For sixteen years, the Profit Power team met with customers for two days to discuss all things Profit Power at our annual Symposium. Then, in 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic forced us into a two-year hiatus. Now we are back live and in person with our customers, and we couldn't be happier. We chose our hometown of Buffalo, NY, to hold this year's Symposium. Eleven customers and over twenty attendees are joining us to review, collaborate, share ideas, and make new friendships.

This year's major topics include reviewing new features added to version 14 of Profit Power. Over the years, we have worked hard to have all of our customers using the same version of Profit Power, and we have mainly accomplished this goal which makes support and future upgrades much easier for our team.

Other topics include our Profit Power API and the third-party applications we integrate. We realize that Real Estate brokerages leverage different software platforms for various purposes, and the ability to have that data flow seamlessly between software platforms is essential to brokerages. Our API and our 3rd party software integration partners continue to grow.

Another major topic of this year's Symposium is the cyber security updates we have made in the past two years. Profit Power is a mission-critical application for our customers, and protecting the data and ensuring availability is of utmost importance to us. We have implemented a multilayered security approach comprising redundant state-of-the-art next-gen firewalls and state-of-the-art next-gen endpoint protection software. These systems are monitored 24/7 by a SIEM (security information and event management) product that a third-party cyber security company named Sedara monitors for us. Sedara employs some of the top cyber security experts in the industry. On top of all of these new updates, we are implementing multi-factor authentication for users. This final piece protects our users from having their passwords compromised where most security breaches occur.

Along with these topics, we are reviewing updates to our Agent Edge mobile app for agents and updates to our web interface for sales input.

Finally, as I write this post, our breakout sessions are underway. Topics include miscellaneous apps, reporting and 1099's, and the always popular "ask your peers" session.

It has been a great two days so far, and as mentioned above, we couldn't be happier to be back with our customers once again.

There are Real Estate Brokerages who have been in business for many years, They've been through recessions, booming economies, and everything in between. Why do these Brokers remain successful despite the market conditions? 

Savvy Real Estate Brokers focused on growth and profitability rely on key performance indicators (KPI's) to understand their company's performance. Real estate is like any other business. And all successful companies need reliable real-time data to execute rational decisions that lead to profitability. 

The same should go for your agents.

As a real estate back office solutions provider who has been working with brokers for over twenty years, we see the same pattern every Fall. Brokers who have enjoyed a long run of success (let's call them "the planners") come to life and take action by evaluating their organization to see where they need to improve. The flipside is the struggling brokerages who are just barely scraping by (we'll call them the "the procrastinators") who don't make any changes or put in the work to evaluate where improvement is needed. These brokerages usually call after the first of the year with fires to put out and with no time to or plan to put them out. 

Successful residential real estate brokers understand how a mix of experienced top producers, up-and-coming agents, and new agents just starting their careers is ideal for maintaining a profitable business. It may seem counterintuitive to prefer a mix of experience levels instead of a roster full of top-producing agents. However, we will show how a healthy mix of agent types combined with the right blend of commission plans is essential for brokers when building out their agent roster.

Back Office software is more than just a tool to help calculate agent commissions and process transactions for your brokerage. It should also help Brokers make decisions based on real-time financial information. Timely and accurate data entry practices are vital components to maintaining a healthy business. A broker can only use and trust reports if they know the data entered is accurate and timely. To that end, the Cash Flow Projection report is one of the most critical reports a residential real estate broker has to help make sound financial decisions. With one report, a broker can identify the sales coming up for closing, sales with an estimated closing date that has passed, and the agents they need to contact to see if they can help a sale close.

The Cash Flow Projection report in Profit Power is the cumulation of years of feedback received from successful brokers. Savvy brokers realize that they can make intelligent business decisions with strong data entry practices and sophisticated software tools. Using the estimated closed date to determine what is closing in the next week, two weeks, three weeks, etc., allows a Broker to understand the flow of money they will be receiving over a period of time. Seeing open sales with an estimated closing date that has passed enables a broker to take action and step in when necessary to help a sale along. Using color coding quickly alerts a broker to the most critical pending sales that could use their attention. All of this vital information on one dynamic report is a must-have for any broker looking to maintain a profitable business. With the Cash Flow Projection report, a broker can have confidence in making investments into their business if the pending projections look healthy. If things are not looking good, it allows a broker to focus their energy to help drive future business.

Let's break down the Profit Power Cash Flow Projection report in some more detail.

"We have always been very particular with how we produce reports. Once we learned Profit Power, and that we could have reports structured with the details we wanted, there was no looking back.”  
- Missi Moody – Accounting Manager   

Summary
Carolina One Real Estate, based in Charleston, South Carolina, has been in business for over 50 years. With 17 offices and 1000 agents, they are the real estate market leader in the Charleston area. Carolina One went live with Profit Power in January of 2013. Prior to that they were using an antiquated software that lacked flexibility and reporting options.

The job of recruiting and retaining top agents is always a top priority for Real Estate Brokerages. Providing technology tools to help agents in their business is one major way Brokers look to accomplish this. Every year there's new technology offered to Brokers and Agents that promise to help build their businesses up. Yet, technology that allows your agents to monitor their written and closed business, as well as their commission breakdowns is a tool seriously lacking in the real estate industry. The simple reason is that most back office software solutions don't provide this data to agents in an easily accessible format. It is often provided in the way of reporting that is not real time, nor interactive. It is usually left up to managers or administrative staff to run ad hoc reports that need to be sent to agents when they request it.

We have set out to solve this problem with Profit Power Agent Edge. 

It's a New Year and it is customary for individuals and companies to set goals and go about achieving them. Up until recently, it was what I did personally. Set a goal, then work really hard to achieve that goal. Yet, the achieving part was sort of nebulous. I had every intention to reach my goals, and sometimes I would, but more often than not the goals being set were "pie in the sky" aspirations and the plan to achieve them was never well defined. This all changed for me after reading Atomic Habits by James Clear. I changed my mindset on how to look at goal setting and switched to a focus on improving systems and not caring so much about achieving goals.