How Odoo Gives Brokers More Than a CRM to Operate Their Business

0:00Hi and welcome to Broker Tools, where we unpack the tools, systems, and strategies that help brokers optimize the way they work. I'm Katey, your host,
0:088 secondsand today we are catching up with Derek from Odoo. Odoo is that all-in-one CRM software that includes portals and e
0:1515 secondssignature software. So, if you have been looking for a software that is more comprehensive than a basic CRM, then Odoo
0:2424 secondsmight be the way for you. Derek, welcome to the pod. Hi Katey, thanks so much for having me on.
0:3131 secondsYou are most welcome. Before we even and most people know this, I love a good pre-hat. We always have a pre-hat before we do these podcast lives. And I
0:4040 secondsdiscovered in our pre-hat that you had a whole entrepreneurial life before you even began working with Odo. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
0:4949 secondsUm, yes. So, I've been in sales for as my day job for the last decade or so across a number of different industries, but I've always had a bit of an entrepreneurial angle. Like when I was
0:5757 secondsstudying my commerce degree at university, I was running a fitness business, which was, you know, selling gym memberships, subcontracting through a gym, you know, selling personal
1:051 minute, 5 secondstraining, running group fitness, selling programs. I sort of figuring out ways to do that. And then once I got into the corporate world, I sort of saw how the
1:121 minute, 12 secondsthe partners at the big accounting firms are quite entrepreneurial and sales or sort of rain maker roles, and I really like that, but not the sort of 20-year climb to to be a partner at a big firm.
1:211 minute, 21 secondsSo, yeah, I lived and worked in Asia in for Australian entrepreneurs when I was based in the Philippines. and most our clients were entrepreneurs, startups, scaleups. So, it was just sort of
1:301 minute, 30 secondsmarinating in entrepreneurs for years and years. And I've had other roles that were a little bit more selling to big corporate and big government. So, I've seen that compare and contrast between
1:371 minute, 37 secondsthe top end of town and the the sort of main street entrepreneurs. And then, yeah, while doing that, I've sort of been part of business networking groups with entrepreneurs as well as running an
1:461 minute, 46 secondsentrepreneurial podcast in a past life as well. So yeah, just sort of always learning new things but seeing you know how entrepreneurs work and think and
1:531 minute, 53 secondsthen seeing how and work inside entrepreneurial companies and seeing how you know large corporates also sort of operate and think. So seeing the different parallel universees some people exist in.
2:022 minutes, 2 secondsNice. And I guess some of those entrepreneurial things that you mentioned were uh being part of a virtual assistant company setting that
2:092 minutes, 9 secondsup over in the Philippines and then was it you came back to Australia?
2:132 minutes, 13 secondsSo as an employee in so six months after being an accountant I realized that wasn't what I wanted to do. So I thought if I'm changing sort of professions what I'd studied for years I might as well
2:212 minutes, 21 secondssort of change countries. So I landed in the Philippines having never visited Asia and it was a marketing internship.
2:262 minutes, 26 secondsSo I spent six months sort of as a marketing intern and then the the CEO said I think you'd have a good knack for sales and business development. Um I didn't really know what that meant but I learned a lot sort of apprenticing under
2:342 minutes, 34 secondshim um and sitting in a lot of boardroom sort of pitches from an excellent solution seller and then yeah ended up being in sort of sales roles and then
2:422 minutes, 42 secondsyou helped out the US office and operations. So spent some time over in America in a another role as well. But yeah, on the sort of sales entrepreneurial selling to
2:502 minutes, 50 secondsentrepreneurs, working with and for entrepreneurs. Yeah. For the majority of my career.
2:542 minutes, 54 secondsAnd I guess this is where like kinds of industry matter because not only did you do virtual assistant support or
3:013 minutes, 1 secondinfrastructure and I guess entrepreneur B2B sales for them. You also went into cyber security.
3:083 minutes, 8 secondsYeah. So that was when I came back from Asia after a great half decade living and working there. I end up in a US cyber security training company. So
3:153 minutes, 15 secondsdoing very technical training for the ASX 200 military, police, government, which was again a whole different universe. And you see, you know, how
3:233 minutes, 23 secondsmuch like procurement for example factors into that all these sort of different regulations again government, state, federal, civilian, military and
3:313 minutes, 31 secondshow much different, you know, an ASX 50 or 100 operates from the entrepreneurs I had been sort of dealing with in the previous 5 years. So it was a real you
3:393 minutes, 39 secondsknow sort of learning process and seeing how and it was quite an entrepreneurial company as US company. So they operated quite entrepreneurally but selling to
3:463 minutes, 46 secondsreally the you know the top end of the tip of the spear globally fortune 500 ASX 100 and government and military. So some of the most sort of regulated
3:543 minutes, 54 secondsstrict high stakes banks data security intelligence you know at the government level that you can sort of deal with. So yeah, really the opposite end of the
4:034 minutes, 3 secondsspectrum and very informative to compare and contrast that to how you know your average sort of startup scale up move fast and sort of break things entrepreneur operates to the the very
4:114 minutes, 11 secondsantithesis but yeah and how to sort of yeah work and succeed in both environments. Yeah. And I guess obviously we were talking about your
4:184 minutes, 18 secondscareer before Odo, but I think these factor into how broker gets to optimize the way they work. And one of the things
4:264 minutes, 26 secondsI realize is that you also ran a podcast in and alongside of these things. And
4:334 minutes, 33 secondsyou get to learn a lot a lot from having these podcasts. You also ran events with BNI. And then you got to meet a lot of I
4:424 minutes, 42 secondsguess people in the real estate and financing industry as a part of that role. Uh where where do you think I
4:494 minutes, 49 secondsguess some of the best lessons or insights that you've had into the industry because of those uh jobs that you had even before ODOT started?
4:584 minutes, 58 secondsYeah, I think it is that exposure to just very different industries. Like I used to say to people that sort of size of business is a variable most people don't think. they work at five law
5:055 minutes, 5 secondsfirms, but they're all giant multinationals or they're all, you know, micro boutiques and and that sort of size of a business matters so much. A
5:135 minutes, 13 secondslot of 5,000 employee companies operate in a similar way and a lot of fivep person companies operate in a similar way across industries and seeing those variables how it happens when you're
5:205 minutes, 20 secondsfive staff, your 50, your 500, your 5,000 and all sort of levels of growth.
