4-page Case Study - Posted 12/13/2007
Views: 622
Rate This Evidence:
Real Estate Services Provider is on the Map with New Home Search and Evaluation Tools
Nearly half of all REALTORS® in North America use online Multiple Listing Services (MLS) provided by MarketLinx, a subsidiary of First American Corporation. While the company provides mapping services as an integral element of its product suite, recent demand for more sophisticated property search and location tools prompted the company to upgrade its offerings. MarketLinx chose the Microsoft® Virtual Earth™ platform to build dynamic interactive property search and evaluation functionality. The new technology gives REALTORS and consumers stunning visuals and detailed demographic data to streamline real estate transactions. MarketLinx expects the new mapping solutions to differentiate its services, drive customer loyalty, and help grow the business over the long term. In addition, Virtual Earth helped MarketLinx save U.S.$250,000 in mapping expenses compared to its previous solution.
Situation
MarketLinx is the largest provider of Multiple Listing Services (MLS) products in North America. More than 650,000 real estate agents in the United States and Canada, or almost 50 percent of all REALTORS® in those countries, are MarketLinx customers. The company is a subsidiary of First American Corporation, the largest provider of business information in the United States.
 |
Our MLS, broker, and real estate agent customers find the presentation and visualization of data with Virtual Earth superior to Google and MapQuest. The bird’s eye view, 3-D capabilities, satellite imagery, and superior street mapping are awesome. |
 |
|
Stephen Roney President and Chief Executive Officer, MarketLinx |
|
|
MarketLinx consolidates industry-leading technology applications, services, and support for residential real estate professionals into a single online environment. “We offer ease-of-use for real estate professionals, who can now order several core products and services from one entity rather than multiple providers,” says Stephen Roney, President and Chief Executive Officer at MarketLinx. “The end result is an enterprise solution that offers the same high levels of service, while producing significant efficiencies for our customers.”
Boosting efficiency is a value that resonates with residential real estate agents who are facing tough competition for their services. A growing number of Internet-based buying and selling services and an increasing number of individuals that list and buy their properties online are pushing REALTORS to find new and innovative ways to add value to the personal services they can provide. Quick, efficient, and cost-effective access to MarketLinx’s suite of IT products and services is the core value proposition that MarketLinx provides to REALTORS.
“This is where we see mapping as a key element of our offerings,” says Bryan Foreman, Executive Vice President and President of MLS Solutions at MarketLinx. “Our business is managing property information, and mapping is the most engaging, intuitive, and effective way to communicate property information both for the REALTOR and the home buyer or seller. At MarketLinx, we have been using mapping technologies for many years.”
Rising Expectations
Today MarketLinx generates 25 million map transactions per month, making it one of the largest consumers of geographical data in the United States. According to Shonda Paul, Product Manager at MarketLinx, these numbers are proof of a burgeoning interest in mapping technology in the industry. “Today, the first questions our clients ask are ‘What are you doing with your mapping?’ and ‘How often is it updated?’ We host our own MapQuest implementation, however its functionality, including the ability to mouse over a property to view basic information, zoom in and zoom out, pan, and generate street maps, were not as compelling as we would have liked.”
Foreman agrees. “We’d have complaints if our geocoding was inaccurate, which points to a growing level of sophistication and expectations on the part of our customers and their end consumers, the buyers and sellers of homes.”
Changing Business
The Internet has done more than introduce people to increasingly powerful mapping technologies; it’s changed the way the real estate business works by redefining the roles of REALTORS and consumers.
“It used to be that REALTORS were the only source of property and housing information and they would search the MLS listings and provide consumers with printed lists of houses with textual descriptions and maybe a picture,” says Edward Myers, Product Manager at MarketLinx. “They would take customers on drives through neighborhoods, and then when a purchase was made, they would facilitate the ensuing complex transaction. However, today a lot of
property information is online for consumers to browse, and they want to be more proactive about doing their own filtering and searching of homes, before they engage a real estate agent.”
While providing top quality services to REALTORS is the mainstay of MarketLinx business, changing consumer behavior is an industry factor the company cannot ignore. The company also hosts consumer-facing Web sites as a service for its customers, so they can offer online shopping to their clients. “Our primary customers are MLS’s, real estate agents, and brokers, whose primary customers are the sellers and buyers of homes, so we have a number of levels of customers,” confirms Roney. “There is no doubt that consumer shopping for real estate on the Web is significant today.”
Looking for a Win-Win Situation
So how does MarketLinx deliver better solutions to fit the needs of its customers and their consumers to provide a win-win solution? The answer to that challenge lies in providing better, more intuitive, graphical, and interactive mapping applications. “I think mapping capabilities in this marketplace is a perfect fit,” says Roney. “As the industry evolves, people are going to want to look at images that come with new levels of interactivity and ways of presenting data. We have to keep their business by staying ahead of their expectations through innovative, new mapping solutions.”
“We all know the old adage: location, location, location,” adds Myers. “A mapping-oriented UI is perfect because it provides the location as the centerpoint of the viewer’s experience. We need to package our mapping offerings so they deliver even more real estate information to promote the efficiency of the REALTOR so he or she can provide better customer service.”
