See exact Tech Plan requirements in the Homework Assignment Handout. Similarity rating must be less than or equal to 15% or you will lose 1 point off your grade for each percentage point over 15%. Late penalty of 1% per day applied for papers not submitte

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Technology Plan: Real Estate Agency

Business Description

Ace Real Estate Agency is a Real Estate Agency located in Kodiak, Alaska where houses

go unnoticed and unsold for long periods of time. We think with our different approach to

customers, people will be more interested in the homes we put for sale. With being a fishing

community, fishermen bring home a lot of money at one time, looking for houses to put a down

payment on; Kodiak is also a high traffic area for the United States Coast Guard, who as well

like owning homes, therefore our target market is residents from age 20 and up. With the size of

Kodiak being roughly 14,000 people, not too much staff is needed to manage this island that’s

why our size of our business will be roughly 9-19 employees which should be more than enough.

The way we plan on gaining customers selling more homes than everyone else is our highly

technology savvy operations enabling the customers to do mostly everything online and on their

own, by the time they walk through the house, they will know everything.

Strategy

Social media and e-commerce is very important to our success in Ace Real Estate

Company. We are all about Micro-Blogging; it is basically free marketing and customer service

for us. Micro-blogging also enables us to satisfy the needs of a lot of people at the same time

because the same question a customer asks online, another customer is thinking about. In

addition to Micro-blogging, we will have a very user friendly website, with the intentions to

highly educate our customers on the home with 3-d tours, detailed information, pros and cons,

and other homes in the same category. B2C e-commerce would be our preferred way of

communication to our customers, with sites like Facebook, Twitter, Radio Ads, and newspaper

ads. This will give me a huge competitive advantage because the other four Real Estate Agencies

do not use social media as a booster.

Data Processing Needs

The two applications that I compared were most compatible for our Customer

Relationship Management. These types of applications are meant for Real Estate companies

because being a two-sided market, we as a company need to keep good track of our customers.

Also making sure that we have great customer service for the customers, making them want to

come and tell others; the more B2C we have, the more revenue we can gain. There are quite a

few benefits of using B2C e-commerce is that we can reach worldwide market with unlimited

volume of customers. We can display information, pictures, and prices of products or services

without spending a lot of money on colorful paper advertisements. Last, but not least, E2C can

operate and be successful on little, or even no overhead costs, which is cost efficient.

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Through micro-blogging we will gain a large diverse customer base because. The

benefits of using this in a Real Estate setting is that no other companies use micro-blogging as a

tool because of its short character count of about 140 characters, but I feel like we can capitalize

on this by giving a “seeding” effect. With a picture and a few highlights of the house, this will

bait the customer into clicking on the link to our main webpage, where they can view 3-D tours

and all. With all of this being stated, I would choose to use Microsoft Dynamic CRM because of

its capabilities that SalesForce doesn’t have. For instance, Microsoft Dynamic CRM is meant for

10 or more users at about $21 less per person which both are satisfying our needs. Also

Microsoft Dynamic CRM has the offline capabilities that follow my business direction, unlike

Salesforce, not to mention that doesn’t have territory management like most Real Estate

Agencies suggested to have as a feature.

Software Requirements Microsoft Dynamic CRM Salesforce

CRM Application Online Yes Yes

Accommodate for 10 or More Users Yes No

Components of Software Available on Mobile Device Yes Yes

"Offline" Capabilities Yes No

Manage Sales Opportunities No No

Marketing Campaigns & Activities Yes No

Trouble or Service Tickets/Cases Yes Yes

Reporting & Business Analysis Yes Yes

Price is Below $45 Per Person Yes No

Two processes that would be streamlined through the use the system Microsoft Dynamic CRM

would be the process of offline data access and instant messaging capabilities. We need these

two things to maintain our business model for availability and great service.

Process 1: The offline data access is a huge process needed in our business plan. We plan on

being very mobile and available for customers. This also is a great help to the iPad app, enabling

out agents to take iPads out to customers where ever they are and show them the detailed

numbers.

Process 2: Instant messaging process on the software enables co-workers communicate all

within one program, but this feature is most helpful on the B2C side, because customers can

instant message Agents through our link on our webpage, with faster responses and also freeing

up phone lines for customers without access to the internet.

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Operating Environment

For the software I chose, Microsoft Dynamic CRM, there are a couple system requirements. The

software system requirements are Windows 7, Microsoft Windows Vista, Windows XP

Professional SP3, Windows XP Tablet PC Edition SP3, or Windows XP Professional x64

Edition. Other system requirements are Processor (32-bit): Multi-core 1.8-GHz CPU or higher,

Processor (64-bit): Multi-core x64 architecture 2GHz CPU or higher such as AMD Opteron or

Intel Xeon systems, Memory of 1 GB RAM, Hard disk: 400MB of available hard disk space, and

a Display of Super VGA with a resolution higher than 1024 x 768. With the information I know

right now, I will be purchasing a Windows based desktop for my company, along with Apple

iPads to use as mobile devices. These devices will need internet capabilities for the initial

process, but the offline feature enables us to not always need connection.