Transcript:
Sarah Bell: I have got Richard Bootle from the Rundl platform and Lawlab with me on the AREC couch today. Welcome.
Richard Bootle: Thank you very much. It’s lovely to be here.
Sarah: I have had the benefit of a video conference with you, learning about the Rundl platform and safe to say, mind blown.
Richard: That’s very kind.
Sarah: Talk to us about where Rundl came from.
Richard: Rundl came out of the real pain that we were experiencing in trying to escape our geography in providing a service. So we were a law firm wanting to deliver a service beyond the confines of a particular geography, and so we built software that enabled us to digitise that very traditional service. By digitising it, it then becomes available to essentially a world audience.
Everyone talks about this amazing digital world out there, but no one is giving agents the tool that enables them to do that. Rundl’s difficult to describe but in simplest terms, it’s the tool that enables you to digitise.
Sarah: It’s like a digital room. If you had everybody involved in a transaction in the same room at the same time, it could be really quick and easy, right?
Richard: Yup, and chatting and solving problems and like that.
Sarah: And being notified when it’s their turn to do something. How quickly could we leverage that if everyone was in the same room at the same time?
Richard: You bring that whole community around the client. So in the traditional model, the poor, old client who doesn’t do this often, maybe once every seven years, had to project manage between all the other parties. They had to run documents from their lawyer to their broker or to the bank.
In the old days, you used to have High Street, you had those people and they were quite near each other physically, but that’s breaking down very quickly and if you’re not providing your service to your client’s phone, then someone else is going to be.
And so what we’re saying to agents is [that] you don’t have to spend a million on getting some sort of giant CRM build. You can just grab Rundl and digitise your service in two hours. Suddenly, there’s your service on your client’s phone.
The problem with the digital world is that, once the consumer experiences something really cool, then they expect that becomes not just a one-off cool experience, it’s like the benchmark for all their other digital experiences.
And so, if you’re going from you can watch your cab or your pizza, then you need to be able to look and see your property transaction on your phone 24/7. The angst levels drop down so much because they know where the transaction’s up to, they know who’s doing what, they know what they need to do next.
Sarah: I read a PwC white paper on the stress that people go through in settlement and the numbers are devastating.
Richard: It’s the fear of the unknown. It’s mostly things are fine, they really are and most clients and lawyers are doing a great job, and agents as well, of course, but it’s the don’t-know factor.
Sarah: I think transparency builds trust, doesn’t it?
Richard: It does.
Sarah: And if people feel and can see that this is progressing, then they don’t need to call you concerned all the time. They can engage with you in the Rundl on the digital platform at a time that suits them from any device.
Richard: Yup. We’ve got the technology, it’s just Rundl is the tool that then delivers that for a per transaction fee and incredibly no big, up front fees. It’s just ready to go.
Sarah: And electronic signatures, they don’t mean that anyone can just sign your house. That’s fraud electronically in the same way that it is in a written contract.
Richard: Yeah, absolutely. And with DocuSign, that’s a great product, it’s actually positioning the person with the IP address and time, exact time. So in some ways-
Sarah: So it’s more secure than a written signature, really?
Richard: Well, it’s easy to trace.
Sarah: What’s the best way for someone to experience Rundl?
Richard: Just refer a client to Lawlab. So go to lawlab.com.au, drop in, send us a client. So we will bring that client into a Lawlab-hosted Rundl so the actual conveyance would be the sale or the purchase conveyance, but we’ll also bring the agent in as well.
So the agent, they’ll actually get to experience what a digital Rundl experience is like. Decide after that they may want to keep using Rundl, but they also could then say actually, “My wife is the conveyancer,” so you bring your other partners in and you host your own Rundls then. Start with Lawlab and then go from there.
Sarah: Rundl can be whatever you want it to be. You can configure it and customise it to your process and your people-
Richard: Your relationships. So you bring in your building, you bring in your conveyancer. So you bring that into a digital space.
Sarah: It’s brilliant. Richard, thanks so much for joining me on the couch and sharing Rundl with the world.
Richard: It’s been really great being here. Thank you.
