Every industry has its single-service tools, suite of solutions, and comprehensive platforms. It’s the nature of the beast. Where there’s a need, there’s a technology company that wants to solve it (and make money off of it!).
That’s all well and good. But the problem is when these tools, solutions, and platforms operate in silos and flood the market with disconnected pieces. Users end up with more problems than solutions and more platforms than they can shake a stick at.
Real estate is no different. In fact, I’d say real estate is worse-off than most industries, as agents, office staff, brokers are inherently independent professionals that perform entirely different functions and yet are totally reliant on one another.
That’s where all of these disconnected tools and solutions and platforms fail real estate. That’s where the industry’s problems with data entry, miscommunication, and transaction inaccuracies come from.
And that’s where a technology ecosystem comes into play
I used to think “ecosystem” was a corporate buzzword. But there’s not a more fitting concept to resolve the problems of working in real estate.
Think about it. Ecosystems are comprised of countless different parts that exist independently of one another, and yet interact with each other symbiotically to keep the entire environment healthy, productive, alive.
Shouldn’t real estate be like that, as well?
We’ve got the parts, the platforms, the providers. It’s time to focus on connecting them and making things better for everybody.
So what does a technology ecosystem look like?
Look at Lone Wolf’s technology ecosystem as an example. Built-in collaboration with other leaders and innovators in the tech space, it offers everything real estate professionals need to serve their home buyers and sellers.
The ecosystem, which is founded on Lone Wolf’s industry-leading solutions zipTMS, TransactionDesk, and brokerWOLF, and includes partnerships with Real Estate Webmasters, Updater, PrestoIntelligence, and Earnnest, offers both agent- and brokerage-centric features for eSignature, digital forms, document storage, file review, transaction management, integrated accounting, commission calculation, agent billing, business intelligence, websites, CRM, lead gen, moving, home inspections, earnest money deposits and more.
In this ecosystem, data flows in and out through the core solutions—Lone Wolf’s transaction and back office management solutions—and to the extraneous components. This ensures each individual piece operates on its own but, through a series of integrations, connects to the others to work as a whole. It also ensures that the agent and/or broker gets the benefit of all these leading technology providers, without having to leave the comfort of “home” – their transaction management solution.
What are the benefits of a technology ecosystem?
On their own, the solutions that comprise an ecosystem solve specific problems for specific people—finding leads, managing relationships, getting signatures, reviewing documents and so on. But together, these solutions solve some of the bigger problems facing real estate today. Among its many benefits, an ecosystem provides:
- Simple transactions for agents and consumers
- Easy collaboration between agents and the office
- Actionable insight into revenue-generating activities
- Unheralded functionality and flexibility
- Seamless interaction with different technologies
- A complete real estate experience for home buyers and sellers
It’s a dream, I know, to work in an industry where everybody has everything they need at the same time and it all works together perfectly. But that’s the goal of a real estate ecosystem. To strike a perfect balance for the industry and foster the ideal working environment for its professionals. All of them.
And to be honest, we’re not that far off.
Lone Wolf is the provider of real estate’s leading technology ecosystem. Built on the foundation of transaction and back office management and bolstered by partnerships with other technology leaders and innovators, the Lone Wolf ecosystem provides agents and brokerages with everything they need to serve their buyers and sellers and define the real estate experience for the next generation. Click here to learn more about the solutions that comprise the Lone Wolf ecosystem.