Month: May 2016

How brokerages benefit with Transaction Management customization

By Tricia Stamper

real estate transaction software
Brokerages have a lot of options when it comes to choosing a Transaction Management solution, but for the most part, what they often end up with is something that is identical to what their competitors have down the street. It’s as if brokerages are trapped in a Henry Ford world: “Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black,” Ford used to tease his sales team.

Trouble is, we live in a world where you can go online and customize your car, from the color of your bumpers, to the look of your taillights. So why can’t you customize your Transaction Management software so that the look and feel of the software is your brand and not the same one your competition uses?

Well, with Form Simplicity, you can, because that’s what brokerages tell us they want.

Importance of Brand
A survey of top real estate executives nationwide said that among “competitive differentiators,” brand was ranked in the top 3 items along with marketing tools and technology and agent productivity. The Thought Leader Survey from marketing firm Imprev also found that brand outranks the leads a brokerage generates for their agents and the company’s culture as a competitive differentiator.

That’s why Form Simplicity offers a level of customization that we believe is unique among leading real estate transaction and forms management choices. Brokers want the look and feel of the tools that they provide agents to reflect their brand. Brand consistency is paramount at leading brokerages and Form Simplicity does not believe that just consumer-facing products should reflect a brokerage’s brand. That’s because a brokerage has two audiences to serve: consumers and their agents. Providing a brand experience to one’s agents is arguably just as important as providing one to consumers. Brand consistency should be for all, not just some.
Continue reading →

Are you using Internet Explorer? Read this.

By Tricia Stamper

Browser Blog 5_3_16
The real estate industry today is Internet dependent. Agent and company websites, company intranets, MLS access, and back office systems all require agents and brokers to go online to manage these resources. So must the American homebuyer too, as more than 90% of all real estate home searches begin online.

Perhaps the most important software tool that enables the Internet is the one that’s also taken for granted: your Internet browser. For years, real estate agents’ favorite browser has been Internet Explorer from Microsoft. Unless you were a Mac user, when you bought your PC, Internet Explorer was automatically your browser and the vast majority of agents simply never switched. Additionally, many MLSs were only compatible with Internet Explorer, adding to many agents’ reliance on IE.

Even with the sun setting of support for Internet Explorer’s older versions and IE 11 being replaced by Edge as the Windows 10 default browser, agents have been tentative to switch to a different browser. According to the NAR REALTOR Technology Survey, while the use of Internet Explorer dropped from 50 percent to 38 in the most recent survey, it was still the number one browser for agents, with Google’s Chrome coming in at 32 percent, Firefox at 16 and Apple’s Safari at 9 percent. However, among the American public, Chrome is the most popular browser, according to a 2015 Federal Government report.

But the Internet is changing so fast that if you are still using Internet Explorer, especially an older version, you should ask yourself, “is it time to switch?”

What might be wrong with an outdated browser? Continue reading →