★ APPLICATIONS ★ DIVERS ★ HOMEVIEW ★ |
| Homeview | Applications Divers |
MOVING EXPERIENCE Calling all estate agents! A new program is out to help you match buyers and sellers more efficiently. As the 8000 Plus staff prepare to fold up their tents and move to the new office in Bath there has suddenly been a great interest in estate agents. Who could be better than us as instant experts to look at Cavalier Software's new Homeview - a program to make PCW-owning estate agents' lives easier? Whenever you want to buy a house, estate agents seem to ask a series of questions and then, regardless of the answers, hand over a sheaf of 94 house descriptions, one or two of which might approximate to the right thing. Apart from decimating the world's rain forests, this really wastes everyone's time. Computers are ideally suited to the information matching process, and it is a mystery that so few estate agents yet use them. The big match The idea is simple. In one section you list the name and details of all purchasers, and in another you list all vendors. When a new customer comes in you add their details to the appropriate list and then check it against the other list to find the most suitable houses or prospective buyers already there. There is also a simple mailmerge facility that prints out letters (prepared with LocoScript or another wordprocessor) and produces envelope labels. The ideal for house buyers is a system where they specify every requirement - North facing sea view in the Bath area with nine bedrooms and the lounge carpet in green and gold. You run that into the computer and out pops the ideal Des. Res. On the other hand, estate agents are not so keen on being so precise as there is a good chance they wouldn't have a house to fit the requirements, or worse the system would ignore an almost ideal house because the lounge carpet was green and beige. Homeview takes a compromise approach. For instance, prospective buyers can opt for three choices of house type and three choices of area. Although the program comes with a menu of nine property types to choose from (bedsitter up to detached), if none of the categories is suitable you have the chance to change them to suit. So if your agency sells a lot of castles you can commit one of the nine options to this description. Pick an area...any area The ability for the buyer to specify a number of choices is obviously more important with the areas. When you set the system up you partition your trading region into 19 different areas, of which the customer can specify three (or all of them). Setting up this list is obviously the most complicated part of the program and will need a bit of thought. Prospective buyers have to specify the minimum number of bedrooms needed and the maximum amount they have to spend - the program will then give details of any properties that suit. The agent can list mortgage details, 'house ownership status' and even enquiry strength with grades of interest such as 'red hot'. Cavalier have kept their sensible 'Short Name' method of finding entries, as used in their accounts and stock control packages. This means that as well as an eminently forgettable 10 character reference number for each entry you can define a short name of six characters. Type in this short name and the program shows you all the entries under that name (five at a time if the short name is Smith for instance) with the relevant full reference number. The process is similar for storing vendors' details. The same categories of area and house type codes are used, along with the number of bedrooms, reception rooms and garages, type of heating, the type of garden and, most importantly, the value. For the estate agents' use there is space for the agreed amount of commission and whether they are sole agents. The rest of the program allows you to print out all the details you need. For instance you can produce lists of vendors or purchasers with full details, a telephone list or a price list. You can print out the results of matching purchasers with vendors and vice versa and you can produce mail-shots (for instance asking prospective purchasers if they want to be kept on the lists) address labels and statistical counts. Verdict The program is sensibly structured and simple to use. It is obviously not a package for the home user to buy, and the price reflects this. The main decision you have to make is whether it will save your business £200 worth of time and organisation. After all, if it gets you one extra sale the software will have paid for itself. As well as the basic program at £195.44, you can choose from a couple of package options. A PCW8512 together with the software costs £746.35, and the 8512, software, and installation service anywhere in the UK costs £1033.85. All prices include VAT. 8000 Plus
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