5:255 minutes, 25 secondsBut yeah, so in some days I'll be in a room full of real estate professionals, conveyances, mortgage brokers, accountants, financial planners, commercial lenders, asset finance. again
5:345 minutes, 34 secondssort of main street uh local property heavy asset heavy real estate face to face sort of transactions but then my podcast was interviewing the the fastest
5:425 minutes, 42 secondsgrowing new businesses all across Australia. So seeing entrepreneurial businesses, seeing small and growing, small local pill multigenerational
5:505 minutes, 50 secondsbusiness and then dayto-day having clients in um Australia, UK, Singapore, America, um Canada who I was working like I said with offshore staffing space
5:585 minutes, 58 secondsbut seeing how again just sort of all different layers operated and then comparing contrast that to my past experience with like the very big sort of you know government, military,
6:066 minutes, 6 secondspolice, corporate Australia and how they all function in you know unique ways that all work for their where they are but seeing the miscommunication gaps I
6:146 minutes, 14 secondsguess sometimes where again a lot of brokers are small businesses and even soul traders but they interact with the biggest companies in Australia, you
6:226 minutes, 22 secondsknow, the big banks and then they also interact with, you know, real estate agents and accountants and are sort of again uniquely positioned at the
6:306 minutes, 30 secondsintersection of all these different, you know, sort of parallel groups within society that often don't overlap. If you're in a big corporate and all your clients and suppliers big corporate,
6:386 minutes, 38 secondsyou're in a small business, all your clients and suppliers are local small businesses. Mortgage brokers are a unique crossover industry that is yeah
6:476 minutes, 47 secondsoperating at multiple levels. So I think I have a bit of an appreciation for that versus someone who's only been in small business, only been in self-employment or only been in like government for their entire career.
6:566 minutes, 56 secondsNice. And I guess with those like learnings that you've gathered throughout your career, what led you to joining Odo?
7:047 minutes, 4 secondsUm yeah, so my wife and I are living in Melbourne. Um that's where we grew up like I said. um spent a bit of time in Asia, a bit of time in America, but wanting a bit of a lifestyle change to
7:117 minutes, 11 secondsmove up to Queensland. So, I was looking at jobs and it just sort of came up on my radar as a a tech business in the Gold Coast. I thought, okay, we want to move to Queensland, Brisbane, Gold
7:207 minutes, 20 secondsCoast, and and it sort of surprised me, but as I've spent a bit of time here, it's also a bit of a fascinating parallel. ODO itself is a European
7:287 minutes, 28 secondscompany. The founder is a tech guy who started, you know, a garage sort of software business 20 25 years ago. But unlike most big tech companies that are
7:367 minutes, 36 secondssort of privately tra uh sorry publicly listed or owned by venture capital private equity, it's still majority privately held. So despite being the founder and CEO, he's still coding and
7:447 minutes, 44 secondsand designing the product and he's still majority owner even though now it's about 8,000 staff globally, 200,000 clients, 15 million users. And the
7:527 minutes, 52 secondsAustralian office is only three years old. So it's gone from zero to 85 staff in three years. So it's it's almost like an entrepreneurial Australian New
8:018 minutes, 1 secondZealand headquarters based in the Gold Coast, part of a sort of Hong Kong AP pack sort of mid-market scaleup with a couple hundred pel but actually then
8:088 minutes, 8 secondspart of a Belgium sort of 8,000 person multinational. So again sort of layers inside layers inside layers and you know seeing the interactions of all of that I
8:168 minutes, 16 secondsthink is sort of the perfect complement to my background. So I sort of fell into it a little bit um more based on geography. Um but once I sort of went down the rabbit hole a bit and
8:258 minutes, 25 secondsunderstood the founder story and the business and working in the business with the clients um who again often sort of small mediumsized business and entrepreneurs it sort of was almost like
8:338 minutes, 33 secondsa a perfect fit role for me but I just sort of fell into it and life is like that sometimes.
8:378 minutes, 37 secondsYeah. And I think making those kind of switches really can impact life because
8:448 minutes, 44 secondsonce you start doing one particular job and then you move to another, you realize that this is what you've been doing. You've been gathering different
8:538 minutes, 53 secondskinds of lead flows um along the way and different I guess intelligence of customers and opportunities. And you've
9:019 minutes, 1 secondprobably learned that throughout this process, um, how you document, how you manage your relationships really do matter.
9:119 minutes, 11 secondsUm, yeah, absolutely. And you see how, yeah, different businesses function, but how, yeah, you can compound the skills rather than feeling like you're starting from scratch. When you change, you can
9:199 minutes, 19 secondstake something that seems very unusual in one environment and bring it to a new environment. And to them it's sort of like you invented fire because no one in their environment may it's big corporate
9:279 minutes, 27 secondsmay it's small business they rarely cross over often so you can sort of bring the best ideas from different sides of the economy and often that's sort of again where big opportunities
9:369 minutes, 36 secondsare where things that a small business wouldn't think twice about is quite innovative in a big company and vice versa. So yeah, always trying to learn
9:439 minutes, 43 secondsand collect things as I go and also like you said, yeah, keep sort of compounding the learnings and building my understanding of all these different industries and like um for brokers, you
9:529 minutes, 52 secondsknow, what they're going through, what they're thinking about, what are their challenges, what are their opportunities.
9:559 minutes, 55 secondsYeah. And I guess often with these challenges and opportunities, I guess compliance is probably one of the biggest headaches that you've probably
10:0410 minutes, 4 secondscome across. How does ODO actually help brokers, you know, not even have to think about compliance because it's really part of their process?
