Harcourts Real Estate Technology Leading the Way

Harcourts Real Estate Technology Leading the Way

In 2009, international real estate group, Harcourts launched its new technology system to over 600 offices and 5,000 users throughout Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Indonesia, Fiji, and China.

The technology platform, H1, is an internet-based bespoke system which was built in-house by Harcourts developers and is used company-wide.

Over the two years since the initial launch, the H1 system has gone from strength to strength and is now widely recognised as one of the best real estate management systems in the world.

Demonstrating the power of the H1 system, Harcourts has recently been approached by other real estate franchises with requests to license the product.

The system has also been used to recruit offices in the USA and is now operational in the states of California, Oregon, Hawaii and shortly Georgia.

H1 includes the ability to add property listings, manage contacts, develop and send email marketing campaigns, manage tasks and contact trails, produce financial KPI reporting, manage sales and web content, and access to the group’s intranet library, as well as credit card and SMS gateway options.

“The development of H1 took over two years and the original roll out was tough going as we had to tweak the system for each country Harcourts operates in. The end result is extremely satisfying as everyone in the project put in a lot of hours to make H1 a success,” Chief Information Officer of Harcourts International, Jason Wills said.

“The feedback from our users has been fantastic and the extra tools that it provides to our agents allows them to provide outstanding service to their customers, which was one of our key drivers in creating this new leading edge system,” Mr Wills continued.

The key to the success of H1 has been the platform the product is developed on
Using Microsoft ASP.NET / MVC, Ajax and Javascript running off SQL virtualised servers, H1 can be accessed by any device (iPad, Macbook, PC, internet café) from any location.

“Basically, if you have an internet connection, you can access your contacts, properties, tasks and sales figures. Using the latest development tools means H1 is super-fast and as powerful as standalone software,” Mr Will said.

“We have laid a super infrastructure for our entire company and will continue to enhance this system by gathering feedback from our users and by monitoring global software trends, Mr Wills continued.

ENDS

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