PropTech Today - Working together means being 'open' for business

Whether we’re selling properties, managing buildings, servicing heavy goods vehicles or flogging widgets, we’re all operating in a digital world.

This is a world in which ‘this is the way we do things’ is a phrase that has become obsolete because the ‘way we do things’ is constantly changing.

It’s not that process no longer exists – it’s a vital part of almost every business – it’s just that more and more, procedural tasks can be automated, saving time and money and increasing efficiency by removing human error.

Let’s be honest, the property sector wasn’t the fastest at taking up the digital challenge. It was a siloed sector suspicious of change and skeptical of software.

But we’ve seen an automation revolution over the past decade and a veritable explosion in the number of companies offering bureaucratic, administrative, accounting, communications and marketing software that is now operating and improving the systems that keep us all in business.

Improved efficiency

And today we all want the next chapter in the evolution of change. We want all these solutions to operate in unison without the need to log on to separate platforms every time we change task.

Integration has become the name of the game but to achieve that comprehensively, we have to learn to work together.

‘Closed’ systems have now become a barrier to what PropTech was meant to achieve in the first place. Improved efficiency and automation comes to a shuddering halt when data from one platform cannot be seamlessly transferred to the next piece of software in the work stream.

It causes delays and frustration which is why more and more operators want to see ‘open’ solutions which integrate with the other products at their disposal – this increases flexibility and adds value.

When PropTech was in its infancy, an operator might have two or three platforms to navigate on a daily basis. Now that this has increased to five, six, seven or more, the market is insisting that co-operation and collaboration are at the top of the agenda. PropTech companies are having to talk to each other about finding solutions to integration.

Great benefits

And the things is, that not only are these developments resulting in increased performance for operators, collaborations of all kinds bring innovation and improvements to the supplying companies.

The ValPal Network (TVPN) is a good example. TVPN has just celebrated its 10^th anniversary in business having created 8.7 million sales leads and built a branch office network of 4330. This has happened because we’re constantly looking to improve and innovate. Our latest feature enables agents to discover whether their leads are already on the market with another firm. This important new function has come about through working closely with our partners, the data provider TwentyCI.

Since that collaboration began, we have been provided with some fascinating insights including, how many leads come to market, how long leads take to instruct an agent and the success rate of marketing campaigns. All of this information is vital to agents trying to generate sales leads.

And to know that a property is already listed with another agent greatly influences the nature of a call with a potential client – forewarned is forearmed.

Partnerships, collaborations, co-operations – call it what you will – create great benefits and software integration is a vital part of that.

And let’s face it, much of the donkey-work involved will inevitably be undertaken by AI in any case.

The technology for AI-Enabled integration is here now – AI can build the integration, monitor it and optimise it. This will free up developers to concentrate on more complex aspects of application development – speeding up efficiency and improving productivity.

In the end, we’re all going to have to work together - it builds better businesses and, ultimately, makes life easier for our customers.