Founded in 2007 and headquartered in Singapore, PropertyGuru Group is a leading proptech company with over two million property listings and advanced data technologies. Operating across Singapore, Malaysia, and Vietnam, the company has consistently been at the forefront of digital innovation for Southeast Asia’s property seekers.
In 2015, PropertyGuru’s then CTO identified automation as a key pillar in their transformation from an online classified marketplace into a full-fledged technology company. The transformation began with sales process optimisation and expanded across other business units. By 2018, Allen, a key member of the PropertyGuru technology team, was entrusted with addressing an integration challenge that would become a cornerstone of this transformation.
Clunky Custom Builds
PropertyGuru was engaging with numerous SaaS applications, demanding intensive customisation and several other challenges:
- Manual data syncs: Sales and Finance teams relied on Slack or email for updates, leading to delays in revenue recognition, data mismatches, inefficient administrative processes, and a limited audit trail.
- ERP complexity: Non-technical users in Finance struggled with NetSuite’s steep learning curve, resulting in manual back-and-forth communications and costly license expenses despite limited access.
- Unscalable custom-builds: With in-house integrations being built from scratch (e.g. from proprietary systems to the Netsuite ERP), it became too unscalable and resource intensive for PropertyGuru to expect their application specialists to maintain these. These specialists were not full-time programmers and every change took a long time to turnaround.
- Inefficient context switching: Without a centralised interface for managing purchase orders (POs), the Finance team was overwhelmed with manually routing and rejecting POs, causing inefficiencies and confusion.
Recognising the need for a low-code/no-code platform that makes maintenance a breeze, PropertyGuru turned to Workato to address these pain points.
Redefining Work for >100 Gurus
Using Workato, PropertyGuru integrated 42 applications, connecting Salesforce, NetSuite, proprietary systems, and marketing tools like Braze. This allowed:
- Faster order fulfillment by integrating complex business logic that did not already reside in source systems like Salesforce.
- Automated campaign and promotion workflows, enabling instant notifications between marketing and sales systems.
- Seamless data transfer and reduced manual intervention, using robust API-based endpoints.
To ensure maximum impact, Allen and team prioritised use cases based on the projected return on investment, benefitting over 100 users by orchestrating with Workato. They automated and optimised critical processes, including sales order and billing syncs, purchase order creation, and campaign management.
1.) Automated sales order and billing syncs
Here’s what the reimagined workflow looks like:
Automation replaces manual coordination between Sales and Finance teams, leading to:
- Near real-time synchronisation of opportunity and billing data to NetSuite.
- A 30% reduction in non-compliance risk.
- Improved cross-team alignment and reduced delays in revenue recognition.
- Strong audit support, significantly reducing time spent during financial reviews.
2.) Streamlined purchase order creation and management
Likewise, PropertyGuru used Workato to empowering their finance team to close books on time:
This enhances visibility into PO status and aging, reducing confusion and inefficiencies.
3.) Integrated campaigns and promotions
With Workato, PropertyGuru’s sales and marketing teams no longer have to manually enter data to notify each other. For instance, Workato directly connects to API endpoints on the marketing platform Braze, so that the sales team can be automatically notified of promotions their customers are eligible for:
Efficiency, Productivity and Scale
PropertyGuru achieved remarkable efficiencies through Workato’s platform:
- >10,000 hours saved annually by syncing sales order and billing workflows.
- $15,000 saved on NetSuite licenses and 25% drop in error rates, with streamlined purchase order creation and management
- 4x productivity increase, with faster PO processing that minimises troubleshooting.
- Reduced training burden and improved user experience for non-technical users.
Technical teams find it easier to connect systems and democratise how business users innovate with Enterprise Orchestration, such as when PropertyGuru’s Vietnam team connected CRM workflows to improve lead generation
Revolutionising PropTech
With a focus on democratising automation across teams, PropertyGuru is poised to leverage Workato One for even greater impact. This will also serve as a foundation for meaningfully leveraging AI and chatbots to open doors for property seekers seeking relevant content, actionable insights and world-class service.
Allen sums it up this way: “Workato will continue to be the glue for many other SaaS systems that PropertyGuru uses in future. Democratisation will be key too, in the age of AI and chatbots.”
