While it has been fun to talk about iPads and Nano chips, the next series of blogs will focus on technology implementation and support at the basic fulfillment level.  I will try to keep it in plain English vs too much tech-speak, which is endemic to everyone in this technology world.

The real estate industry has been notorious for decades to be late adopters of technology and then switching software every time there is a new kid on the block.  How many companies have come and gone in just the last few years?  And how many times will a real estate department be using MS Excel when right in the next workstation someone is using an advanced web software?  And it seems at every turn I get some breathless email about a new technology product.  Some are often pretty good at the outset as every hacker programmer thinks they can reinvent the wheel and come up with the latest widget.  But what about the rest of the solution?  What about what really counts to assure that your technology investment is really well spent?

  • Deployment base?  Which ensures a wide user base to give immediate feedback to the developer(s) about how good or what is missing in their latest invention?
  • Global Reach?  Make no mistake about it, every company in order to survive in the US must do business offshore?  And it’s not about being able to convert your currencies into dollars or area calculations done in metrics.  More often it is about experience in different parts of the world to understand the local business practices whether for how space is measured or how lease costs are calculated.  Even in New York City, such things are a moving target and different from the rest of the country.  And anyone know what a “Quarter Day” day is or how and when to calculate VAT?  Obviously this is one of the advantages of NAI having a global reach in many parts of the world with local practitioners familiar with those markets.
  • Resources?  Software today changes at least yearly and often more than that.  Can a small programming shop really keep up with all of these changes?  And of course resources are more than just a clever programmer, but the back office and administrative staff to keep track of multiple projects each with a different scope of work, pricing, delivery requirements, billing cycles, implementation dates, documentation, training, and support services to just simply answer the phone and provide quick responses to your clients.
  • Integration Capability?  This isn’t about having a clever programmer or two who can do some quick one off ad-hoc report (often “locked in a closet somewhere”), but about knowledgeable integration staff who understand the difference between Oracle, SQL Server, and Sybase, much less how to integrate with SAP; JD Edwards, MRO, etc.
  • Security?  Even in the Cloud, security is of paramount concern to clients who don’t want their important data seen by others, sometimes even by other brokers in the same real estate company… and sometimes even by different staff within the office.  Any viable technology solution has to be able to support multiple levels of tiered and granular security, even down to the individual field level of different database tables.
  • Self Customization?  A key aspect in any modern technology is where the end-user can quickly build their own ad-hoc reports without going back to the software provider to stand in line for an expensive custom report.  Clients today are demanding more control of their technology as their own expertise is growing, often beyond that of their service providers.

 

Whenever a company is considering the purchase of technology, either hosted or deployed on a network or in the cloud, you have to start with the basic considerations above.  How cleverly an application may look at first glance, is really less important than how so many other aspects are really supported – price of course being equal.  Which of course it never is.

-Warren Bailey

Warren Bailey is Vice President of Corporate Technology at NAI Global.