ADVERTISEMENT Feature Aspasia Cloud Informational Series – No.18 Time for some serious reflection?


A FUNDAMENTAL ASPECT of any really successful business is its ability to invest time to consider what is happening within its sphere of operation and then to position itself such that it is can exploit opportunities early, and assure longevity and sustained profitability. It is all too easy to get lost amidst the everyday pressures and opportunities that offer short term rewards in the hope that they will continue, neglecting to make time for reflective analysis and strategic planning. Close to home and whatever our views may


be about what has happened – Rightmove is, by any objective measure, an extremely successful and flourishing business and must be viewed with envy by many aspirational entrepreneurs. The point being, that someone must have taken time out to sit back and analyse what was happening in other areas of business and then applied those lessons to our industry with devastating success. It is often the case that just “going with the flow” will at best produce an average return and one is left with limited options such as, perhaps, providing higher levels of customer service in an attempt to differentiate ourselves.


GETTING IT RIGHT The former is exactly what we are trying to


achieve with Aspasia Cloud on behalf of our customers and is why we are taking our time to get it right. It would have been relatively quick and easy to have produced a modified version of the original Aspasia ten years after the original software was first released and this would probably have had reasonable success. However, the world outside is changing so fast


that we felt this time we needed to have a deep analysis of environmental factors likely to have an impact on our agency customers not just now but long into the future. The result needed to allow some agents to continue more or less as they do now (if that was what they wanted to do) whilst at the same time permitting others to experiment with new and more profitable ways of conducting business. So what were the key conclusions we came to that have driven our approach with Aspasia Cloud? First, and perhaps rather obviously, the


realisation that cloud computing is the future for all but a few niche commercial specialisations of which residential property is certainly not one. Desktop computing has served us well over the past years but most observers agree it is now witnessing the start of a gradual decline. This is reflected in worldwide sales of PCs and licenses for desktop software solutions, even giants like Microsoft and Apple are in different stages of realigning their businesses and with different degrees of success. Many would suggest that to start a new business today, or to consider expanding an existing one, based on desktop computing would be a serious error of judgement. It just can’t compete in terms of flexibility or cost and more importantly it can’t offer the ability for customers to interact with businesses effectively using the devices and mechanisms they prefer to use as they go about their daily lives.


Second, the consolidation of our conclusion of


10 years ago that the Internet will be the platform on which we will all communicate, almost exclusively in the future, using a variety of mobile devices. Understandably there have been critics who have pointed out that this is all very well for those conducting their business in our major cities and residential conurbations but for those in rural areas this has not yet proved a viable option, and they are quite right. But all this


Aspasia Cloud is the first fully integrated cloud technology software solution for agents involved with residential sales, lettings and property management. This informational series has been designed to explain how the software differs from other solutions and what that means for agents who use it.


For further information and to read previous articles in the series, please go to www.aspasia.net.


PROPERTYdrum OCTOBER 2011 11


is set to change with the introduction of 4G mobile networks in the next few years which will provide speeds way faster than most of us experience now with conventional broadband at home and with far better geographical coverage. This is likely to be a real game changer and will probably hasten the end of widespread desktop computing for the majority of standard businesses such as our own which don’t rely on any specific computer intensive services requiring a large amount of local processing power. Third, the appreciation that most of us want and expect to conduct our affairs at a time and a place to suit ourselves which is made possible by the Internet. Shopping, banking, tax returns, almost anything can be accomplished so much more easily and conveniently these days online and it is businesses that can offer this way of working that will flourish (eg. Rightmove again). But it goes much further than this.


Most of us like to benefit from the speed at which transactions of whatever type can be achieved over the Internet and in most cases we are prepared to engage in a two way interaction especially where there is a cost benefit to both parties involved. And it is here that we see the real scope for major change to conventional practices within our industry in the future, particularly for lettings and property management, and is a key reason for our integration with Google Apps which will provide the infrastructure for us to enable this to happen.


STRATEGIC CHOICES These three conclusions have provided material


for several of our previous articles and in some ways we are simply consolidating what we have said before albeit in a different manner. Nevertheless, these are extremely important traits that any serious business proprietor needs to consider carefully when deciding on a strategic direction.


With Aspasia Cloud, our customers can look


forward to a future where their efforts to create a successful business don’t need to be put on hold whilst they cope with a change in their software solution designed to better address the needs of a changing environment.


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