What is a Workflow Automation Engine?

Before we talk about what Realm-X Flows is, we should talk about what it’s not. As mentioned above, Realm-X Flows is a workflow automation engine. This is different from the workflow process documentation tools that you may have experience with — and that aren’t meeting your needs.

The goal of process documentation tools is to instruct your employees on how to complete a standard operating procedure (SOP), and it’s up to your employees to carry out and complete those tasks on their own. This might be via printouts with checklists, employee manuals, or even digitized within software you are using. It’s designed to document and enforce often lengthy and complex SOPs across multiple teams, departments, and technologies — but it’s often difficult to implement, leaves plenty of room for human error, and is not optimized for improving the performance of your processes.

Workflow automation, on the other hand, is designed to target specific operational workflows and can facilitate and carry out a series of tasks on your behalf. Instead of asking employees to manually complete a twenty or forty step process and then report back on the completion of each step, all you have to do is configure that workflow in advance and assign triggers that set it into action. It’s a solution that sits adjacent to the user and reduces the high volume of repetitive tasks by completing them for you.

With workflow automation powered by Realm-X Flows, you can free up hours spent on repetitive tasks and focus on more valuable work that impacts your bottom line. Your operations can run more efficiently and reliably, so you can increase NOI, provide better customer experiences, and focus on initiatives that grow your business.

See the Impact Overnight

We set out to create Realm-X Flows guided by three principles. We wanted to make the workflow builder easy to use. We wanted to automate as many actions as humanly possible. And we wanted to target workflows that drive property performance.

In Realm-X Flows, automated workflows are easy to set up and activate. You can select from a library of pre-defined Workflow Templates codified to manage specific property management business flows — including rent collection, lease renewals, lead nurturing, and rental applications. These are designed by a team of experts and can be customized according to your specific best practices.

The visual designer tool is a space to build and tweak workflows specific to the contours of your business needs. It’s where you can see everything that’s happening in a workflow in one place. Workflows are kicked off by a trigger — in the example of lease renewals, that may be the 90-day mark before a lease ends. After the trigger, it’s easy to add in actions that organically lead from one to the next until the workflow execution is completed.

Some tasks can be completely automated — like sending outbound communication to residents. Other tasks, like preparing renewal offers, you may want to have your team involved. That’s where the other two components of Realm-X come in — Assistant and Messages.

Both are seamlessly integrated with Realm-X Flows and embedded throughout the entirety of our platform so you can access AI–powered assistance wherever and whenever you need it. When an action in Flows requires a bit more of a human touch, Assistant and Messages can step in and suggest actions and responses for your review, expediting your ability to respond to residents with personalized messages while meeting their needs faster.

And all of this activity can be tracked in real-time, so you can keep a pulse on your business. You can easily view a summary dashboard of all the workflows you currently have in progress, providing complete visibility into the daily operations happening at the property level. From here you can add, adjust, and tailor workflows according to business need, while auditing individual employee progress through all of your configured procedures.

Get Back to Being Human

Ultimately, the automation made possible by Realm-X Flows is designed to help you and your teams get back to doing what you do best: providing outstanding customer experiences and focusing on the meaningful work that helps your business grow. And it allows you to do all of this faster and more efficiently than ever before.

AI and automation are the backbone of productivity. When time-consuming tasks complete themselves, your teams are free to do their best work. It’s time to see the game-changing productivity that’s possible when your most critical workflows are automated by Realm-X Flows, and controlled by you.

If you’re already an AppFolio customer, check out this help article to see how you can start using Realm-X Flows today.

And you’re interested in seeing Realm-X Flows in action, sign up for a free demo here.