“Our members demand the best tools available and Discover iMapp gives them a powerful, easy way to access the MLS on any computer, including Mac and iPad, on any browser and the ability to effectively use their mobile devices and stay in contact with their clients.” said Teresa King Kinney, CEO of the MIAMI Association of REALTORS®. “We are excited to be the first association in the country making this powerful benefit available to our members. They deserve the best and it’s our job to make sure they always get it.”

Keeping Agents at the Forefront

Existing MLS software providers have been slow to embrace mobile technology while consumer access to listing data has skyrocketed. By putting agents first, Discover iMapp emphasizes the MIAMI REALTORS’® role as the leading source for real estate information and marketing tools for agents, brokers and their clients.

“Our REALTOR® subscribers are used to having iMapp running on their iPads and all other mobile devices.” said Bill Rovillo, CEO of iMapp. “Now they can share MLS and any public record data with consumers from a single, mobile solution using trusted, MIAMI Association of REALTORS® data.”

Strong Demand From Associations

“The MIAMI Association of REALTORS® saw our presentation for the first time just three weeks ago.” said Bret Wiener, CEO of DiscoverMLS. “They instantly recognized the value to their members and approved the product for launch.”

Discover iMapp includes a real-time client portal with a live-chat feature that allows agents to interact with their clients, react to feedback on properties and instantly modify results to include the dynamic changes that often occur in the challenging search process. Discover iMapp is optimized for mobile and runs on all major web browsers, freeing users from PCs and allowing agents to use their preferred devices.

Roll-out Scheduled for Summer, 2012

The MIAMI Association of REALTORS® anticipates having the Discover iMapp System running with their existing MLS data in Summer 2012. An implementation team and work group will guide the launch and work with iMapp and Discover MLS to insure a smooth transition for all MIAMI REALTORS®.

About iMapp, Inc.:
Founded in 1997, iMapp is committed to the development and maintenance of highly accurate web-based geographic real estate information systems that integrate a variety of property information including parcel lines, tax-roll data, demographics, aerial imagery, mortgage and deed recordings and foreclosure information with a specific focus on the real estate industry.

About DiscoverMLS, Inc.:
Discover MLS Software was launched in 2010 by a group of partners with more than 40 years of combined real-estate industry experience. Determined to set new standards for the MLS software marketplace, the goal was simple: raise the bar.

#########

iMapp® is a registered trademark of iMapp, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries.

For more information:
Joel Cohen, 888-462-7701, JCohen@imapp.com
Bret Wiener, 800-964-2656, Bret@DiscoverMLS.com

For more information on iMapp:

http://www.iMapp.com

For more information on DiscoverMLS:

http://www.DiscoverMLS.com

Announcements of new deals and partnerships hardly get read any more, or usually as only a passing gesture to kill time to see who is buying what from whom?

This article is going to be about a successful product launch and about great partnerships and why it should be the norm.

Let’s start with the disruptive event:  Changing from one MLS vendor to a new one, launching a new version of a tax product, elimination of some products and services and the elimination of a critical search component within the MLS.

This all occurred the first week of April in Corpus Christi.  The leadership decided to change from one vendor platform to the Discover MLS platform.  In conjunction with this, they decided to upgrade their Realist tax product to the latest version on the same day.  They also decided to eliminate the use of a forms product, a CRM package and several other ‘linked’ products/services that some of the members were using.  Finally, they took away ‘Area’ from the listing input, reports and search capabilities from the MLS altogether.  This final decision was very political and disruptive enough in most situations to tackle by itself, in my experience.

Guess what?  With fairly nominal negative outcry, it all is working just fine and the members are actually getting over the ‘who moved my cheese’ moment with grace and acceptance.

As the selected vendor for the new MLS system, we entered into this situation with great expectations and some level of trepidation.  Lots of changes being pushed onto a membership all at one time is hard on leadership, but equally as hard on the vendor and their team that is out doing the training for the new system, as they are usually the ones to bear the responsibility of answering all of the questions regarding “WHY?”  Why can’t I search by Areas anymore?  Why do I have to accept the new ‘Terms and Conditions” for the tax system to work?  Why can’t I use the old MLS system anymore?  Why do I have to call a new phone number for support?  Why wasn’t I told this was happening?  No one told me about this!  Why, Why, Why???  Oh, and don’t forget the “Who” question:  Who made these decisions?

So, what went right?  First off, the Corpus Christi Association of Realtors and the Coastal Bend MLS decided months ago to make significant changes in how they were doing business.  They were losing members and money.   Many financial cuts, personnel cuts and services were being evaluated.  It wasn’t easy, but the leadership team came together, made hard decisions with some pretty significant input from users and plotted a course of action.  Then, they stuck to it!  Once most of the hard decisions were made (new MLS vendor, upgraded tax product, elimination of other products and services), work was still ahead of them.  They had to implement.