10:1310 minutes, 13 secondsUm, yeah, a big way is having everything in one system. Even if you are compliant, if everything's spread across five different systems, you've got a CRM, you got an invoicing software,
10:2110 minutes, 21 secondsyou've got other industry specific tools, you've got a marketing email list software, you've got, you know, five other tools. Even if you are compliant, can be hard to sort of sort, sift and
10:3010 minutes, 30 secondsfilter if you had to produce a report, you had to prove a sort of documentation. So I'd say the biggest thing for ODU is being a single source of truth where you can have all your
10:3810 minutes, 38 secondscustomers, all your referral partners, all your suppliers, all your leads, all your past clients, everyone in one place. And you can also see, you know,
10:4510 minutes, 45 secondslike an audit trail of the history or if someone edits something, you see who edited when and where someone signed something. You have the um signing certificates and having all of that in
10:5410 minutes, 54 secondsone place. I think it's a bit like, you know, if you've got everything in one house, obviously it's easier to find stuff and you got spread across five different properties, your friend's house, your parents house, you know,
11:0211 minutes, 2 secondsthat's sort of what a lot of small businesses that are putting out individual fires, you know, I need an email tool, let me get an email tool, I need an invoicing, let me I need a marketing tool, I need an automation
11:1111 minutes, 11 secondstool, and you sort of you spread all the, you know, information and documentation across a lot of systems.
11:1611 minutes, 16 secondsIt can make it very chaotic to even see, oh, I thought we did it, but I didn't check the other system, or the person responsible is employee A. Employee B didn't even realize that, or they
11:2411 minutes, 24 secondsthought the other person was handling it. Whereas a single view, everyone's on the same page. Everyone is looking at the same thing and reporting data, and I'm sure we'll talk about in the future,
11:3211 minutes, 32 secondsautomations, AI are only really possible when everything's in one place. If it's across disparate systems, then you're building bridges or APIs between systems and more and more it starts to sort of unravel or become very unmanageable.
11:4211 minutes, 42 secondsNice. Did you want to kind of give us a walkthrough of what ODO is? Because I also understand that sometimes people
11:5111 minutes, 51 secondssay, "Hey, you need a CRM." Um, but you know what is a CRM? Because uh you often
11:5811 minutes, 58 secondsbuy these one tools for particularly CRM, but then you realize you need to do these add-on bits. And I guess that's
12:0612 minutes, 6 secondswhat Odo has noticed. Sure, CRM is a component, but the add-on bit need to not be fragmented. It needs to be all part of one system.
12:1612 minutes, 16 secondsYeah, like that's sort of the key inside of ODU that subscription fatigue. Even just logging in between systems, you know, you log in, you log out, you open a browser tab, you two factor on your
12:2412 minutes, 24 secondsphone, all those things individually are great, but across six apps or three staff, suddenly it's a big tax on productivity. So, yeah, if you like, I could do a brief screen share to sort of
12:3312 minutes, 33 secondsshow a little bit of a visual of sort of the look and feel of ODO. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that would be great. Yeah. So, let me just pull that up.
12:4012 minutes, 40 secondsAnd as you pull it up, uh to confirm, Odo has Australia data regency, doesn't it? Um yeah, so the servers are in Sydney.
12:4812 minutes, 48 secondsUm there are crosscontental backups across Asia and Europe. Um we can do onrem hosting which a lot of software businesses don't. So if you do want it locally hosted, you can host it locally.
12:5812 minutes, 58 secondsBut yeah, so we are flexible based on the requirements of um an individual and their industry and their need. Um, so yeah, like I said to give a a sort of
13:0613 minutes, 6 secondshigh level tool because ODO is a little bit different like it's not a point solution where it's just email marketing, it's just a CRM, it's just an invoicing tool. It is essentially an
13:1413 minutes, 14 secondsall-in-one system. Um, so you see all of these different apps on the screen. They are all connected to one database which is where you get that power of being
13:2213 minutes, 22 secondsable to have a single thing like a contact list and then whether you want to send an email, an SMS, a WhatsApp, whether you want to connect it to a task
13:3013 minutes, 30 secondsor a event or a signature, it's all a help desk ticket for customer service issues after someone's got their loan with you. It is all pulling from one
13:3913 minutes, 39 secondssystem. And then another thing that a lot of business owners, especially entrepreneurial minded brokers have is
13:4613 minutes, 46 secondsessentially more ideas than they can use. And a big frustration they come across is having an idea like they want
13:5413 minutes, 54 secondsto run a newsletter. They want to run a referral partner event to generate more referrals every quarter, but they get sort of stuck in the the how do I do that? How do I get event software to
14:0214 minutes, 2 secondssell tickets? How do I send an email blast to my referral partners? How do I get a full list in one place, my referral partners? So you've got this
14:0914 minutes, 9 secondssingle architecture of one database, but ODU has about 80 pre-built apps. So say for example, I go into apps and I type event because you want event management
14:1714 minutes, 17 secondssoftware, you can click install and it will literally sort of add that app on in about 30 seconds and that app talks
14:2514 minutes, 25 secondsto all the other apps. So if you want to go to your contacts and see a list of all your referral partners you've tagged as referral partners and then send an email blast to invite them to an event
14:3214 minutes, 32 secondsor to buy a ticket to an event you're hosting, that entire flow is in one system. You've already paid for the subscription. We don't charge per app, it's per user. And I would say that's
14:4114 minutes, 41 secondssort of the biggest value of ODO is having the ability to turn your ideas into reality. So this is sort of just
14:4914 minutes, 49 secondsprompting me to build a website where I can then sort of host that even that. So you've got the ODU website or your own website. You can add e-learning, events, appointment, contacts sort of onto that.
14:5814 minutes, 58 secondsSo now it's added the events module. So you can have a page on your website for upcoming events. And there's nothing here because we haven't scheduled them.
15:0415 minutes, 4 secondsBut that's where adding an event section to your website that then connects into your back end is like sort of three clicks and 3 minutes. It's not find an
15:1215 minutes, 12 secondsagency, hire a freelancer, look at five vendors, add more software subscriptions, create a new login. It's already sort of there and done. And
15:2015 minutes, 20 secondsthat's sort of yeah the odo way to sort of keep keep up with your ambition and ideas as a mortgage broker, commercial broker, asset finance person.
15:2715 minutes, 27 secondsAwesome. And do you have the ability to do like learning systems and videos for on boarding?
