Question

 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 itself. It 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 happier 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;

 tumover among agents had risen by 500%, and in exit 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 skill by providing a system that could enable less skilled agents to perform almost as well as highly skilled ones. Worse still-from 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?

 Adapted from: "The Hidden Minefields in Sales Force Automation Technologies," Journal of Marketing, July 2002, by C. Speier and V. Venkatesh.

Answer 1

1) As System is providing the virtual tour of selected houses listed by company it self, this should be explained how they are selecting the houses. Company has taken survey in country how the survey is done is not mentioned, Here the more concern of the agent is that buyers can directly involve with system thus they are not getting benefits of agent's skill .due to system , less skilled agents are also getting benefited.

2)

As System is providing the virtual tour of selected houses listed by company it self, this should be explained how they are selecting the houses here selected houses is confusing , company should provide description of on which criteria houses are shown on virtual tour, there might be a case that company are considering those houses to show on tour for which they find it hard to sell and no agent want to get that deal.considering. how the survey is done is not mentioned, how many agents participated in survey, what are the profile of the agents are missing,here. here the more concern of the agent is that buyers can directly involve with system thus they are not getting benefits of agent's skill ,due to system less skilled agents are also getting benefited.to mitigate this case company should use rating system for agent , also show agent's past deal on the system, so that agent will not have that issue.

3)  

Company should provide a virtual tour of houses based on buyers need and requirement, it should not be generalized , it should be specialized.As today many portal are available to compete with them they should provide recommendation System engine in portal this system will analyse the buying and selling behaviour of portal users and create customize behaviour for each of the user. there should be separate portal for buyers and for agent, rating system should be provided so that buyers get benefits of better agents