Partnerships aren’t new. What’s new is their potential to transform the profession.
If you’ve read the news lately, you’ll have noticed a glut of industry announcements regarding technology partnerships.
While the names on these announcements may change, their motivation is the same: to allow customers of different vendors to connect their products or services and drive better job performance. The reason you hear about these partnerships often—but experience the benefits rarely—is because they’re usually limited to a small portion of the real estate industry.
What’s different about real estate’s most recent partnerships, however, is that they have some of the most prominent tech leaders—with some of the largest customer bases—joining forces.
The impetus behind this rush of partnerships is an industry-wide movement toward integration. Rather than any single vendor solution, which often provides a few good services but rarely all good services, integration is the single biggest step real estate can take to catch up to other industries.
I know what you’re thinking: “Real estate has a ton of modern technology products! We’re not that far behind!” And you’re right. The problem is that few of these products work together.
Because of that, it’s nigh impossible to share information in any cohesive fashion. This prevents REALTORS®, staff and brokers from taking swift and deliberate action on their most important activities.
Closing a deal, for example, should be as simple as sending a picture through Facebook Messenger. The app connects directly to phone cameras and performs a simple task that requires no added steps on the part of the user. The two applications feel like one though they were designed, manufactured and sold by different companies.
Real estate technology should work that way.
- REALTORS® should expect their forms and e-signature solution to connect. It should be simple to send a contract from their client to the office.
- Staff should expect their REALTORS®’ forms solution and their office’s transaction management solution to connect. It should be simple to collaborate on listings and file review.
- Brokers should expect their transaction management solution and their back-office solution to connect. It should be simple to send updates between these products and their users as soon as they occur.
However, outside of the two-way integration between Lone Wolf’s transaction management and back-office solutions, these types of connections don’t exist.
That’s why we partnered with Real Estate Webmasters (REW). With an integration coming soon between their state-of-the-art website platform and our industry-leading transaction management solutions, it will be possible to manage a lead from contact to contract to close using real estate’s best-of-breed products. And though each of these tasks will be completed in a separate solution, the entire workflow will feel as though it was completed in one. More importantly, the integration of data ensures that there’s consistency across systems, regardless of where changes are made.
And that’s just the beginning. Imagine the impact partnerships will have when they include more components of real estate—front office, title, mortgage, digital EMD transfer, buyer/seller moving services—and more industry leaders like Lone Wolf and REW.
By connecting these services, solutions and providers, our goal is to construct the industry’s first true ecosystem of real estate technology. One that brings best-of-breed technology together. One that makes complicated work feel simple. One that empowers real estate professionals in the activity that matters most: brokering deals for homebuyers and sellers.
That’s the potential that partnerships hold. That’s the vision that Lone Wolf has.
Jason Cheverton is director, Ecosystem at Lone Wolf Technologies. For more information, please visit www.lwolf.com.
