really cool new features. So at the moment there’s a lot of we’re spending a lot of time on innovating and um coming up with our road map, I guess for where we want to be in the next 5, 10, 15 years. But yeah we’ll just get a bit more of an opportunity to sit down hold conveyancers hands just that little bit more while in the background we can continue to work on those features.
Ash: Because you’re operating in Western Australia and South Australia?
Katelyn: Yes.
Ash: Is there plans to go to other states in territories in Australia?
Katelyn: I don’t know.
Ash: And when will that kind of you know happen? Is there sort of like a roadmap of Australia domination, International domination? So it’s not on the white board in the office?
Katelyn: Well see I work remotely so it could well be on the whiteboard.
Ash: Oh lovely but South Australia has been the second market you’ve entered and how’s that going?
Katelyn: It’s going really, really well. So one of our beta testers settled their first property on Realtime this week.
Ash: Incredible.
Katelyn: So that was a very exciting milestone for us and the feedback that we got from them was phenomenal.
Ash: Oh that’s lovely. Bringing you back to today’s conference what are you hoping to achieve from being here?
Katelyn: For us, it’s really just getting in front of WA conveyancers, seeing people that we often we only connect with once a year at these events. All of us are ex-conveyancers ourselves so you know we’ve worked side by side all of these people it’s really great just to catch up and see how everything’s going for them and if we can you know impart a little bit of um you know a few tips and tricks to make their lives a bit more efficient and give them some more time in their day then that’s a bonus.
Ash: Yeah sure so this year PropTech Hub WA declared that Perth will be the proptech capital of Australia within the next 365 days. Do you think that’s possible?
Katelyn: Absolutely!
Ash: And what would it mean to you guys to be you know in WA, operating from WA, you know with a hundred or hundreds of other innovators you know all in the same backyard and being able to learn from them?
Katelyn: I think um it’s really important to surround yourself with like minded people, We can only grow if we’re around people that want to build us up so to be around people like that constantly is only going to benefit all of us.
Ash: Agreed. Well thank you so much for being on the show, thank you very much for watching and we’ll see you next episode. Until then take care.