15:3415 minutes, 34 secondsYeah, so that's a a great sort of next example. So we have an e-learning module. So if I type learn, there's a full learning management system with
15:4315 minutes, 43 secondsgamification, quizzes, scoring. So for example, if you have a um a new hire process, like a new broker, a new admin process, you want to watch 10 videos, understand your business workflows.
15:5415 minutes, 54 secondsmaybe for clients, you know, here's the videos about first-time home buyer options or things like that. Like I said, two clicks, I've now got a
16:0116 minutes, 1 secondlearning the e-learning app and that can also be pushed straight to my website and I can be building a course, building quizzes, publishing content, tracking
16:0916 minutes, 9 secondsattendance, reviews, having a message board, again, all included in the subscription, but turning that idea, oh, I should train my referral partners to
16:1716 minutes, 17 secondsgive me better leads. I should train my clients on how to get the best option. I should have a FAQ video on um refinancing or buying your first
16:2616 minutes, 26 secondscommercial investment versus a residential investment. The gap from that to reality is a couple of clicks, not new software, new team, new learnings, and it's all in the same
16:3416 minutes, 34 secondsinterface, the same login and the same subscription.
16:3716 minutes, 37 secondsNo. And maybe we should start at the beginning because if we think about an entrepreneurial journey, let alone a broker journey or a client journey, when
16:4616 minutes, 46 secondsa new lead comes in, we're trying to document and capture this information.
16:5016 minutes, 50 secondsAnd I guess this is the value of odo and what generally speaking a CRM does because that kind of captures your
16:5816 minutes, 58 secondscontact your maybe a business association. You get to label them from as a source and that is the CRM feature itself. Would that be?
17:0717 minutes, 7 secondsYeah. So you're right that that's sort of yeah that that's where most journeys start. You've done some sort of activity. You've gone to a networking event. You've given a talk. You've gone
17:1517 minutes, 15 secondson a webinar. You've you know built up referral from happy clients. you've asked your clients to refer their friends and family maybe when you followed up or refinance or or did
17:2417 minutes, 24 secondssomething for them and that's when the first point you want to go into the CRM I guess just to take one step back for people aren't familiar with the CRM the
17:3217 minutes, 32 secondsin simple terms it's sort of like a 24/7 executive assistant who remembers everything you said and did remembers every commitment you made remembers
17:4017 minutes, 40 secondswhere everything's up to and also can work when you're asleep to send out reminders do things can remind you and prompt you that oh you said you would do
17:4917 minutes, 49 secondsthis and can remember exactly where you're up to, but instead of being, you know, a six figure highle chief of staff executive assistant, you know, because
17:5617 minutes, 56 secondsthe software is sort of 500 or $1,000 a year instead of, you know, $100,000 a year. So that's, I guess, a real world equivalent of what a CRM does when sort of used properly.
18:0518 minutes, 5 secondsUm, so this is a sample CRM and again it can be a little bit overwhelming, but essentially it's tracking all the
18:1318 minutes, 13 secondsstages. So, a new lead might come in from an email, a web form. You might push it in through um a digital bridge from like Facebook or Meta if you're
18:2118 minutes, 21 secondsrunning ads. And that comes in and sort of captures the details um and the contact information. And what's probably a bit unique about ODU because we're not
18:2918 minutes, 29 secondsjust a CRM, you don't have to force fit all the stages of your entire business into this layout because it's very good for sort of sales stages, but sometimes
18:3718 minutes, 37 secondsCRM aren't as good for the, you know, processing and um post settlement, other things like that. Um, so if you click on
18:4418 minutes, 44 secondsone, this is where you can have the information, the phone number, tags like what they're doing. You can also set up logic based on the source. It can auto
18:5118 minutes, 51 secondstag there. You can have notes, comments, you can see if it could be a duplicate, someone who inquired with you before, if you've got a meeting scheduled with
18:5818 minutes, 58 secondsthem, internal communications. So I'll sort of pause for a moment there, but that's sort of yeah, how ODU works. And then within ODU single subscription,
19:0619 minutes, 6 secondsyou've got all the things you're familiar with like a CRM or workflow project management or an e-ign or like we mentioned sort of events and e-learning.
19:1319 minutes, 13 secondsNice. And I guess if we wanted to I just drill a little bit down a further on what a CRM functionally is, not just
19:2119 minutes, 21 secondswithin ODO, but generally if you were to look anywhere else for a CRM, the only thing a CRM particularly does is what I
19:2819 minutes, 28 secondswould call a dynamic spreadsheet type of thing. So, if you put in a name and the type of opportunity it is, however you
19:3719 minutes, 37 secondswould normally fill out a spreadsheet, that's what a CRM does. But it gets to also segment your relationships. So,
19:4419 minutes, 44 secondsthis is your deal opportunity board. Is that what you would call it? Your deal or an opportunity board?
19:5119 minutes, 51 secondsYeah. This is whoever in the business is doing the sales of sort of taking people from first inquiry through to collecting all the paperwork. This is before that
19:5919 minutes, 59 secondssort of handoff in you know a soul trader they're you know the janitor the CEO the marketing manager the broker they're everything but especially as a
20:0620 minutes, 6 secondsteam grows this is where you know the core sort of sales and making sure everything is progressing people are a good fit you know they understand the
20:1420 minutes, 14 secondsunique value that you provide ideally you've got like a niche or some specialized expertise in what you do and this is where you can drag and drop
20:2220 minutes, 22 secondsthings between you can use the stars to prioritize so if you've got a long list of deals you can sort of prioritize you can color code. I've got two overdue
20:2920 minutes, 29 secondstasks, one today, two plans. I want to say quickly what's overdue. I can filter just to my overdue. So, like I said, in simple terms, it is sort of like a
20:3720 minutes, 37 secondsspreadsheet. But the reason why you would use this over a spreadsheet is the ability to, you know, have other things you can sort of add on top of this. Like
20:4520 minutes, 45 secondsfor example, if you wanted to do an email marketing campaign, you could go into the ODU email marketing app and then I could and I can sort of show you.
