Seizing the opportunity

Long & Foster vice president and CIO Mike Koval is pushing the idea of mobility to make the real-estate company more responsive to customer needs. In a business where workers often use their car as an office, that means a heavy reliance on mobile devices.

With about 15,000 independent associates and 2,000 of its own employees, Long & Foster is one of the nation’s largest privately held residential real-estate companies, its footprint ranging from southern New Jersey into North Carolina. Ever since Mike Koval took the reins as vice president and CIO some eight years ago, he’s been pushing the idea of mobility to make the company more responsive to customer needs. In a business where workers often use their car as an office, that means a heavy reliance on mobile devices, which the company is using to impressive effect.

What does your IT infrastructure look like?Within our main data center we have about 200 individual servers running different applications. We have three SANs [storage-area networks] that total 100TB-plus worth of storage. All that is integrated with Cisco networking communications gear. We also have servers in all of our sales offices, so that’s about another 240 servers — all managed through our systems back at headquarters.What is the breakdown between company-owned computers and those owned by your independent sales associates?We have probably 5,000 to 5,500 agents who own their own technology and bring it into our systems. That’s complemented by about 4,000 company-owned machines in the field that they can use as well. So, between the two, we have about 8,000 to 8,500 computers on our network on any given day.When did you start deploying wireless devices for data?When I joined the organization in 2000, one of the things I saw that was going to be critical to the success of this business, or pretty much any business for that matter, was the ability to be mobile. So, one of the first projects we did, in the fall of 2000, was to implement 802.11b in every one of our offices, as well as at our corporate headquarters and regional sites. Since then, we’ve upgraded to 802.11g and we’re in the process of upgrading to 802.11n in certain areas.

As far as the mobility devices, I brought a BlackBerry into the company in the spring of 2000 and a BlackBerry Enterprise environment in the fall of 2000. We now have thousands of BlackBerries in the organization and also thousands of Treos, and probably hundreds of Windows Mobile devices. And now the hottest thing is, of course, the iPhone. We have a large and rapidly growing population adopting the iPhone. That includes the [AT&T] EDGE [Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution] network version, Version 1, as well as within the last week I probably had 20 to 25 e-mails about agents and employees who have upgraded to the Version 2, the 3G version. Everybody who’s gotten one has just fallen in love with the device. We support the 802.11g environment on that, and agents are very pleased.

Who owns those mobile devices?If you’re an employee, they’re owned by the corporation. So, Long & Foster owns 300, maybe 400 BlackBerries. Predominantly the devices are owned by the agents. We have strategic relationships with every carrier, and the agents can get preferred pricing on the device and the service. They go buy their own, they own them, although they are connected to our enterprise environment. We have Microsoft Exchange running ActiveSync for the devices that support that, as well as a BlackBerry Enterprise Server environment that supports BlackBerry users.What kind of challenges does that present, having to support a range of devices you don’t own?The most common thing I come across is an agent who is tied like an umbilical cord to the device and then the device breaks, or is lost or stolen. I think we’re pretty good at getting a replacement out within 24 hours. Then it’s just a matter of getting it provisioned, getting all the data transferred over and getting them back to work. We can do all that wirelessly. We have very strong procurement and provisioning processes of the devices through our different vendors. Even the iPhone 3G, frankly, we don’t have a hard time getting. AT&T has been working hard to get the business-enterprise side up and running. We put in an order for some 3Gs, and they were delivered just a couple days after launch. And I buy 50 or 100 BlackBerries at a time, and they come next day. So, procurement is not a problem.

I always have concerns about security. But in a contract environment it’s very difficult or next to impossible to bring in a lot of policies because we’re dealing with independent contractors. We do have remote-kill on every single device that we support. So, if a device is lost or stolen, we provision a new one wirelessly; and if we have to kill the old one, we can send out a poison pill and the device is dead. So, we’re maintaining the integrity of the data.

I do get the occasional issue of associates wanting to look at documents. Some devices are better than others at looking at documents online. The new iPhone is fantastic at looking at Word documents or PowerPoint slides, PDFs and such. I get those requests occasionally, but for the most part it revolves around basic communications, phone and e-mail.

Aside from the poison pill, in what other ways are you dealing with security for these devices?It’s just education, trying to get the communication out there to users to keep their devices in a safe place if they’re going to put all their data on them. Don’t think of this as a PDA anymore. This thing has as much horsepower, as much memory as any laptop you owned three years ago, so treat it as such. Put a password on there, try to keep it locked down, don’t share it. It’s just education and communication.

But the poison pill does offer me a lot of peace of mind. Every day someone loses a device. In just a couple of moments, we can push a button and that device is rendered useless.

Are you able to recover the data?Yes, unless it’s personally stored on their own memory chip, all that data is synchronized, so anything in their mailbox, their calendars, contact lists, we have all that, and we can immediately synchronize it with another device. And we do that wirelessly, so that’s very convenient to the user. As part of our communication and education, we try to tell users that that some of these devices have backup capabilities. I know that sounds funny. Why would you back up your cell phone? And I tell them it’s not a cell phone, it’s a little computer. I think iPhone has done the absolute best job at that. For all the negativity they get because you have to connect to iTunes, every time you stick your iPhone into its dock and synchronize with iTunes, you are making a copy of your data. If that device were to get lost, you could recover the data just like that.Don’t the other devices provide ways to back up data?Oh, yeah, with every device you can. But it requires education and most people don’t have it set up. With the BlackBerry, you have to tether the device, run some software, go to a couple of menus and say back up the device — and you have to do it regularly. The average iPhone user does it every time they stick it in their dock.Let’s talk about the business side of mobility. What applications are you using your mobile devices for?Primarily it’s e-mail, contacts and calendaring. Now, with the power of what the BlackBerry and iPhone can do, we have agents who are pushing content — primarily PDFs of contract forms. They’re pushing those via e-mail, and now have the ability to download and read them. It’s really enabling agents to be more effective.

