Today you will meet the three Great Estate professionals who make up the IT department of our group, as well as the important work they carry out on a daily basis in order to improve the business of all GE professionals and, consequently, the services and consultant services offered to clients
Welcome back guys, and thanks for your availability! Do you want to tell us something about yourself?
F.C: My name is Francesco Cigna, I am 40 years old, a native of Rome, with a degree in Computer Science. I worked in several small / large software companies and taught programming and data analysis courses for the Region of Lazio.
M.G: My name is Mihai Grigore, 25 years old, born in Romania. I attended the IT Technical Institute in Castiglione del Lago (PG) and worked for a short period in public education as a computer technician.
M.P: My name is Manuel Pucci, I am 24 years old and I was born in Castiglione del Lago, where I attended the IT Technical Institute. I also worked for 2 years in a 3D graphics studio, until I joined Great Estate.
How long have you been collaborating with Great Estate, and what do you do, specifically?
F.C: I have been collaborating with GE since 2016; for the last two years, I am the head of the IT department.
M.G: I have been with Great Estate for just over 1 year, my task is to develop new management software features, as well as improve existing features, increasing performance where possible.
M.P: I have been working at GE for about 2 and a half years and, like my colleague Mihai, I am involved in the development of new management features and, in general, with the maintenance of the IT infrastructure.
What were the most significant innovations that you have designed and applied to the Great Estate management system in the last 3 years?
Our daily work consists of 2 main focus points:
to consolidate the functionalities already present in the CRM and develop new ones.
Both of these aspects are necessary to optimize the work of GE professionals and improve every process directed towards the best client experience. Within the management system there is a reporting system through which users / professionals can report improvements (but also bugs). This allows us to understand their real needs and, consequently, schedule the upgrade based on the complexity of the problem. Since 2018 we have released more than 10 versions of the management software, getting involved in:
– Real estate evaluations a core service of G.E. and the basis for which the entire computer system was built.
– Property management, publication on portals and increase of contents, such as professional and amateur videos.
– Customer management and automatic and personalized communication.
Let’s not forget the New Property Search Tool, which was particularly appreciated by GE professionals, and the integration with Google Calendar, the improvement of one of the systems for real estate evaluation (specifically the evaluation based on the OMI values offered by the Revenue Agency).
Another great daily work concerns the greatestate.it and rightestate.com sites, which continue to grow monthly.
At the beginning of 2020, on greatestate.it we chose to track the viewing of some contents to the login by the customer. Also, the Management System, uses the storage of this data to better understand the customer’s needs.
Also, a tool called Online Statistics was specifically designed for the property seller whereby the seller can view – within a highly customized area – 8 graphs on a single page indicating or detailing the trend / satisfaction of the property in terms of advertising, views, information requests, brochures sent and site inspections.
Last but not least is the attention dedicated to Privacy and the GDPR topic.
How long does it usually take to process and release a new integration?
F.C: Difficult to answer! It depends on the functionality development time and its impact on the system. Then we must add the analysis and comparison times, the drafting of technical / functional documents, and approval and release times–which may vary based on other parallel developments.
M.G: For minor integrations about 2 weeks, while for more consistent ones it can be up to 2 – 4 months, although some may take even longer.
M.P: Giving time for the development of new features is very difficult, because there are no fixed deadlines: some are easier to integrate (if no malfunctions emerge, it takes a few weeks between development and testing); however, other features are more demanding and may take a few months of development plus testing. There are different timelines for different malfunctions and in this case you must work as fast as possible, since the problem could block the work of more professionals, who use several G.E. tools.
Would you like to tell us about the most recent developments of the Great Estate management system upgrade?
F.C: We’ve been working on management software. I have developed the new “On-site or virtual tour” which allows the guided creation of a route consisting of various stages (real estate or any other place) in which the client and real estate consultants participate. The generated route is visible on a Google Maps map, both in the Management System and in the Reserved Area of the customer involved (on the greatestate.it site). Once all the participants have confirmed the tour, the system generates a summary document, with duration and times for each stage, a visitor sheet and an email notification to the customer on the evening of the tour.
At the end of the visits, a feedback system asks the clients to review the properties viewed and the consultants. Going back to the question you asked me earlier, the entire development of this project took 6 months!
Furthermore, on the greatestate.it site we have released a login via the Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter platforms and the “remember me” function which allows you to remain logged in on the site even after closing the browser.
M.G: The last integration I completed was the automatic email planner: a tool that allows us to offer our customers our best properties. In particular, I took care of the general revision of this tool to improve the quality of the properties sent.
M.P: For some months I have been dealing with the automatic publication of properties from our management system to national and international portals, thus optimizing our administrative work, in general, and for all real estate consultants, keeping the advertisements up to date.
We know that, despite being part of a single department, you physically operate from different locations: how do you manage to work in perfect synergy to achieve the objectives?
F.C: In addition to our department’s weekly meeting, we call and use chats constantly. Even if the developments of each resource are best planned, questions always arise that must be examined immediately and with all developers involved.
M.G: We always try to work on different aspects of the team and to avoid a “collision” of sorts with the various new developments; it is clear that this implies constant communication.
M.P: The physical distance could create communication problems for us but, as already mentioned by Francesco, thanks to video calls and messages we are constantly able to work in perfect synergy. The secret that simplifies the work of all of us is certainly the division of work so that nobody works on an aspect that another colleague is already working on.
To conclude, what additions will be released soon by the Management System?
F.C: There is so much in the pipeline! Surely the introduction of WhatsApp as a faster means of communication with customers, and a new, next release of the greatestate.it site that will give our customers a new graphic layout and the expansion of functionalities, such as making evaluations and publishing the sale of properties in complete autonomy.
M.G: I am working on a system that makes it possible to significantly improve the reliability of assessments; in addition, I have a system for managing the working time of each consultant, in order to help them work better and be even more precise with customers.
M.P: Currently, I am working on improving the evaluations, perfecting the system we already have, building and improving the algorithms. At the same time, I am creating a function to simplify the process of managing customers who sign up on the site. Finally, I continue to manage the automatic publication of properties on portals.
Thanks to the daily work of the IT department and, through them, the optimal work level of the consultants and professionals of the group, Great Estate is able to provide our customers, sellers and buyers with increasingly high-performance and cutting-edge services!
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