Three weeks before launch of the new MLS system, they decided to eliminate the ‘Area’ field.  Wow.  MLS vendor has to change the system, and modify our training approach.  However, in all of that, the leadership at Coastal Bend MLS decided to make sure that at least one of its volunteer leaders and one of the staff members would be present at all training sessions.  This was critical.  The ‘why’ and the ‘who’ questions could be addressed by one of their own members, not be vendor training staff who were there to answer the ‘how’ questions.  At no point did any of the sessions get out of control about the ‘why’ and ‘who’ issues and remained focused, allowing the members to actually begin the process of change with real information about how to maintain their business practices.  After all, this new system does everything the old system could, plus much more, just in a different way.  Training was accomplished effectively and efficiently—due to the partnership between vendor and customer.

Don’t get me wrong, things were difficult at times.  If anyone thinks that vendor changes or new product launches of critical services to Real Estate professionals is easy, let them stand in front of a room of anxious users who do not read advance notices (no matter how frequent or how far in advance they were sent out) about ‘exporting their contacts into a CSV file’ and become “ALARMED” and see what happens!  Reactions are either downright angry or hilarious!  As an example, one user claimed, with 10 days left to accomplish this simple feat, that ‘she couldn’t possibly find the time’ to export her 38 clients.

The point of all of this:  There IS an effective way to accomplish significant change and implementation of ‘disruptive’ product rollouts in the Real Estate industry without angry blogs and social networking sites getting blown up.  It involves strong leadership and great partnerships (not just legal documents) with vendors and communications with the users.  It takes flexibility on all parts (the MLS ‘Areas’ discussed here were left as a map overlay for those users who just couldn’t function without them), and it takes courage to do the things that you know have to be done.

Check out the full release notes here.

Check out the full release notes here.

As promised, a test site is available for the Corpus Christi committee responsible for testing & evaluation of the new Discover software prior to cutover.  On this site, the data is synchronized from MLXchange in near real-time, so it’s possible to do side-by-side comparison of agents, offices, and listings to ensure the conversion is thorough and accurate.  We will now spend several weeks working with Corpus leadership to resolve any conversion flaws, and when it’s time to cut over in April, there will be no scary, final data conversion.  Rather, the Discover system will have been up & running — and vetted — well in advance.

Some vendors call this “running parallel”.  Although that term is typically reserved for a case where the MLS allows all of its users to access the new system for some time prior to cutover, the workload for the vendor is the same either way…whether 10 or 10000 users bang away on the parallel system, the data has to be converted and kept in sync, and that’s the hard part.  Make no mistake, it is hard.

Our philosophy, however, is that the extra effort up front is worth its weight in gold, since it’s a lot easier for a customer to test a new system in advance when the data is current and the new site can actually be used for day-to-day work.  Duh.  It’s not like we’re the first to comprehend that.  In fact, it’s why almost any vendor will offer parallel when they can afford to do so.  But, because it’s so challenging, it’s usually only offered to the largest MLS’s.  Not any more!

Discover is proud to offer a “data sync” approach for every MLS conversion we ever do again, regardless of size.  In fact, if your current vendor will provide us access to other types of data in RETS (such as clients, auto-prospecting searches, etc), we will even sync that.  Why?  Because we can.  Our extraordinary toolset makes this possible at the same cost for most vendors to do a traditional data conversion.  And more importantly, I would argue: because we should!

You can choose to offer your fully-synchronized test system to just a committee or task force of agents who will represent your membership, or you can choose to expose the system to your entire membership.  Either way, we’ll back it with sufficient hardware to handle the load, even before launch.

Doesn’t the industry deserve this kind of customer service?  If you’re going to switch MLS systems in 2012, shouldn’t you expect it?  Why on earth would you do a conversion without it?!

Discover Software, Inc. (Discover) announced today that the Corpus Christi Association of REALTORS® (CCAR) has chosen Discover MLS as its new MLS software platform, to be installed in second quarter next year.

Following a competitive selection process, Discover MLS was chosen for a variety of reasons.  In particular, the social networking features and benefits of Discover’s state-of-the-art Multiple Listing Service software stood out when compared to other vendors.  Discover MLS is the industry’s first and only production-ready, next-generation solution, designed from the ground up to harness the power of both Adobe Flash® and HTML5.

