All Forum Posts by: Bryce DeCora

@Isaac El I set mine up to have Lead items (property) and contacts. The contacts are then attached to the Lead item that they own. Message me if that doesn’t make sense.

@John Lyszczyk and anyone else wanting to automate and track mail better through a CRM. I wrote up a tutorial on how to do this with Lob.com, Podio and Zapier. Shoot me a message and I can just send it to you.

It's tough migrating from one to another so I would recommend picking one you plan on staying with for awhile.  Options with call and text built in are going to be more expensive of course.  What's your budget?

@Isaac El desire for call, text and text messaging to be tracked through the CRM or does that matter?

That depends.  Are you looking for an out of the box solution and alright with not having fine tune control over the automation or are you looking for something that would require more up front work that would allow you to modify to your liking?  Once you identify that, it's about price and functions.

Hi Franky, I'm an ex-prototype software developer in aerospace and have built my own Podio CRM. I'm now building a new CRM for acquisitions from scratch to help with my ability to scale. To address your question. If I were to build a CRM for property management I would implement the following:

• Property data auto-fill when adding a new property to PodioLanding pages where tenants can file complaints or repair requests that load into Podio and create tasks for managers
• Landing page for applications, loading into Podio automatically and sending automated followup emails to applicants
• Auto drip campaign of mail and texts sent from Podio so you don't have to upload files to various 3rd party sources to do things like send mail or text blast.

The sky is the limit when you have access to a customizable backend like Podio. Reach out if you need help or more suggestions!

@Gavin D. I had no idea ATTOM was missing a substantial amount of county data!  I guess I would have to manage a team to build scraping solutions for the gaps then.

My local import script calls other endpoints that are hosted on AWS to do different things.  I have one endpoint that scrapes county data and one that takes data and imports it to Podio.  I built endpoints instead of running these locally because I have several cloud applications that want access to this function.  Having an endpoint makes it more accessible as a tool. Hopefully that makes sense.

My original plan was to invest solely in Snohomish and King County Washington.  I wanted my custom CRM (built with Podio) to have the ability to auto-populate property data found on the county assessor site.  This drove me to create an API endpoint written in Python that would do this on demand.  I've met others who build code like this and store the data in tables to be queried later, but then you're stuck with older data.

Is anyone else using property scraping solutions on a large or small scale?  As my company grows, I think I will start using a company like ATTOM Data to provide property data so I don't have to continue to coordinate the build and maintenance of scraping tools.  Fellow nerds let me know what you're up to!  

@Andrew R Tillett I am a software developer, well versed in Podio as well as a handful of other CRMs.  Use Podio if:

• You are looking for something customizable
• You are ok with doing some code work or hiring it out to add the customization you desire

Do not use Podio if:

• You are looking for something that works well out of the box

If you're looking for something simple and easy to use out of the box even with limited bells and whistles, I am with @Tracy Levy on using Less Annoying CRM.

@Mark Shaver I think we are on the same page.  I have come to that conclusion and that is why I am building my own CRM that will be able to handle what I need.  I agree Podio is a great tool.  I agree that Podio is not built to handle what I want.  I also agree that there are some handy CRMs out there that may handle what I desire quite well.  However, I need full backend access with unlimited API rate limits to perform some of the future tasks I have in mind including but not limited to:

• Deep learning on conversation threads
• Tracking n-depth relationships of leads to other leads (connected via phone numbers, addresses, email, etc.)
• Bot response to SMS on a large scale

In addition to implementing these features, I have a unique user interface design that will make it much less cumbersome to navigate leads and communications.