At the same time, consumers can benefit from a more feature-rich, graphical, intuitive, and interactive mapping solution. MarketLinx strives to make these new mapping solutions available to consumers through the Web sites it hosts on behalf of REALTORS, brokers, and related real estate boards or associations.
“Our customers prefer to work with educated consumers,” explains Myers. “Putting the right information in the hands of the consumer before he or she starts working with a real estate agent, the better prepared they can be to quickly complete a transaction.”
Solution
MarketLinx faced a decision: either upgrade its existing MapQuest solution, which is hosted in-house, or evaluate other solutions and compare the cost of migrating to a different platform. For Roney, the underlying focus of the company’s evaluation of mapping solutions remained the customer. “We can’t force feed our clients with stuff that they don’t want, or with something that is a B+ and not an A. That reflects on us,” he says.
|
“We have only scratched the surface, but we are confident that the Virtual Earth platform will help us execute on our strategy to make mapping a central part of our real estate applications.” |
|
|
Bryan Foreman Executive Vice President and President of MLS Solutions, MarketLinx |
|
|
Foreman and his team conducted a thorough examination of the mapping capabilities of its previous MapQuest solution and other major players, including Google and Microsoft® Virtual Earth™ mapping technologies.
Choosing the Right Vendor
“We had to decide whether or not to stay with our current product, so we looked at the other vendors in great detail,” Foreman recalls. “But when it came down to making a decision, a major question was cost. We spend a lot of money on mapping by generating those 25 million different map views per month. We wanted more capabilities than we had, but at the same time, we wanted good value for those capabilities.”
Other considerations were scalability, accurate geocoding, and integration with MarketLinx’s development environment and Microsoft-centric IT infrastructure. “We had hosted our mapping in house due to the high volume of transactions that we run, so we needed reassurance that if we moved to an outsourced model such as Microsoft’s, we would continue with the same level of performance,” says Foreman.
Finally, since mapping services form part of the contractual obligation between MarketLinx and its customers, management wanted the same level of long-term commitment from its mapping solution vendor.
Choosing the Right Solution
According to Roney, MarketLinx chose the Virtual Earth™ platform because it provided an integrated set of services with unique imagery and powerful, accurate mapping functionality that allows MarketLinx to provide better services. “Overall, I have a strong conviction that when Microsoft enters a market it does so with an awful lot of research, and they understood the customer in a way that aligned with our customer-centric goals for the new solution,” says Roney. “Knowing that Microsoft was behind this product gave me a great deal of comfort to move forward.”
And once Richard Paulson, Vice President, Product Management and Marketing at MarketLinx and his team compared how the Virtual Earth platform features and capabilities lined up against Google and MapQuest, they were impressed. “Sizzle sells the steak, and Virtual Earth definitely has the sizzle.”
“Our MLS, broker, and real estate agent customers find the presentation and visualization of data with Virtual Earth superior to Google and MapQuest,” confirms Roney. “The bird’s-eye view, 3-D capabilities, satellite imagery, and superior street mapping are awesome.”
And when it came down to the cost, the news got better. “With Virtual Earth, we saved $250,000 compared to our legacy solution’s cost,” confirms Paulson.
The company wasn’t worried about the move to an outsourced model, with Microsoft hosting its Virtual Earth solution, despite the 650,000 users that access its MLS systems, property listings, and geographical data from its Microsoft SQL Server® databases every day. “Our multi-terabyte SQL Server 2005 databases routinely handle 50,000 concurrent users. We know that Microsoft products are scalable. We weren’t worried about Virtual Earth handling our 25 million mapping transactions every month,” says Paulson.
Myers is happy that Virtual Earth works seamlessly in the Microsoft ASP.NET environment, making it easier to integrate the product into the company’s IT environment. “This is a very rich API that allows me to focus more on business problems and how to deliver that “wow factor,” and have fun doing it, rather than writing code,” he says. “We will be using the .NET development environment for interacting with the SQL Server to overlay geographically-contextual information, and the Ajax toolkit to deliver a browser-based user interface.”
MarketLinx converted its original solution to the Virtual Earth platform, replicating the previous solution’s existing capabilities. Then the IT team began adding new visualization capabilities, choosing to start with the bird’s eye view feature, which allows users to zoom in and pan around a building at a 45- degree angle. The company has developed two primary applications: one for the mapping services in its MLS and broker products and one for the consumer-facing Web sites that MarketLinx hosts on behalf of its customers, the REALTORS.
“That was another big win factor for us that other competitors could not provide,” adds Myers. “We stipulated that the mapping solution had to have a public-facing consumer component. Other vendors wanted us to use their own consumer-facing product with their advertising, and that wasn’t acceptable to us or our customers.”
