About the Client

Our client, Homes and Living (H&L) is a UK-based software solutions company that specializes in providing a comprehensive, end-to-end solution for the real estate market. Utilizing advanced IT enablement and web-based applications, H&L aims to streamline and optimize various aspects of the real estate industry, from property management to marketing and sales.

Business Need

The Homes & Living (H&L) business is to provide a hosted and managed application to estate agents to enable them to market their property portfolio (For sale or To let) through an easy-to-use, consumer-facing website or a branded version of the same called a “Kiosk” to be used solely by the estate agent as a sales tool. The consumer brand will be marketed in a specific “Area” and a website for that area will be accessible to consumers in that area. The H&L consumer brand will be established in each local area with estate agents being invited to market their property portfolios on the site for a fixed monthly fee. There will be no charge to consumers for use of the service.

Challenges

While developing the solution for the client. scalong had to keep some challenges in mind and find a solution to tackle them and provide the best quality solution to them. These challenges include:

1. Lack of insight and information about real estate customer segmentation and profiling.
2. Lack of impressive, easy-to-use, and effective properties portfolio to showcase.
3. Difficulty in managing supply chain management and property tracking.
4. Lack of tracking of nearby hospitals, schools, police stations, etc. for the listed properties.

Solution

The application provides an Agents Kiosk Model option to design the front-end layout and import/ add properties under their brand name with the location of head offices, branch offices, and local offices. Under this model, the full functionality of the consumer site is available, but only the properties of the specific agent and its branch offices will be shown.

The consumer site for each local area will have easy search facilities(including latitude, longitude, distance from Tube, Hospitals, falling under budget range, etc.) using a combination of Google Maps and textual database searches to zoom in and locate the area they wish to live. Once the consumer has found the area they wish to live, properties will be displayed on the map up to a maximum of say 100 at any one time. The user can click to see summary details of the property in a pop-up on the map. From the summary details, a link to the full details is possible. Once a property is selected, full details of the property with extensive photographs (if supplied by the agent)will be displayed and the consumer will have the option of calling or emailing the agent to arrange a viewing.

I haven’t worked with a team that is so enthusiastic and willing to learn new paradigms of business.Your team has gotten us a longway forward on technology.

Managing Director
United Kingdom

6 resources were deployed on the project development including Team Leader, DBA, QA, and developers with expertise in.Net, Google Maps, and MS SQL 2005. The project was started at the beginning of 2006 and was completed in a 7-month time frame.

Benefits

By utilizing our innovative technology and expert consulting services, the client has been able to streamline their business operations and achieve their goals. Here are a few benefits:

1. Allows estate agents to identify trends and patterns in tenant behavior as well as the interdependencies between tenant profiles with anti-social behavior, voids, arrears, etc.
2. Improved Customer Insight including customer segmentation and profiling (both demographic and behavioral) enables estate agents to provide a better, more tailored, and cost-effective service.

Tools & Technologies