Global real estate software provider MRI Software has acquired customer relationship management platform Box+Dice, in a move that will enable agencies to look after clients throughout their entire property journey.
Itโs MRI Softwareโs fourth acquisition in the Asia Pacific region in the past two years, after gaining Australiaโs Rockend in August 2019 and New Zealandโs Palace and WhosOnLocation earlier this year.
MRI Software Managing Director and Senior Vice President (Asia Pacific) David Bowie said the acquisition was โvery excitingโ and enabled the software provider to offer clients a holistic suite of platforms and solutions across sales and property management.
โWeโve obviously been very strong in the property management space for some time, but when you combine that with a best of breed CRM solution, it really does start to be quite a unique offering for agencies in the region,โ he said.
โIt really starts to bring up a single customer view to how an agency can look at a customer across their lifecycle, through their property journeys.โ
Box+Dice won the Established Supplier PropTech of the Year award at the PropTech Awards earlier this year, and Mr Bowie said the platform not only enabled agents to list properties and manage buyer relationships, but provided a centralised view where agency owners could measure performance and KPIs.
โWhen you start to combine that with property management, I think that the future is the ability to manage a person through their property journey where they go from being a tenant to hopefully an owner, a seller or a landlord,โ he said.
โYou can spend dozens and dozens of years in the property lifecycle, so the insights you start to get around the habits people have and the decisions theyโre making allow a more valuable conversation.
โReal estate agents today already do a great job of managing relationships, but having a more holistic view of the individual opens up new opportunities for insights and actions.โ
Mr Bowie said agencies could use such insights to plan for the future.
โIt means agency leaders are now empowered to make decisions that drive profitability and revenue for their entire business, while agents can know, anticipate and better serve the needs of a person throughout their property lifetime in one unified solution,โ he said.
Box+Dice Founder and Chief Executive Officer Travis Williams said he was proud of what the platform had achieved over the past 15 years and pleased the innovative CRM would now be more accessible worldwide.
โOur customers and team will benefit from MRIโs national and global resources and open and connected platform approach to PropTech,โ he said.
Mr Bowie said MRI Software prioritised not just meeting their clientsโ needs, but their clientsโ clientsโ needs in the PropTech space.
He said they did that in three different ways; they build it themselves, they acquire companies that meet that need, or they partner with organisations to bring that innovation to the market.
In June, MRI Software announced a partnership with Propic to bring conversational artificial intelligence (AI) to their clients.
โWe have an open and connected philosophy,โ Mr Bowie said.
โPropic is a great example of why we donโt need to build it or buy it to bring it to market.
โPropic is an awesome example of bringing analysis, insights and artificial intelligence into data and decision-making.โ
To help keep their finger on the pulse of what clientsโ needs are, Mr Bowie said MRI Software had established a client advisory board.
He said it to create valuable tech solutions, you first had to understand the problem from the clientsโ perspective.
โTechnology is ultimately an enabler of a business outcome,โ he said.
โCool tech means nothing if it doesnโt bring increased revenue, more efficiency and better productivity.
โItโs really important to understand what that endgame is and to bring innovation to bear to solve it.โ
โโ