20:5320 minutes, 53 secondsFor example, if I go into OD to email marketing, I want to um look at my leads that and I want to add a condition. So,
21:0121 minutes, 1 secondI want to say tag is equal to commercial and I want to send an email to my 10 commercial leads with a template that I can edit. It's that ability that you
21:1021 minutes, 10 secondscan't do in a spreadsheet to then send an email opportunity or something like that to a specific set of people I'm
21:1721 minutes, 17 secondsspeaking to or SMSF specific information, asset finance, first home buyer, first home buyer tag or if you're handling across states with different
21:2521 minutes, 25 secondsgovernment incentives, you could have um you know different things there. So that's where the connection versus just a flat sort of spreadsheet. It sort of
21:3321 minutes, 33 secondsadds layers of extra capabilities and technology and automations on top of a static sort of contact list or lead list in an Excel.
21:4121 minutes, 41 secondsNo. And what else do you think would matter in this circumstance? Because obviously, you know, lead tracking and making sure that a lead is followed
21:4921 minutes, 49 secondsthrough, followed up. That's the value of what you're saying with your overdue tasks and the reminders. Did you want to go through like some of the AI um
21:5821 minutes, 58 secondsautomations that are also available through this?
22:0222 minutes, 2 secondsYes. So a lot of people that I speak to when they say AI what they mean are automations but you know AI is sort of a more exciting one. So I can start with
22:0922 minutes, 9 secondslike a basic automation. So what you can have here again versus like a spreadsheet or a very you know entry- level static CRM is the ability to
22:1722 minutes, 17 secondscreate automations where you can say when a lead comes in you know without needing to be a software developer or code when the stage is set to newly I
22:2422 minutes, 24 secondswant to add an action I want to update the record I want to send an email I want to send an SMS I want to trigger an AI action maybe send a WhatsApp I want to add followers I may add the senior
22:3322 minutes, 33 secondsbroker if a certain condition like the loan size is greater than a million dollars then add the senior broker because they need to be aware of those
22:4022 minutes, 40 secondsdeals. deals or I want to you know trigger something else. You can create these sort of if then automations. So as soon as the lead comes in based on
22:4722 minutes, 47 secondscriteria, location, lead source, you can then build like sort of logic into the system. And that's I guess like the next
22:5522 minutes, 55 secondslevel of sound where I was comparing to sort of like an executive assistant that can work 24/7 when you sleep. So lead comes in overnight. It can auto tag, auto send a template, auto do a next
23:0323 minutes, 3 secondsstep. So a lot of people I speak to when they say, that's really what they have in mind. automated emails, automated follow-ups, automated like tagging and
23:1123 minutes, 11 secondsprioritizing so they can focus if they've had 10 inquiries come in over the weekend or overnight, they can like prioritize the top three as an example.
23:1823 minutes, 18 secondsIf you do actually want to connect your paid AI account, your chat GBT, your Gemini, I think at the moment also adding Claude because it is one
23:2523 minutes, 25 secondsdatabase, you can actually connect those in natively and then give and again on the paid account where it's got a lot more confidentiality and security. um
23:3423 minutes, 34 secondsgive them sort of access to your database and connect it so that when you beyond the automation stage in the simple if then automations automated
23:4123 minutes, 41 secondsactions you actually want to you know give sort of plain English prompts do this generate that the AI can run on your behalf and you know show you a list
23:5023 minutes, 50 secondsof things or reports or things like that so that's sort of I guess the beginner level is just having a static CRM that's a bit more visual in one place intermediate is having automated if then
23:5923 minutes, 59 secondssort of actions and the advanced is having you know an AI connector that has access to your data across multiple apps and workflows. So you can sort of plain
24:0724 minutes, 7 secondstext prompt it and get it to aentically sort of move through your system.
24:1024 minutes, 10 secondsNice. And I guess coming back to the AI part and the features of it, it can also do summarization and surfacing of
24:1824 minutes, 18 secondsinformation. So you know if you asked for example who has settled a loan two years ago,
24:2524 minutes, 25 secondsit could probably be able to surface all that type of information. Yeah, that those sort of plain text prompts rather than going here, clicking a report and again some people just even like I said
24:3324 minutes, 33 secondsit'd be a big win just have all their data in one system and be able to pull up all their people they haven't heard from in six months or people who inquired with them but never bought and
24:4124 minutes, 41 secondsjust that is a big step up or for others it's an automated send a reactivation if this but yeah you can also have AI level the same way you ask AI questions to
24:5024 minutes, 50 secondsplan your holiday and it sort of does a lot of actions based on a simple text prompt you can do the same with odo especially because it's in one system
24:5724 minutes, 57 secondseverything's organized You're not connecting to five different systems and then there's a duplicate contact in two different software.
25:0425 minutes, 4 secondsNice. And then the document collection process, it's not the same as an what we call an industry factf find, but you do
25:1325 minutes, 13 secondshave a way to gather data for um and forms.
25:1825 minutes, 18 secondsYeah. So, so a lot of things in ODO, it is designed across more industries. So, we're not a finance, mortgage, commercial finance specific software. So
25:2725 minutes, 27 secondssome things are built again a bit more horizontally across multiple industries like I haven't got them on here but you know manufacturers wholesalers we have
25:3325 minutes, 33 secondsapps for that but in a mortgage workflow um you know I would sort of help people map out their workflows and see what they need but you can build yeah custom
25:4125 minutes, 41 secondsforms client portal to have fellow submit documents signature requests um have e-sign agreements and collect
25:4825 minutes, 48 secondsdocuments and mold odo odo into what you need it to do but it's a tiny bit less out of the box that's the trade-off a lot of out of the box and quite rigid So
25:5725 minutes, 57 secondsif you're growthminded, you're entrepreneurial, you want to add extra things to your business, often they're quite locked down. The trade-off with Odo is a lot more powerful, but it does
26:0526 minutes, 5 secondsrequire a little bit more upfront configuration. You can do document gathering, factf finding, tracking all the stages of that as well all through a deal life cycle and having all that connected again in a single place.
26:1426 minutes, 14 secondsNo problems. And I guess sometimes when you are doing say for example a web inquiry, you might be able to just do the web form type of information which is not even a full fact find anyway.
