When Century 21 Canada announced its new Rise platform earlier this year, Linas Kilius wasn’t ready to be impressed. The managing partner of Century 21 Heritage Group had seen technology transitions go sideways before, and the brokerage had already reached the point where it stopped waiting for a better option and paid for a third-party CRM of its own.

Kilius also spent years as a software developer before moving into brokerage management, which has made him particularly skeptical of a good tech demo. When Rise was announced, he remembers looking around the room and seeing much the same reaction from others. “Everyone was cautiously optimistic,” he says. “That’s about where I was too.”

His first feedback to Century 21 Canada was that he wanted to actually use it. “Seeing tech demos is one thing, but having access to it so you can give it a run yourself and see what you like about it, see how it can integrate, is a really important piece to me,” he says. “You want to make sure there are no false promises.”

Heritage Group signed on as an early adopter and went through several onboarding sessions with its management team before opening the platform to a smaller group of agents. Some volunteered to test it, while others were new to the brokerage and were given the option to start using the new platform while Heritage evaluated a broader transition.

The first test was whether agents would actually use it

What stood out to Kilius wasn’t a particular feature. It was how quickly people with very different levels of technical ability could figure out what to do.

“The tech was good, but the ease of use is probably one of the most important things,” he says. “As a brokerage, you have to be able to support a wide variety of agent skill sets,” from people who struggle with technology to those who want to customize everything. As Kilius puts it, “The best CRM is the one that you use.”

He’s seen that range among the early adopters. Some agents in Heritage Group’s Kingston office who don’t consider themselves particularly tech savvy have been able to get comfortable with Rise quickly. Meanwhile, a recently joined seven-person team has a technically inclined member who has taken to the platform’s customization options.

The feature Kilius considers more innovative is the predictive side of the CRM. Most systems still rely heavily on the agent to decide who needs to be contacted and when, creating tasks and reminders that may or may not get completed. Rise uses the information in the database to surface contacts it believes an agent should be reaching out to.

“A lot of agents really resonate with that specifically because they’re like, ‘Oh man, my CRM will tell me who I need to call instead of me telling it who I need to call in four months,’” he says. “It’s like an assistant just giving you a checklist for the day.”

Heritage Group is still early enough in its rollout that Kilius can’t point to transactions generated by those recommendations, and he doesn’t try to. What he can speak to is whether agents are responding to the idea and incorporating the platform into their workflow. So far, he says, they are.

One example is something Heritage Group was already doing before Rise. Kilius writes a monthly Kingston market update, with the brokerage producing similar versions for its other markets, and makes it available as a template agents can send to their databases. They can use it as written, customize it with their own listings and events, or choose not to send it at all. Roughly half of the Kingston office uses the brokerage-created newsletter.

“It takes us half an hour to put some of that together,” Kilius says. “It saves you probably maybe three hours of trying to figure it out if it’s not something you’re doing all the time.”

Rise has allowed Heritage to make that content more local without creating every version manually. A recipient in Gananoque, about 20 minutes east of Kingston, can receive Gananoque market information rather than the Kingston numbers, based on the market insights associated with that contact.

Another early favourite is considerably less sophisticated. Rise integrates with Canva, allowing an agent to pull a design directly into the CRM instead of downloading it from Canva and uploading it again. Kilius laughs at how enthusiastic the response has been to what amounts to eliminating a couple of clicks. “Everyone’s like, ‘This is amazing.’”

Century 21 Canada’s partnership with Canva also gives agents access to discounted Enterprise accounts, where brokerage brand kits and templates can be made available. For Kilius, the reaction is another reminder that adoption isn’t always driven by the most advanced feature. Sometimes removing a small annoyance from something agents already do is enough to change how they feel about the technology.

It isn’t trying to replace everything

Kilius is equally clear about what he doesn’t expect Rise to do. A dedicated team module has yet to launch, the current integration list is relatively short and he hasn’t seen anything about importing data that strikes him as fundamentally different from other modern CRMs.

He also wouldn’t necessarily recommend it as the only system for an agent generating large volumes of raw internet leads. Heritage Group uses other technology for that purpose, and Kilius sees value in using specialized tools for specialized jobs rather than trying to force one platform to do everything.

“I drive a minivan,” he says. “And I like sports cars and stuff too. But would I consolidate everything into my sports car? Probably not. I don’t know how I’d get the kids to school.”

His view is that Rise is strongest as a sphere-of-influence and relationship-nurturing CRM. An agent might use another platform to work a raw internet lead and then move that person into Rise once the relationship develops into a client. “Stay in your lane and excel at it,” he says. “For 95 per cent of agents, I think it does all the things they need to do.”

That distinction matters because Heritage Group isn’t evaluating Rise in a vacuum. Moving away from its existing system would mean rebuilding training videos, onboarding materials and other internal processes. The brokerage has also been burned by technology providers in the past, which is why Kilius and his partners have deliberately avoided rushing the decision.

Still, when asked whether he has seen enough that he would make the change, Kilius is clear: “I want to make the change.”

Part of the appeal is financial. Rise aligns with the technology Century 21 Canada is providing its network, which means Heritage Group would no longer need to pay separately for its own solution. “There’s cost savings there too,” he says.

Heritage Group isn’t alone in working through that decision. According to Century 21 Canada, 3,640 agents across 27 brokerages had been onboarded to Rise as of August, representing about 36 per cent of its network.

For Heritage Group, though, the case for switching isn’t ultimately about having the longest feature list. After years of testing different systems, Kilius keeps coming back to the same standard he uses for any CRM: it has to be useful enough, and simple enough, that agents will actually use it.

So far, Rise is passing that test.

Learn more about joining Century 21 Canada at join.c21.ca.