Leveraging this powerful platform, the application now includes:

• Client Portal: providing full integration with Google+, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, plus live chat between the client and agent.
• Discover Mobile: utilizing HTML5 (an industry first!), accessible on any smartphone or tablet (iPhone, iPad, Android, Blackberry, etc), with robust features like count-on-the-fly, “smart” text-entry fields, and integration with your local mapping app.

“Technology is changing faster than ever, and we wanted a vendor who can keep pace,” said Gary Doran, chief executive officer for CCAR.  “After considering our options thoroughly, Discover was the clear choice.  The software is way ahead of the competition, and the company has the right vision and leadership to ensure it stays that way.  Equally important, we also believe that Discover’s intuitive design, flexible architecture, and on-line video training materials will provide a smooth transition for our members.”

Bret Wiener, President of Discover, said, “We are very pleased to offer our newest group of users in Corpus Christi the full benefit of today’s online MLS experience, integrating social networking and real-time communications to connect agents and clients like never before.  With great feedback and guidance from progressive customers like Gary Doran and his members in the Coastal Bend, we will continue to push the industry forward with exciting new innovations.”

As part of its standard offering, Discover will launch a test site by the end of the year – with data synchronized in real-time – for committee members to begin a structured review of data mapping, business rules, reports, and more.

About the Corpus Christi Association of REALTORS®:

The Corpus Christi Association of REALTORS® has served the real estate needs of the Coastal Bend Area of Texas since 1925.  The Association operates the Coastal Bend Multiple Listing Service which covers a five county area along the Gulf Coast of Texas. The MLS provides over 900 real estate practitioners with the technology tools to service consumer needs in the buying, selling and appraisal of real estate in the coastal bend area.

For more information, please contact the Corpus Christi Association of REALTORS® at (361) 991-8221 or visit http://www.ccaronline.com or http://coastalbendlifestyle.com

About Discover Software, Inc:

Discover MLS Software was launched in 2010 by a group of partners with more than 40 years of combined real-estate industry experience. Determined to set new standards for the MLS software marketplace, the goal was simple: raise the bar.

Working together in previous years, Discover’s founders deployed and supported over 100 MLS customers nationwide, constantly frustrated by the limitations of the Web 1.0 platform. Beginning in 2008, the Discover MLS application was designed from the ground up for usability, flexibility, high-performance, and low-cost operation. Web 2.0 is about new ways of thinking and interacting, not just new technology. Think you know MLS software? Think again.

For more information, please contact Discover at (800) 964-2656 or visit http://www.discovermls.com.

As the web got seriously underway in the late 90′s, search results were often not paginated at all.  Some sites posed a “reasonable” max search results limit (50, 100, etc) — or else no limit was imposed, and you’d have to sit & wait for a mile-long page to download & render.  Of course, count-on-the-fly was virtually impossible back in those days (when Microsoft and Netscape were such bitter rivals that almost no Javascript was safe), so you wouldn’t know if you were going to hit the ceiling or wait until you hit the “View Results” button…with your fingers crossed.

Today, the expectations are much higher.  Even without count-on-the-fly, we can’t limit users to 100 results or something, and even with count-on-the-fly, users will sometimes run searches that return nearly 1,000 results.

For years now, the most popular solution has been to “paginate” search results.  Show a user 25 or 50 results at a time, with “VCR” controls to see the next/previous batch.  This isn’t exactly ideal either, though, if a user actually wants to work with the data (sort, filter, scan, hide, etc).

So, in the RIA world, where the bar continues to rise, what’s the answer?  Sadly, too many developers are still just paginating (or showing everything in one shot, which is equally puke-inducing).  However, thanks to the pioneering work of Facebook, Yahoo, and more recently, a slew of mobile app developers, a new mechanism is emerging at last!

“What is it called?” you ask.  I don’t know, but here’s how it works:

Just like in the world in pagination, a user is initially presented with a subset of the results — say, the first 25 or 50.  However, instead of clicking “Next” to view another batch, the user can choose to see “More”…and the next group of 25/50/etc are simply appended to the current view.  In addition, a user may have the option to see “All”, in which case the entire results set is downloaded.  Just like in years past, the user may need to wait a while for “All” to download, but now it’s only after making the conscious decision to do so.

This alternative offers the best of both worlds: perceptibly quick response on the initial results display, with the ability to see and work with ALL the data, if so desired.