26:2526 minutes, 25 secondsit's basic and therefore it won't hopefully hold any uh PII type of documentation um because that type of
26:3326 minutes, 33 secondsinformation obviously needs to be locked down in a better service environment and so ODOT is not really made for that type
26:4026 minutes, 40 secondsof document collection the PII stuff but it is made for general inquiry kind of processes. Um yeah and like there are
26:4826 minutes, 48 secondsdifferent hosting methods, different levels of security you can optimize it for and obviously the regulations sort of change and evolve but yeah we do um
26:5626 minutes, 56 secondshave different methods, different ways of working with Phil but we can also work together with other document collection systems if you want to use this as almost like your business
27:0427 minutes, 4 secondsmanagement like said growing your business, generating leads, tracking it, following up tracking who's doing what when and where but have a supplementary
27:1127 minutes, 11 secondstool that's industry optimized for, you know, just collecting the data and still have a link to that notice so you can click click on a client, go to that in the second tab and then sort of see
27:2027 minutes, 20 secondseverything you need. So there's yeah quite a few, you know, practical real world ways. I'm happy to show people as well if they want individually to their business in how we would sort of again
27:2927 minutes, 29 secondshave a lot more power to sort of make it fit exactly how their business fits.
27:3427 minutes, 34 secondsYeah. And I guess that's the power of the AI API rather integrations or Zappia
27:4127 minutes, 41 secondsand or whatever other tool you want to use to do that process.
27:4627 minutes, 46 secondsYeah. So we have open APIs which are going to like digital bridges between other software. So that's very possible and even out of the box there's a lot of
27:5327 minutes, 53 secondslike said built-in automations or ways to create a custom web form in ODO and those fields on the form you can have
28:0028 minutesconditional logic if there are you know business you add that what's the ABN field if they're not ask for this and that can all push like I said straight
28:0728 minutes, 7 secondsinto ODO natively without needing API Zappia make.com so there are quite a lot of sort of automations given this one database that you can quite powerfully
28:1628 minutes, 16 secondsput together and I I help show people those sort of things every day perfect And I guess some of the other things that I have found in the industry
28:2328 minutes, 23 secondsis having a portal for referral partners to track and measure. Did you say Odo does portals as well?
28:3028 minutes, 30 secondsYeah. So we have a a customer portal. So you can have a contact, you can grant them portal access so that they have a login basically a free login. So it
28:3928 minutes, 39 secondsdoesn't cost you any extra. And then you can have um documents, you can have help desk tickets, you can like you know customer service tickets, project
28:4628 minutes, 46 secondsstatus. So again someone can see the progress of their loan. I mentioned before sort of having like a project task with like a commercial loan. You
28:5428 minutes, 54 secondscan share this projects which would be a replica of a template with the client and also maybe their accountant or other
29:0229 minutes, 2 secondspeople again with no extra cost. So they can see as tasks get sort of you know marked off, approved or cancelled. You know they can have a login and for free
29:1029 minutes, 10 secondssee exactly where it's up to as well as in different views like a list view and who's assigned and when the due date is they can see that like I said versus
29:1829 minutes, 18 secondshaving to call, follow up, ask for things. They can see that they can comment. They can be assigned tasks like I said an external accountant, financial
29:2429 minutes, 24 secondsplanner, other people who might need to sort of see the the progress. And also, like I said, for the more intermediate people, you can also have automations
29:3329 minutes, 33 secondslike when a certain task is complete, auto send an email, SMS or auto followup if something's not responded to in a certain amount of days. So, this is sort
29:4129 minutes, 41 secondsof the baseline, but there are, like I said, intermediate and even advanced levels on top once um you're comfortable um and when you're at the right readiness for it, that you can definitely do.
29:4929 minutes, 49 secondsPerfect. And you can kind of customize what they have access to see or not see.
29:5529 minutes, 55 secondsUm, yeah. So, like, so for most clients, you would, um, like I said, have a project that's just for them. So, they're not seeing any of your other projects, any of your other clients, or
30:0230 minutes, 2 secondsif there's, you know, someone has two loans with you, but one's for their business, one's personal. Obviously, their business partner, you would add on the business one, but maybe it's their spouse, you add on the personal one, so
30:1030 minutes, 10 secondsit's not all intermingled at a sort of project by project level. You can control who sees it. And for document folders, for submitting documents, you know, you can control exactly who's
30:1930 minutes, 19 secondsadded on to that and put things behind a login versus a public link and other things like that to control Yeah. Yeah.
30:2430 minutes, 24 secondsWho has access cuz that's um a big part of cyber security is access controls.
30:2730 minutes, 27 secondsNot just staff within your business which we can handle but also um external parties and what they have sort of visibility and access to.
30:3430 minutes, 34 secondsNice. And I'm just trying to think it through cuz ultimately this is usually what happens here at broker tools is
30:4230 minutes, 42 secondswhen we have a client who comes on board they're like oh I need to just really clean up my lead management system. And my first thing is okay so how do you go
30:5030 minutes, 50 secondsthrough who is the source? Does it come from your website? Is there a referral partner? Then we have to mark that up.
