Interview with Tom Reiss, CEO at Roby AI

Roby AI leverages the power of RPA (Robotic Process Automation) and enables property companies to easily automate and manage different business processes such as property maintenance requests, property inventories, automate property advertising, automate viewing & scheduling, tenant referencing, digital signing, automate rent collection, credit control, onboarding/ offboarding of a landlord and more. Alongside this, our technology also integrates with endless software and apps including DocuSign, OneDrive, Zoopla and Rightmove.

Property businesses can easily intertwine these features with their day-to-day business processes. A great aspect of our technology is what we call the ‘Lego brick philosophy’, whereby our customers have a great deal of flexibility in what they choose to automate – something, which suits the way they work and not the other way around. The following has allowed them to become increasingly agile during the pandemic.
 
 

 

How did you come up with the idea for the company?

 
The idea of Roby AI came about when I was given the responsibility of implementing Robotic Process Automation in my previous role in the Air Force. With an inherent focus on systems rather than end goals, we decided to shift to more advanced processes, and I became significantly exposed to the possibilities of technology.

When I experienced being a landlord myself, I then decided to test the idea privately and launched the first concept of our RPA model in the residential property B2C sector. When I realised the potential of sizeable applications, I pivoted the model to focus more on B2B firms. We have launched the product in the UK and have plans to expand globally too.
 

What advice would you give to other aspiring entrepreneurs?

 
The main thing that I have taken away from my entrepreneurial journey so far is that it is very difficult to remain agile and flexible in an everchanging market. My advice for budding entrepreneurs would be – don’t fall in love with your ideas. Think carefully about how your product or service fits into the market that you’re trying to crack.

In the beginning, I had to pivot our business from B2C to B2B, I made this decision based on the best interests for the company, rather than my own ideas. Initially, when we started working with private landlords, we soon discovered that it wasn’t enough for the direction we saw the business moving. The levels of automation that we knew we could deliver had more potential than the risk assessments we were providing.

Having an open mind was something that has made the company what it is today. Even now, we are constantly developing and evolving the product to give our customers what they want in the current market.
 

What can we hope to see from Roby AI in the future?

 
One area that we are continuing to develop is around the insights Roby can provide companies with, we’re looking to really ramp up the impact that our technology can have on businesses as a whole. While we already provide our clients with analysis on how our technology is integrated with their existing staff, we will be delving deeper into the smart aspects of this in 2021.

When the business started, we focused just on pure automation. Now that Roby is more advanced, we look forward to exploring the insights that our data can provide our customers with even further. All these insights are helping our customers to understand that PropTech doesn’t just automate but plays a key part in business decisions, that help companies grow, become more efficient and successful.