What started in 2005 has become the foundation for what is now a multifaceted business application that can benefit all level of agents who hang a license at an @properties | Christie’s International Real Estate office.
Are you receiving Inman’s Agent Edge? Make sure you’re subscribed for the latest on real estate technology from Inman’s expert Craig Rowe.
Pl@tform is @properties | Christie’s International Real Estate in-house suite of productivity applications
Platforms: Browser; iOS, Android apps
Ideal for: @properties agents, staff, clients
Top selling points:
- End-to-end suite of tools
- Deal management/daily workflow tracking
- Comprehensive marketing w/integrations
- Collaborative, dynamic CMA
- Active adoption tactics/gamification
Top concern(s):
I’d like to see even more concern for the consumer experience, as everything was developed from the inside out. That doesn’t reflect my take on its effectiveness as a software product, only my hope for its roadmap.
What you should know:
Pl@tform has been in development since 2005 when the company launched one of the industry’s earliest CRM applications. That effort became the foundation for what is now a multi-faceted business application that can benefit all level of agent who hangs a license at an @properties and Christie’s International Real Estate office. That very CRM has evolved as all modern tools in the space should and is accompanied by a range of entries spanning CMA creation and publishing, deal management, document oversight and storage, a buyer escrow experience, omnichannel marketing with email campaigns and asset creation and even a well-rounded open house promotion solution. Everything is right there, within reach of the user, supported by in-house dev and support teams and gives off the energy of a third-party-built enterprise tool. (For the sake of brevity and personal preference, I’m using “@properties” to describe @properties and Christie’s International Real Estate for the majority of this review.)
If not for a chance encounter at Inman Connect Las Vegas with a familiar Christie’s mouthpiece, I honestly wouldn’t have known that one of the more prominent non-Anywhere brands in the industry had undertaken such a capable software effort, and has been at it for some time. I was told that more than 30 people are part of the application’s dev team, as well as UI/UX designers and a data scientist. It all shows.
The application, from login to the last item on the escrow milestone checklist, feels like an agent was sitting in on each function’s origination, but with limits on their input. You can’t merely digitize the process, it has to be reduced to its core purpose and accelerated from there, which Pl@tform does at almost every step.
The system doesn’t feel too big or intimidating, another characteristic of software developed hand-in-hand with its end user. A new agent could sit down, go through some training and, in little time, feel ready to trust it with their data and time.
The listing presentation tool, which doubles as an interactive CMA tool, offers the ability to immediately offer a listing agreement, as well as give the seller the ability to contribute by adding a listing. I like this aspect of Pl@tform, and it’s why I mentioned the customer experience as a concern. Rather, it’s a hope.
The Closing Milestones app is designed for the consumer, too, and there are few parts of the deal more important than the days between final acceptance and recording. This app pipes in vendor information, critical dates and presents like a piece of marketing collateral, rather than some clinical flowchart of to-dos.
Agents and teams at @properties and Christie’s International Real Estate have a lot to be pleased about when it comes to marketing, like the graphic design integration with Marq, which used to be LucidPress, as well as a partnership with Adwerx to run online ad campaigns, most of which rests in the “content hub,”
The Deal Management module comes with marketing checklists that remind users to schedule photo shoots, videographers and other tasks and vendors related to exposing a home to the market. This is the module that also has a series of folders to hold and store content and deal documents.
There’s a lot to like about Pl@tform. Its tenure and dedicated staff means it has had a lot of time to shake out bugs, establish best practices and know what its users need to be productive. It uses a lot of performance tracking, goal setting, user ranking and login metrics to encourage daily engagement, an effective series of tactics to assist in onboarding and adoption.
It’s rare that the in-house brokerage solution offers reasons to eschew third-party technology contracts. Sure, there’s always a business instance where outsourcing is the better call, but for the agent new to @properties, or the industry in general, you have little to @worry about.
Have a technology product you would like to discuss? Email Craig Rowe
Craig C. Rowe started in commercial real estate at the dawn of the dot-com boom, helping an array of commercial real estate companies fortify their online presence and analyze internal software decisions. He now helps agents with technology decisions and marketing through reviewing software and tech for Inman.
Comments