30:5630 minutes, 56 secondsAnd so that's obviously like your contact pile. This person has come in and then you put their contact in. But then it heads over to the CRM side of
31:0431 minutes, 4 secondsthings because you're like, "This is an opportunity or a deal that we need to work on. And then from there, you should
31:1131 minutes, 11 secondstrack and measure along what stage it is. That's what those stage markings are for. And then you have those automations
31:1831 minutes, 18 secondswithin the system to say, "Hey, just follow up a reminder to the client. Um, you haven't finished this or it's a
31:2531 minutes, 25 secondsfollow-up to the teammate because you need to do this task or we got this piece of document back." That CRM holds
31:3331 minutes, 33 secondsthose status updates, I guess. And like you said, you can add a follower. So this means that if you are just a I
31:4231 minutes, 42 secondsguess the broker itself but you have a team lead they don't they're not the assigned broker they're the team team leader but so they want to have overview
31:5031 minutes, 50 secondsof what you're doing and that's what that follower watch is that correct yes that's right yeah so you have sort of on and again the other benefit of odo
31:5931 minutes, 59 secondsis it's quite a similar interface across all the apps so once you learn like the CRM for example you know you click on it and you see the details here on the left
32:0632 minutes, 6 secondsand here on the right is the internal chatter and that's where I could have an activity assigned to myself to call this person tomorrow and again these can be
32:1432 minutes, 14 secondssort of automated or manual but I could also assign activity to someone else or view all my activities across all the apps and things and that's like my to-do
32:2232 minutes, 22 secondslist instead of relying on my memory on my inbox or if I'm away someone else in the business say oh what's Dererick assigned to he's sick for 3 days let me bulk reassign to myself and or I can
32:3032 minutes, 30 secondsjump in and see an internal note or things that were logged here what's the next step what was at the past emails that all be logged along the right call notes What's the thing? They can pick up
32:3932 minutes, 39 secondsthe file in a heartbeat and kind of keep moving so that the client experience doesn't suffer, which often in a smaller business a lot relies on people's memories, inbox, their phone, and not
32:4732 minutes, 47 secondsbeing able to, you know, hand off if someone's sick, they're away, something happens, they leave the business, someone new joins the business. Being able to have a central brain and a
32:5532 minutes, 55 secondscentral system makes that sort of growing pains that a lot of businesses have or the onboarding of new staff or the reluctance even to hire or grow, bring on team members because it's such
33:0433 minutes, 4 secondsa heavy lift to get them trained up. But if it's in a system, the system is sort of half the training. Oh, what's the next stage? What's their phone number?
33:1133 minutes, 11 secondsWhat were the last notes? What's the scheduled activity? So much of that sort of challenge of bringing on team members and pulling away from the day-to-day is
33:1833 minutes, 18 secondssort of the training logic beyond the e-learning sort of built into the actual logic of the system where you've turned your workflows into repeatable process.
33:2533 minutes, 25 secondsPerfect. And then because I guess from a CRM point of view, it's really about lead management and the sales pipeline.
33:3333 minutes, 33 secondsit doesn't really go into project details and that's where your project management kind of does. So if you need to do specific evaluations and really
33:4233 minutes, 42 secondsneed to drill down on task more so deeper tasks and workflow management that's where your project tool would come into place.
33:5133 minutes, 51 secondsYeah. And that's where the sort of you know some people talk about the front stage of the business the backstage of the business. The front stage is the referral partner relationships, the
33:5933 minutes, 59 secondsclient relationships, the other related sort of parties that are involved, tracking all of that from when the broker, but then when they hand off to their sort of admin team, that's where
34:0634 minutes, 6 secondsyou can have a clear line. And like I said, it's it's a blank system when you start. So it's up to you to to build it how you want. And we have teams that can help with that. I help people with that as well. That's where you can have the
34:1534 minutes, 15 secondsproject. the more admin back office part processing team can sort of do that part and the sales can focus on creating a fantastic hightouch responsive customer
34:2434 minutes, 24 secondsexperience to their you know clients and potential clients and referral partners and keep everyone updated and things like that and deliver a great front stage experience without getting bogged
34:3234 minutes, 32 secondsdown or lost in the backstage and the backstage can sort of be really successful in helping the front stage and the whole business can sort of flow together versus being disjointed or you
34:4134 minutes, 41 secondsknow admin people are trying to look at the CRM and move things around that salesperson trying to see what their projects are up everyone has sort of confidence in exactly where everything's up to, including the client. Uh, most
34:4934 minutes, 49 secondsimportantly, nice. And then I guess obviously the bonus ads are like document
34:5634 minutes, 56 secondspresentations. And so if you're making an offer, you want to present it nicely.
35:0235 minutes, 2 secondsYou can do that within documents. Is that the place that you would do that?
35:0635 minutes, 6 secondsUm, do you mean for sort of sharing information to a client or knowledge articles or or well more so like presentation? So,
35:1335 minutes, 13 secondsif you say, "Hey, we've done we've done the um assessment of your loan opportunity.
35:2035 minutes, 20 secondsThis is, you know, I forget the terms.
35:2435 minutes, 24 secondsI'm not a broker." No, no, that's okay. Um, but at the end of the day, it's almost like a uh what do you call it? A PowerPoint type presentation. And then
35:3335 minutes, 33 secondssometimes some brokers I work with get them to sign off that they've agreed to this offer or this pathway of moving forward.
35:4135 minutes, 41 secondsUm, yeah. Yeah. So you would use the documents app to compile that have all that there and then you could yeah send that for signature and they can email
35:4935 minutes, 49 secondsand see where form fields they have to fill in where they have to sign other information they can see sort of the full review or um the broker do it on a screen share with the client show them
35:5635 minutes, 56 secondsthrough it send them the link they sign it. So yeah, the do and like I said a lot of the odor apps and I'm always intrigued some days change different clients how they use different apps because like I said across different
36:0536 minutes, 5 secondsindustries per use things quite differently but that's where you can do a sort of presentation of findings for findings for sort of signature sign off or sharing it with a documents folder
36:1336 minutes, 13 secondsyou give them a link behind a login so they can log in their own time and see it securely that's sort of another area where people sort of share information and then send it for signature at the end.
36:2136 minutes, 21 secondsPerfect. And then this is the gift of the knowledge base because this is where it can hold all like as in your operational information.
36:3036 minutes, 30 secondsUh yeah sort of like an internet I don't hear the word internet much more these days but used to be a big sort of thing having like an internal knowledge base.
36:3636 minutes, 36 secondsSo these articles can be private. Again they're just sort of essentially rich text files with videos and links and so even odor is a you know 8,000 person company. We have very comprehensive
36:4536 minutes, 45 secondsinternal operating procedures, manuals, onboardings, trainings. So your your team can sort of self-s serve and figure things out rather than always coming back to you. So you can have your
36:5336 minutes, 53 secondstraining videos in e-learning but your sort of documentation links um and again you can link something internally as well because it's all sort of interlin but you can also share these articles.
