3 minute readWe’ve gotten up to speed. FOMO is fear of missing out. YOLO is you only live once.
What about FOLD? Fear of looking dumb. Or FOBPAAS? Fear of being played as a sucker.
Get this, on
Many Americans, about 40%, say buying a new home is the most stressful event in modern life, according to a survey of 2,000 Americans by Homes.com. Another 44% said they felt nervous throughout the home-buying process.
Going forward, that stress, insecurity, fear of being taken advantage of as a sucker, is not likely to subside, even as many households move from dreams, to inspirations, to aspirations, to motivations, to engagement on their homebuying journey.
This is why technology and data’s roles as forces of transparency are critical in the shift of transaction to trusted relationship. Transparency is the five-dollar word for one simple idea:
Say what you mean, mean what you say, and do what you say you’ll do.
This is where a newly merged proptech combination – New Hope, PA-based Cecilian Partners with Raleigh, N.C.-based BrightDoor – proposes to apply a new solution in customer data management and visualization technology: To reduce insecurity and stress from end-to-end in residential real estate and construction’s building lifecycle.
Speaking of the new combination, announced last week, Cecilian co-founder John Cecilian notes:
The number one challenge that we get to address with our acquisition of BrightDoor’s valued CRM software platform is a single-source of truth predicated on transparency, so that developers, builders, and homebuyers can each thrive in an enhanced experience. Today, this industry is filled with 5×7 note cards with customer information, paper maps to manage anti-monotony, and an intensive monthly reporting process done by an analyst cleansing and chasing data.
The second is that even when existing systems work well, they still don’t talk to each other. Those systems may be helping in spots, but they are also creating more data silos.
That manual interaction and lack of connectivity is driving bad data, lots of unnecessary cost and complexity, a prolonged and painful customer experience, and ultimately it’s hamstringing the investment in larger technology platforms.
Addressing this challenge requires a tailored solution that is specific to this industry. It should link developers and builders, automate the manual processes, and be the connective tissue between customer, marketing, and operations data and systems.
Cecilian notes that the combination now comprises an integrated platform to manage up to 100 masterplan communities in North America. It will serve as an automated reporting engine, aiming to reduce friction and stress between developers and builders. At the same time, it improves and enhances consumer-facing user experience, giving customers a transparent look into inventory and options, and enables a faster, less painful sales process. Together with BrightDoor’s CRM and MPC mapping, the combo elevates interactive customer experience solutions that manage lots and builder inventory with detailed data-driven consumer analytics long desired by master plan community developers and homebuilders, all backed by a team focused on service and training. Cecilian Partners’ flagship software platform, dubbed ‘The XO’ (customer experience meets operations data), transforms how community developers and builder partners work together, and how customers experience the home buying process.
We are working in a business where trust and confidence are a challenge,” says Cecilian co-founder and CSO/ Phil Worland. “Our industry, second only to used car sales, is among the least-trusted businesses, and that’s because people from end-to-end in real estate and building’s value chain don’t feel like they’re getting real information. This is where proptech has opportunity – to remove the opacity and have people at each stage get what they’re looking at and getting told they’re going to get.”