However, it also comes with some unique challenges…especially in the world of RIA development.  See, one of the big advantages of RIA is that with a rich client platform, you can do a lot of processing locally.  For example, when a user chooses to re-sort the data, the updated view can be prepared and displayed entirely on the user’s computer (without going back to the web server).  But, after the first 25 or 50 results are presented on a search results page, and when this is only a portion of the full results, what should you do if the user wants to re-sort the data?  Do you re-sort just the 25 or 50 listings that are currently displayed (which can be done locally, and therefore very quickly), or do you go back to the web server, re-sort the entire set, and then present the first 25 or 50 based on the new sort (which will take a little longer and have more of a non-RIA feel to it)?  And what if the user wants to “Check All” and then print a report or generate stats…do you issue a warning that says something like, “hey buddy, you haven’t actually checked ALL of the listings, but rather all of the ones that are currently displayed”?

And voila…your wonderful rich UI with lots of client-side power just introduced a whole new set of challenges.

This is just the way paradigms work, though.  When something new comes along, it usually solves a bunch of old problems immediately.  In fact, that’s precisely how you know you’re in a new paradigm.  But then, after you live & breathe the new stuff for a while, you start to find the new problems.  Most of those will be solved through the usual trial & tribulation, but some challenges will remain unanswered…only to be solved when the next paradigm comes along.

I won’t give you all of our answers to the questions posed above, but I can tell you that we implemented this new model in Q2 and it really IS incredible to use.  And while I’d encourage you to do the same, just be ready for some of The Tough Stuff along the way.  Here at Discover, it’s what we live for — the kinds of challenges that push us outside the comfort zone, to that magical place where innovation happens.  Have you been there today?

These are just a few of the reasons Android’s numbers keep climbing so rapidly.  Of course, Google’s free license for the OS doesn’t hurt, but users have to actually like it in order to achieve this kind of adoption — over 5% marketshare grab in 3 months!

Courtesy of Inman and comScore…

• http://www.inman.com/news/2011/08/30/number-smartphone-users-jumps-10

• http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2011/8/comScore_Reports_July_2011_U.S._Mobile_Subscriber_Market_Share

Amazingly, while our competitors have spent millions of dollars already, we’re still the only production-proven next-gen system available.  If LPS and CoreLogic are successful, that will change before long – and we welcome them with open arms.  Why?  Because competition is a good thing!

From athletics to business, we all perform our best when we’re pushed, whether chasing or being chased.

At the head of the pack, leaders face fascinating challenges, but there’s one in particular I want to focus on here: imitation.  The MLS software business is rife with it.  Have a cool idea?  If you do, you’ll know it soon…because all your competitors will be working on it!

The features war might be considered a frustrating aspect of this industry, but imitation is an intrinsic sign of good leadership.  The best definition I’ve heard for a leader is: “someone you would follow to a place you wouldn’t go yourself.”  Being chased means being followed.  And being followed is certainly a form of imitation.

So, we’re not surprised to see Rapattoni pushing multi-tasking, Tarasoft offering a history of all recent searches run and the ability to upload multiple pictures at a time, or LPS using precisely the same control we do for suggestive text entry fields.  It’s the best form of flattery, right, so why get bent out of shape?  But there’s more to it than that.  Successful leaders always have the right attitude about this, and it’s not a coincidence.

I was watching a race on TV a couple weeks ago, and as the competitors chased each other around the track, I couldn’t help but draw amazing parallels to my professional life.  I noticed how the leader was there for a reason: he had found a better line through a set of turns, was carrying more speed, and was keeping the competition far enough back that he could breathe a little.  But before long, the racer in second place had seen the effect of the better line (as the leader pulled away through that section), and within a couple of laps, he was running it, too.  Farther back in the pack, some racers couldn’t carve the new line.  The wrong tires, the wrong chassis setup, not enough nerve, or just bad piloting…whatever the case, some racers just couldn’t hang.  If the leader made a mistake, it might allow the guy in second place to make a pass.  And in the end, the winner was the racer with the following in greatest abundance (in order of importance): smooth, consistent, and creative.

You can’t be a leader if you’re not smooth.  Sharp jolts scrub speed, and when you’re trying to stay ahead, it’s all about carrying momentum.  In racing, that means squeezing the throttle & brakes, widening the radius of turns , and transferring weight like it’s plutonium.  In business that means forging a clear vision and sticking to it.

You also won’t be a leader for long without consistency.  In racing and business both, that means minimizing mistakes.  Find a good line, a fast line…and nail it, every lap.

And be creative!!  The best way to make a pass or stay ahead of the pack is simply to find a better line through the next turn.  Sure, whoever is behind you will be watching, copying the good stuff, but if you can be as creative in the next lap as you were in the last, you’ll be very hard to beat.

That’s Discover.  Or at least, that’s who we strive to be day & night.  A team obsessed with leading.  A team with a singular vision and impeccably consistent delivery.  And a team that understands our greatest strength is always looking forward, negotiating the next turn better than the rest of the pack.