37:0237 minutes, 2 secondsYou'll see here the share and you can have public articles obviously internal operating procedures are internal. You might have ones behind a login for
37:1037 minutes, 10 secondsclients like here's our process, here's our thing. And then you might have public articles which are FAQs, things you want to use as like a lead magnet to push people to publicly before they even
37:1837 minutes, 18 secondsreach out to you perhaps, but they see your expertise helping, you know, people do complex restructuring, small business lending, maybe you know complex other
37:2637 minutes, 26 secondsarrangements or refinancing in specific industries with particular, you know, lending criteria. So you can have public knowledge articles private to clients
37:3437 minutes, 34 secondsand then private to just your employees on you know how they do their roles. Um and that knowledge app is sort of again quite a powerful sort of feature of odu
37:4237 minutes, 42 secondsas an internet which a lot of big companies have and are very good at but a lot of small businesses just kind of a word document somewhere or it's an email or it's something versus when you're a
37:5037 minutes, 50 secondsnew hire here the 20 things you need to read and go through.
37:5337 minutes, 53 secondsPerfect. And I guess when um somebody wants to introduce a Gentic AI and having an AI agent run it, this is where that knowledge base will really be helpful for them.
38:0138 minutes, 1 secondYeah, like the AI can, you know, read essentially everything in your database.
38:0438 minutes, 4 secondsSo it can read your past customers, your sales, your past templates, pull up reports, access your business intelligence dashboards. So that's where
38:1238 minutes, 12 secondsyeah by having everything here even if you feel you're a year or two away from being ready for AI because you're getting things organized you're changing
38:1938 minutes, 19 secondssystems maybe you've bought another brokerage or absorbed another business or changed how you operate you're setting the foundation so it's not a sunk cost it's sort of an investment in
38:2738 minutes, 27 secondsyour future when you want to you can like I said use without automations but when you want to you can automate and when you want to go to the next level beyond that you can add aentic AI to do things on your behalf.
38:3738 minutes, 37 secondsPerfect. And I guess the gift of Odo in particularly is that all of this is inclusive in the one price.
38:4438 minutes, 44 secondsYes. Sorry, I was going to say No, no, that's okay. Yeah. So, it's sort of there you go.
38:5138 minutes, 51 secondsWhat I was saying is you'll notice that with most CRM software or when you start looking for CRM software, people will
38:5838 minutes, 58 secondsjust sell you that component, but then marketing is another or automated emails is another component that you have to upgrade and pay for. Yes, that's right.
39:0739 minutes, 7 secondsSo, that's a big point of difference with ODO is very transparent all-inclusive pricing. So, it's normally about $400 to $800 per year per user
39:1539 minutes, 15 secondsplus GST, but that includes all the apps. So, like I said, when you want to do email marketing or something, you don't push up to a higher tier. You've already paid for email marketing, your
39:2439 minutes, 24 secondse-learning, your events, your CRM, your appointmentuler to have a public link where people can directly schedule through the appointments link. you know, your help desk, customer service,
39:3239 minutes, 32 secondsticketing, other new apps that OD releases every year as well. You've already paid for them, your e-sign, it's all all there. Um, there's some tiny extra costs that can come up here or
39:4139 minutes, 41 secondsthere, like for example, if you're sending SMS marketing, OD is sort of your portal to do that, but it is through Twilio or third party. So sort of a send a message or if there's
39:4939 minutes, 49 secondssomething you do paid events and you take payments through Stripe on your website. you know, Stripe have a small percentage merchant fee like all the payment processes. But yeah, it goes to
39:5739 minutes, 57 secondsStripe, not to ODU, but we connect into Stripe so that you can sell tickets to your event or, you know, a training course or other things that you do. And
40:0440 minutes, 4 secondsalways happy to chat through very transparent pricing is all on our website. Nothing's hidden and it is all inclusive. You don't suddenly or you can have multiple pipelines, unlimited
40:1340 minutes, 13 secondsnumber of contacts. You don't sort of suddenly trip over and find your bills doubled. It's very sort of transparent, all inclusive. That's part of the sort of ODO philosophy.
40:2140 minutes, 21 secondsNice. And I guess um because so many people are used to per person per month pricing it roughly equals around 35ish per month.
40:3140 minutes, 31 secondsYeah. If you sort of take it down to monthly between sort of 30 to 65 a month per user per month. So a bit more than you know a dollar to $2 a day or half a
40:3940 minutes, 39 secondscoffee in sort of Melbourne or Sydney for each of your team members. Um you're getting powerful functionality and like I said an improving system. We are
40:4740 minutes, 47 secondsactively improving the product every year. every September, October, big release, lots of new features come out, lots of new things, and you get that for free. Plus tech support. You're not like
40:5640 minutes, 56 secondspaying for the new version or having to weigh off the cost of the new version at the same price. You're getting new features constantly created and um you
41:0441 minutes, 4 secondsknow, across the clients all over the world and best practices.
41:0841 minutes, 8 secondsNice. If people wanted to reach out to you, Derek, and learn more about Odo, um where should they go and what should they do? Yeah. So, I've got a slide here
41:1741 minutes, 17 secondswith all my contact details. So, to get in contact, happy to do a 45minute consult with anyone over at Google Meet who's interested. I'm sure Katey will
41:2441 minutes, 24 secondsput the link in the description um to the podcast directly to book into my calendar. You can scan the QR code. Um obviously, you can directly email me at d sodu.com.
41:3441 minutes, 34 secondsI've always got my phone on me as well, so you can even call me, text me, WhatsApp me and happy to have a direct chat. I know a lot of brokers are on the go in the car. you want a quick call or
41:4341 minutes, 43 secondsyou're driving between, always happy to call and jump in a call and be quite accessible to help answer those questions and help them out.
41:4841 minutes, 48 secondsPerfect. Thank you so much for joining me on the pod. Um, Derek, it was great to have you.
41:5341 minutes, 53 secondsThanks so much, Katey. Really appreciate your time and for having me on.
41:5641 minutes, 56 secondsYou're welcome. All right. Um, if you guys have questions or more questions for Eric, please put them down below.
42:0342 minutes, 3 secondsFeel free to sh like, share, and do all the good things that we always love at Broker Tools. And till next time, we'll catch you around. Bye.