SOFTWARE
NEW PLAYERS His mention of Pinterest, though, brings up another issue of which agents need to be aware. Social media is always evolving, Pinterest began in 2010 and only really took hold in 2011, so it’s important that agents choose not just a software that currently supports the major social media, but one with a commitment to finding and supporting the new growth media. For the moment many agents
don’t use social media much, if at all, Chris Haines reckons the proportion is less than 20 per cent. But he says they definitely should. “There’s this whole world of stuff that costs a fraction of what you have been spending on marketing.” Estates IT, on the other hand,
PC Homes Plus is a complete business in a box. It comes with Microsoft office so anyone can use it!” NICK HUBBARD ESTATES IT
still doesn’t support Facebook or Twitter; Nick Hubbard is not particularly enthusiastic, and says “no one’s been screaming ‘I want to tweet in PC Homes’, so we haven’t embraced Facebooking or tweeting from our system.” He believes the web is still more important than social media for
most agents. So PC Homes now includes a content management system, “and we all know content is king,” enabling agents to add news articles or explanatory features to their websites. Estates IT has also worked to automate feeds to more portals and sites such as Gumtree. “We think we’re the only software to feed Gumtree,” he says. PC Homes also supports clients wanting to send information out in datafeeds to different apps. The old days of just feeding the website
and Rightmove are long gone. Whether it’s Facebook, YouTube, or a third party Energy Performance Certificate provider that’s involved, or integration of mapping into the agent’s website, estate agency software now needs to work with third parties, in many cases by sharing an API (Application Programming Interface, basically the specification that allows two software products to talk to each other). The software you buy is no longer a discrete system on a box, but an open system that need to deal with other suppliers, with portals and other devices.
MAKING IT ALL WORK That’s the case whether or not the software is on the cloud, but it’s absolutely critical with cloud systems. For instance, Aspasia is based on integration with Google services, which can run on any device, and which include the Google Market payment mechanism and Google Documents as well as Gmail. “We looked at Microsoft and Google and Apple,” Stewart Anderson says, “and we believe that Google is more advanced in moving the public into a cloud universe, so we are integrating Aspasia into the Google vision.” While cloud and social media are the big trends, there are plenty of other new things happening in agency software, such as QR
28 MAY 2012 PROPERTYdrum
codes, which allow people to take a picture of the code with their mobile phone camera and go straight through to the relevant web resource. Estates IT now generates QR codes to individual properties automatically; agents are starting to put them on signs and window cards, but Chris Haines suggests they could also print them in the newspaper, reducing the size of the ad and linking to the newest stock. But beyond the functionality,
Nick Hubbard says, agents also need to make sure their software is doing a technologically literate job. For instance, websites created by Estates IT comply with the W3C standards, and have the right metatags, so that they can achieve cross browser compatibility. “Does
it work in Safari, on Chrome, in FireFox?” he asks, because if not, you are saying goodbye to customers who don’t use Internet Explorer, and that’s more and more of your potential market. He believes that iPhone and similar apps are probably a fad. On
the other hand, Estates IT plans to add smartphone websites next year, the difference being simply that smartphone websites don’t demand that the user download software first. Also, it’s worth ensuring that the site should work on any smartphone, not just Apple devices.
THE BOTTOM LINE Let’s not forget though that although all these newfangled bells and whistles are much in demand, the key to agency software is that it lets agents do their job efficiently – organising viewings, marketing properties, and getting contracts signed. However, there has been a slight shift of
focus recently, from marketing properties to marketing the agent, according to Nick Hubbard. “A lot of our development comes from the angle that at the moment there’s a shortage of stock, so we need to see what we can do to help clients get more instructions, as well as helping with the day to day task.” He knows that if Estates IT doesn’t provide
that help, someone else will. This remains a very competitive market, with a large number of different software providers, and new players starting up all the time; the leaders don’t by any means have an impregnable position. Besides, the continually changing nature of
Can you see what it is yet?
the market forces the software companies to continue innovating; indeed the rate at which they’re doing so is accelerating as
agents start to pick up on developments such as mobile and social media, and begin to adopt innovative business models. “When I started in this business seven years ago,” Nick Hubbard says, “you didn’t have to develop at the rate you do now. You really have to move fast these days.”
www.propertydrum.com/articles/innovationmay Do you have any views on this? Log on and add your comments.
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