Benefits
MarketLinx has already significantly reduced the cost of providing mapping services and is taking advantage of its Virtual Earth platform to design and create innovative new products that will grow its business, strengthen customer loyalty, and keep the company on the forefront of mapping technologies. Says Foreman, “We have only scratched the surface, but we are confident that the Virtual Earth platform will help us execute on our strategy to make mapping a central part of our real estate applications.”
|
“Nothing can replace the experience and knowledge of a real estate agent, but the Virtual Earth platform helps to expedite the home purchase process.” |
|
|
Stephen Roney President and Chief Executive Officer, MarketLinx |
|
|
Innovating to Grow the Business
Not only did MarketLinx save a quarter-million dollars with its new mapping solution, but it expects to save money in ongoing development efforts as it evolves its mapping services to take advantage of all the capabilities of the Virtual Earth platform. “The API offers shortcuts that amount to cutting and pasting code: without a doubt that’s a cost savings,” says Myers. “The other value add for us is that because this API is so user-friendly, with reference implementations available online, for example, we gain the agility to quickly and cost-effectively respond to customer requests and market demands.”
MarketLinx plans to take advantage of more proficient development to create and deploy real estate data visualization and mapping solutions to empower both REALTORS and consumers as they work together through a real estate transaction. REALTORS can use MarketLinx Virtual Earth–based mapping applications to differentiate their services and close more deals: a good motivator for continuing to use MarketLinx products. For example, if an agent knows that a client wants to live within a short commute from her new home, that agent will be able to use the solution to draw a polygon shape over a map and ask to see everything that’s within a 45-minute drive of her office.
“Whereas our traditional product allows you to search based on price, number of bedrooms, home style, and that sort of thing, our customers can use the Virtual Earth technologies to see a home’s visual context and make proximity evaluations,” explains Paulson. “Is it close to the highway? Are there a lot of trees? This amounts to new knowledge that they can offer to their clients. And after showing the prototype to a group of customers, they were very impressed with the accuracy of the rooftop geocoding, a critical success factor for the adoption of this solution.”
MarketLinx plans to take advantage of the same rich visualization and interactivity for the mapping solutions it is creating for the consumer-facing Web sites. For consumers, the company is focused on providing user-friendly intuitive mapping capabilities, with a big emphasis on interactivity and visualization.
“We want consumers to be able to sit at home, zoom into a city, zoom into a neighborhood, see proximity to schools, banks, and shopping centers,” says Myers. “If they like a house, we want them to be able to click on an individual property and pull up data out of our MLS database with photos and virtual tours and detailed property information. Using the bird’s-eye view and 3-D features they can pan 360 degrees around the house. The next step, and this is another reason we chose Virtual Earth, is that we can add layers of demographic data to a map using transparencies. Consumers can look at information like age, income, number of renters versus owners, pricing trends, and property tax data that will help them enhance their lifestyle through the best-educated purchase of the right home in the right neighborhood.”
Building Customer Connections
MarketLinx expects to boost its reputation for leading customer service by using the Virtual Earth platform to build and integrate industry-leading real estate mapping solutions into its current portfolio of offerings to drive customer loyalty and increase revenue for its services.
“With Virtual Earth we are answering a definite need within the industry, providing productivity enhancing tools for our customers that will help them provide better service in turn to their clients,” says Roney.
“And we can use the same platform to help our customer’s clients as well,” he adds. “When it comes down to conducting the actual transaction, nothing can replace the experience and knowledge of a real estate agent, but the Virtual Earth platform helps to expedite the home purchase process. By helping both parties work better together to pick the best home in the right neighborhood, we help to streamline the real estate transaction. For our customers, that means making more commissions, and for their clients, it means an optimal lifestyle decision. Everyone wins.”
Partnering for the Long Term
From the outset, Roney and his management team were determined to develop a long-term relationship with a single partner. Choosing to partner exclusively with Microsoft means the company can save the licensing and administrative costs of working with several different mapping solution providers and can focus on aligning their vision with a single vendor.
“We are confident that Microsoft sees where mapping needs to go and that their vision equates with ours,” says Paulson. “The Virtual Earth platform is so rich with possibilities—we are thinking of driving virtual cars down a street to look at neighborhoods or the ability to tie in blogs and wikis from REALTORS and neighbors to capture what it’s like to live on that street. All along, Microsoft has supported us as we work with the Virtual Earth platform to develop innovative new products. It has been a very pleasant experience and we are looking forward to the future.”
Microsoft Virtual Earth
Virtual Earth platform is Microsoft’s next generation mapping and location service. It combines the MapPoint® Web Service with exciting new innovations around bird's eye, satellite and aerial imagery, dynamic map styles and enhanced local search. Using the Virtual Earth platform, companies and government organizations can create an immersive online mapping and search experience that enables their customers to easily discover, search, explore, share and visualize business location data and locally relevant information. For developers, the Virtual Earth supports a variety of programming environments and can be easily integrated into business applications, like customer relationship management and supply chain management.
For more information about Microsoft Virtual Earth, go to:
www.microsoft.com/virtualearth
For More Information
For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:
www.microsoft.com
For more information about MarketLinx services, call (866) 882-4353 or visit the Web site at:
www.marketlinx.com
For more information about First American Corporation services, call (800) 854-3643
or visit the Web site at:
www.firstam.com
