DatixRES brokeredge wins St. Louis Business Journal Technology Award
By Gil Stuenkel
What do you do for an encore after you've designed and built one of the first Internet housing-search platforms in the country and designed a citywide network connecting 24 offices and 400 computers?
If you're Bryan Sapot, you design the software that users say changes the fundamental question of house hunting from “where do you want to live?” to “how do you want to live?”
That's just one of the features of the Broker Edge e-business program that Sapot designed for Coldwell Banker Gundaker, formerly Gundaker Realtors. Broker Edge is the winner in the Real Estate category of the St. Louis Technology Awards.
Sapot, president of Datix Real Estate Solutions Inc., was a network systems engineer for Gundaker before founding his own company in 1998. While at Gundaker, Sapot envisioned a fully integrated system to reduce data entry, but the technology did not exist at the time to make that happen. The vision became reality in November 2001 at the National Association of Realtors Convention in Chicago, when Broker Edge was unveiled.
For customers, Broker Edge puts a whole new perspective on the way they search for homes. For brokers, the software streamlines the entire process.
Of the program, judges said, “Datix provides a wealth of information through a variety of systems. This forward-looking application allows agents to access the latest information in a portable system.”
For example, a sales associate can generate all the forms necessary for a contract, fom any of Coldwell Banker Gundaker's 49 offices, from any computer, and customize the transaction to accommodate varying municipal codes and rules.
“This makes the sales associate more effective in doing the job,” said Bill Devers, vice president/operations for CBG.
Broker Edge features a single point of data entry, a big time-saver and productivity boost, according to Devers. Information is filled out only once for each listing. Previously, even before the Internet explosion of Web-based software, the real estate industry had numerous unique proprietary, stand-alone programs, but the same information had to be entered in each program. Broker Edge integrates all these proprietary programs for such elements as accounting, commission information, and more, and allows them to be imported and exported.
Incorporating Broker Edge into CBG's daily operations was accomplished despite two major external changes during the transition – the merger of Coldwell Banker and Gundaker, and the introduction of a multiple listing system in the St. Louis area.
Broker Edge facilitated the integration of Coldwell Banker's proprietary financial software and Gundaker's system, said Devers.
Broker Edge allows Internet posting of listings within one day, and posting of pending sales within 15 minutes. The program also incorporates password-protected security.
The program allows house hunters to hone their search by amenities such as golf communities, proximity to hospitals, day care facilities, even certain retail establishments. Sapot incorporated a map module, Real Compass, into the program, through which customers can click to a specific city block and get information about individual houses there.
Datix, located at 1724 Clarkson Road, develops and designs custom software focusing on real estate, but also serves a variety of clients, including Bissinger French Confections.
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