When Century 21 Canada officially announced the rollout of its new Rise platform earlier this year, Linas Kilius was far from ready to be impressed. As the managing partner of Century 21 Heritage Group, Kilius had witnessed far too many high-profile technology transitions go sideways over the years. In fact, his brokerage had already reached a point of frustration where it stopped waiting for corporate networks to deliver a better option and independently paid for a third-party customer relationship management (CRM) system of its own.
Kilius also brings a uniquely critical eye to software rollouts due to his professional background. Before moving into brokerage management, he spent years working as a software developer. That technical foundation made him deeply skeptical of smooth tech demos and glossy promotional pitches. When the Rise platform was first unveiled to the network, Kilius recalls looking around the room and observing a prevailing sentiment among his peers.
“Everyone was cautiously optimistic,” he says, reflecting on the initial industry reception. “That’s about where I was too.”
Rather than accepting the corporate presentation at face value, Kilius made a direct request to Century 21 Canada: he needed hands-on access to the software. For a seasoned developer and brokerage operator, watching a demonstration is entirely different from testing the infrastructure firsthand.
“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,” Kilius explains. “You want to make sure there are no false promises.”
Following those early discussions, Century 21 Heritage Group signed on as an early adopter of the Rise platform. The brokerage put its management team through a series of internal onboarding sessions before opening the system up to a smaller, controlled group of agents. Some of these agents volunteered to test the software, while others were newly recruited to the brokerage and given the option to start fresh on the new platform while Heritage evaluated whether a broader, company-wide transition made operational sense.
The First Test: Will Real Estate Agents Actually Use the Software?
For leadership at Heritage Group, the ultimate litmus test for any new piece of real estate technology is straightforward: will the agents actually use it on a daily basis?
When Kilius began evaluating how agents interacted with Rise, what stood out to him wasn’t a flashy, headline-grabbing feature. Instead, it was the platform’s accessibility and how quickly individuals with vastly different levels of technical proficiency could navigate the interface.
“The tech was good, but the ease of use is probably one of the most important things,” Kilius notes. Operating a modern real estate brokerage requires supporting a wide spectrum of agent skill sets, ranging from individuals who struggle with basic digital tools to hyper-connected power users who want to customize every aspect of their workflow. As Kilius frequently reminds his team, the golden rule of software adoption is simple: the best CRM is the one that you actually use.
That diverse range of technical comfort has already been visible among Heritage Group’s early adopter cohort. For instance, some agents operating out of the brokerage’s Kingston office who do not consider themselves particularly tech-savvy have managed to get comfortable with the Rise platform in a remarkably short amount of time. Meanwhile, a recently onboarded seven-person team featured a technically inclined member who immediately gravitated toward the platform’s deeper customization options, tailoring the system to fit their specific business needs.
Beyond basic navigation, Kilius points to the predictive side of the CRM as one of the platform’s more genuinely innovative components. Traditional real estate software typically places the heavy lifting squarely on the shoulders of the agent. Agents are forced to manually decide who needs to be contacted and when, generating a sprawling list of self-imposed tasks and calendar reminders that frequently slip through the cracks or go uncompleted.
In contrast, Rise leverages the data stored within the database to proactively surface contacts that it believes an agent should be reaching out to on any given day.
“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,’” Kilius says, drawing a parallel to administrative support. “It’s like an assistant just giving you a checklist for the day.”
Heritage Group remains early enough in its rollout phase that Kilius declines to cite direct closed transactions generated solely by these automated recommendations. He prefers to maintain realistic expectations, focusing instead on whether agents are responding positively to the underlying concept and successfully incorporating the platform into their daily routines. Thus far, the feedback indicates that they are.
This behavioral shift is evident in how agents handle marketing materials. Prior to the introduction of Rise, Heritage Group had already established a routine where Kilius would author a monthly Kingston market update, with the brokerage producing parallel versions tailored to its other regional markets. These updates were made available as templates that agents could distribute to their proprietary databases. Agents held the flexibility to use the content verbatim, customize it with their own active listings and upcoming local events, or opt out entirely. Historically, roughly half of the Kingston office utilized these brokerage-created newsletters.
