Question

Building a Bad System? 

Several years ago, a well-known national real estate company built a computer-based system to help its real estate agents sell houses more quickly. The system, which worked in many ways like an early version of realtor com, enabled its agents to search the database of houses for sale to find houses matching the buyer's criteria using a much easier interface than the traditional system. The system also enabled the agent to show the buyer a virtual tour of selected houses listed by the company rel. ll was believed that by more quickly finding a small set of houses more closely matching the buyer's desires, and by providing a virtual tour the buyers and the agent) would waste less time looking at unappealing houses. This would result in happler buyers and in agents who were able to close sales more quickly leading to more sales for the company and higher commissions for the agent. 

The system was designed with input from agents from around the country and was launched with great hoopla The initial training of agents met with a surge of interest and satisfaction among the agents and the project team received many congratulations. 

Six months later, satisfaction with the system had dropped dramatically, absenteeism had increased by 300%, and agents were quitting in record numbers turnover among agents had sen by 5005, and in mai interviews many agents mentioned the system as the primary reason for leaving. The company responded by eliminating the system with great embarrassment. 

One of an agent's key skills was the ability to find houses that match the buyer's needs. The system destroyed the value of this skil by providing a system that could enable less skilled agents to perform almost as well as highly skilled ones. Worse Tom the viewpoint of the agent the buyer could interact directly with the system, thus bypassing the expertise of the agent. 

Questions 

1. How were the problems with the system missed? 

2. How might these problems have been foreseen and possibly avoided? 

3. In perfect hindsight, given the widespread availability of such systems on the Internet today, what should the company have done?

Answer 1

Answer 1=

            As the system was treated as a solution to have improved customer satisfaction results in the failure of the system. Customer satisfaction and customer retention are the two areas where all the firms target to perform better. The efforts are made in order to increase sales and revenue. Accomplishing the established targets and looking for the various methods of analyzing the KPIs are aimed by many firms. Because of these elements, the role of sales force activities is being ignored by the firms which are the prime factor in having a better customer relationship which cannot be obtained with the help of an application. It is the experience of the sales team which has a greater impact. Any system cannot replace the skills and experience of the individuals and the activities of the customers have been curtailed significantly they can visit the property without having the inputs from the salesperson. The customers can look for the available houses simply by logging in to the system and without having any interaction with the salesperson can buy the property.

The development of technology is done in order to help people rather than taking their jobs or livelihood away from them. While developing the system, the aim was not to overcome the involvement of the sales team. This application was developed as a new system to show the properties virtually but during the development of this system, the fact that this could lead to avoiding the interaction with the sales team was not considered.

Answer 2=

First of all, a pilot test must be performed by the team before launching it in the public. This pilot testing would facilitate the management and sales team to use this application before its commercialization. The feedback obtained from the users can be used to implement the application in the best possible manner. If there are any limitations of problems, those can be sorted out with the help of this feedback

Answer3=

The proper research must be conducted by the firm to understand the reasons behind the failure of a similar system in other firms and try to find the methods of overcoming those failures. There are some perceptions which indicate that the company lacks the commitment towards their work as they want to implement the technology. This resulted in decreased job security and job satisfaction

The company can also look to rent a similar system in the market so that the expenses and loss of manpower can be overcome as it is quite easy to stop a certain service in comparison to lose the qualified and experienced team of skilled manpower.