Our Technology Springboard , Dan White
Continued from page one ...
We ’ re proud of what we ’ ve accomplished together , but more excited by the potential to take what we have and create something even more powerful , to benefit our customers , our leaders and their businesses .
We write this to explain our strategy and approach , and to communicate not only ‘ what ’ we are working on , but ‘ why ’.
We remain ambitious . Our One System includes over 20 products , some of which are provided by third parties and importantly some that have been built by our own digital team providing unique value to our members . We have 71 software and data engineers , data scientists , product managers , digital business development executives and technology support analysts .
COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGES
Across our technology platform , One System , we have a number of very important assets that together create a strong competitive position :
1 .
Extensive experience in creating relationships and working with third party suppliers , enabling us to deliver an integrated system on strong commercial terms , as well as receiving unique support and attention for product improvements that we identify as being important .
2 .
A well established software development team that has created a growing number of products that have deep engagement with our members and are unique in the industry , and are thereby changing how we operate .
12
3 .
A data lake that integrates feeds from 29 data sources , currently storing over eight billion records and 40 terabytes of group , competitor and market information . This asset powers the analysis and machine learning that is behind the advances in performance benchmarking , propensity and forecasting that puts our product suite at the industry ’ s cutting edge . Some of the products built by the digital team include the Pulse platform , Stockboards , MyRayWhite , Radar , raywhite . com , Refer . raywhite . com and EARS ( auction reporting ).
4 .
With NurtureCloud , we ’ re no longer as dependent on third parties for our primary piece of software . We ’ re building a sales management system that reflects our opinions on leading a sales business , builds capacity , and for the first time provides us an opportunity to leverage our size and relationships in areas like vendor propensity and buyer databases .
We ’ ll continue to prioritise these to identify opportunities to provide unique value to our members .
CHALLENGES
For us retain our momentum to provide a cutting edge technology platform , there are a number of areas for us to carefully manage :
• There remains much work to do to embed the full efficiencies of our platform into each office . Some are still choosing spreadsheets and physical whiteboards for key processes like prospecting pipelines and stock management . The effects are felt in two ways : we miss key data that would allow us to provide better insights and tools , and our members don ’ t receive full value for their
One System fees . Offices that leverage our products to their full potential are able to provide better service and improve results for their customers .
• There ’ s likely to be significant additional compliance obligations with respect to privacy laws and ‘ permission to communicate ’, as well as further vigilance in the areas of data security , which will require additional focus and investment in the short to medium term .
• While cloud computing remains a far cheaper and more secure alternative for businesses than physical servers , the costs of cloud computing is increasing rapidly .
• Our enterprise agreements have annual cost review clauses , many of which are linked to CPI . We actively manage these agreements to minimise the increases as best we can and create competitive tension between suppliers wherever possible .
• There ’ s been significant consolidation in the real estate technology industry , as many of the current players have acquired other businesses and seek scale and product integration . While none of them are currently an overt threat , and we maintain strong working relationships with them , it does benefit those firms that seek to recruit our salespeople with a remote working or ‘ bring your brand ’ model .
• It ' s a very competitive market for software engineers , and we ’ ve fought hard to keep our team together while also adding new talent to expand our potential . We expect this pressure to remain unabated as we compete with multinational firms for talent .