Producing those market summaries internally takes Kilius and his team roughly half an hour, but for agents who do not write market copy on a regular basis, utilizing the pre-made template saves an estimated three hours of drafting and formatting time.
The integration of Rise has allowed Heritage to elevate this content strategy by introducing localized data points without forcing a manual, labor-intensive redesign for every single sub-market. For example, a client receiving the update in Gananoque—located approximately 20 minutes east of Kingston—now receives hyper-local Gananoque market statistics rather than broad Kingston numbers, dynamically sorted based on the market insights associated with that specific contact record.
Paradoxically, one of the early favorites among agents is considerably less sophisticated from a technological standpoint. Rise features a native integration with Canva, enabling an agent to pull a custom design directly into the CRM interface rather than navigating through the cumbersome process of downloading a file from Canva and subsequently uploading it back into their marketing dashboard. Kilius laughs when recalling the enthusiastic reception from agents regarding a feature that essentially eliminates just a couple of clicks.
“Everyone’s like, ‘This is amazing,’” he says.
Century 21 Canada’s broader partnership with Canva also grants participating agents access to discounted Enterprise accounts, where corporate brand kits and pre-approved brokerage templates can be seamlessly deployed. For Kilius, this reaction serves as another stark reminder that technology adoption is rarely driven exclusively by the most complex or advanced features. Sometimes, simply removing a minor, daily annoyance from tasks agents are already performing is enough to fundamentally alter their perception of a new system.
A Focused Tool That Doesn’t Try to Replace Everything
At the same time, Kilius maintains a pragmatic perspective regarding the current limitations of Rise. A dedicated team module has yet to be officially launched, the existing roster of third-party integrations remains relatively short, and the data-importing processes do not strike him as radically different from other modern enterprise CRMs on the market.
Furthermore, he would not automatically recommend Rise as the standalone system of choice for agents generating high volumes of raw internet leads. Heritage Group relies on separate, specialized technologies for that specific function, and Kilius firmly believes in utilizing purpose-built tools for distinct jobs rather than attempting to force a single software platform to handle every facet of a real estate business.
“I drive a minivan,” Kilius explains, using an automotive analogy to illustrate his philosophy. “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 overarching view is that Rise performs best when treated as a sphere-of-influence and relationship-nurturing CRM. Under this model, an agent might utilize a separate lead-generation platform to capture and work raw internet leads, transitioning those contacts into Rise only after the relationship develops into a genuine client connection.
“Stay in your lane and excel at it,” he advises. “For 95 per cent of agents, I think it does all the things they need to do.”
This functional distinction carries significant weight because Heritage Group is not evaluating Rise in an administrative vacuum. Transitioning away from its current operational system means undertaking the heavy lifting of rebuilding training videos, onboarding materials, and a wide array of internal support processes. Having experienced past setbacks with third-party technology providers, Kilius and his ownership partners have deliberately avoided rushing their final verdict.
Even with those operational hurdles in mind, when asked if he has seen enough evidence to justify making the permanent switch, Kilius’s response is definitive: “I want to make the change.”
A substantial part of that motivation is financial. Because Rise aligns directly with the core technology stack that Century 21 Canada provides to its national network, adopting the platform means Heritage Group would no longer need to allocate capital toward maintaining its own separate third-party software solution.
“There’s cost savings there too,” he notes.
Heritage Group is far from alone in weighing these strategic decisions. According to figures provided by Century 21 Canada, approximately 3,640 agents spread across 27 individual brokerages had been successfully onboarded to the Rise platform as of August, representing roughly 36 per cent of the national network.
For Kilius and his leadership team at Heritage Group, the ultimate argument for switching does not rest on having the longest list of technical specifications or trendy features. After years of evaluating, testing, and discarding various software systems, Kilius consistently returns to the same baseline standard he applies to any enterprise CRM: the technology must be practical enough, and simple enough, that agents will willingly integrate it into their businesses.
Thus far, Century 21 Canada’s Rise platform is successfully passing that test.