One of the biggest values of these mobile devices, frankly, is photography. The No. 1 comment that we get on our public Web site always has to do with photography: “great photography,” “not enough photography,” that kind of thing. And it doesn’t have to necessarily be using the mobile device to take a photo, although that is one use of it. But many users are now adopting the tether capability, so they’re taking better-resolution photographs using their regular digital camera, uploading those to their laptop, then using their mobile device as a data modem. They’re able to get information up to the MLS [Multiple Listing Service] — whether it’s photos, contracts, sales offers or price reductions. To me that’s one of the best features of a mobile device, to be able to convert it into a relatively high-speed modem at a very low cost. When agents are trying to write contracts, they can immediately access Xcelerate, our Web-based online-contract system. They can submit contracts or payments. The BlackBerry and the Palm have become little buddies to these agents who are doing this stuff remotely. It’s a fantastic additional benefit.

With the release of the iPhone and App Store, I think that’s going to be a wake-up call to every vendor. Palm has always had the Palm store, but they’ve had a lot of difficulty; and frankly, I question their ability to survive. BlackBerry has some applications. iPhone App Store has just exploded onto the scene with some really good stuff. Some big-name companies are already developing applications. EBay has applications, The New York Times, Oracle. I suspect there will be a very large number of applications that’ll enable the average user to do some pretty extraordinary things on the wireless device.

We are also developing some applications for the iPhone around search, allowing customers to search for properties and store them on their iPhone so they can look at photos, look at content, and e-mail it to others. We’re doing that right now and will hopefully be releasing that in the very near future.

You also have your CRM system tied to these mobile devices, right?Yes, we do. Right now we use a PeopleSoft CRM solution.We are pushing notification and content to our agents when opportunities or leads come in for them. So, the agents get the opportunity information directly on their mobile device and they are required to respond to it in a very very rapid fashion — within an hour.Can you walk me through how that works from end to end?

Suppose someone is browsing on the Web and finds a property they’re interested in seeing, or has some other real estate-related activity they’re interested in — maybe they want insurance or a mortgage. Primarily it’s around the desire to look at a home, which we call a showing. We have an online calendaring system that allows them to pick what time they want to see it. An event gets created and is sent to our CRM system. It goes through a set of business rules we’ve created — a series of yes or no decisions to ensure the opportunity is sent to an agent who specializes in the area that the customer wants. It then goes through a picker system that we built, which uses its own rules and decision process to pick the next available agent. There’s also a human viewer capability that we can use if need be. As soon as the picker system [selects an agent], the information is delivered to the wireless device in an optimized format. It’s quick to read and has information on what the opportunity is, along with a link to click for additional information. We don’t give all the information to the agent because there’s a clock. They have to respond within a certain period of time, say one hour. If they don’t respond within an hour, that opportunity goes back into our picker system and is given to somebody else. The intent is to meet or exceed the customer’s expectations and hopefully create some business. We can also manage and benchmark every opportunity that comes in, so we can see whether agents are responding as quickly as they should. Is 24 hours good enough? Heck no, this is 2008. We’re looking for people to respond quickly — five to 10 minutes would be wonderful. And the only way you’re going to accomplish that is if you have a wireless device connected to some system — in our case, CRM — to make it all happen. If you’re relying on voice mail and phone calls and faxes, forget about it. You can’t do it. It’s not going to work.

What was the process before you had this system?We were basically getting e-mails and had some third parties sending us leads. People were going through the opportunities manually, to clean and scrub them and give them to the right agents.Any way to assess the business benefits you’ve derived from that CRM application as well as the others you’ve implemented for mobile devices?There’s no question we’ve been able to align ourselves more with customer expectations. If we didn’t do any of these things, we would’ve absolutely lost customers. There are lots of Web sites related to real estate across the Internet. It’s highly competitive. If you didn’t have these systems in place, you’d be at a significant disadvantage. It may even be to the point where, you’re no longer on life support, the patient’s dead; it could be that bad. The National Association of Realtors, in its annual technology report talks about how 86% to 87% of people are browsing for their property online. Without the technology we’re speaking of, we wouldn’t be able to compete. What I say is, if we’re not doing this stuff, we don’t even get a chance to bat. If you don’t bat, you can’t win the game.Are there any ways the mobile infrastructure fosters collaboration between agents, or between agents and the home office?

Absolutely. You could be at the settlement table and something is completely falling apart and there’s a possibility of losing the deal. What do you do? You take out your mobile device and communicate to your manager, ask questions, get approval for exceptions. In the old days, you’d pick up phone. Well, we’re a mobile workforce. Try finding somebody on the phone. Even with a cell phone, a lot of people won’t answer if they’re in a meeting or some other kind of activity. But with a mobile device, it’s OK if you — in an unobtrusive way — take it out to read the e-mail quickly and respond. We’re trying to define what etiquette is acceptable and what isn’t, but there’s not a meeting that I go into where half or more of the people aren’t taking out their devices and reading them. Our agents also sometimes work as teams, so the devices are enabling teams to communicate effectively about different activities, showings, what property has just come on the market and so on. These things are critical to our success.

Have you ever tried to calculate the ROI you get from these devices?I don’t think that’s something I could really even begin to do the math on. I can only tell you that, in my estimation, it’s significant. If somebody has a way, let me know. I just don’t think there’s a way to do it.What are some of your future plans with respect to mobile data? Any new services, applications or capabilities you’re looking into?

It’s just applications. We’re going to have more applications available for our users, both internally and externally. We’re going to have more applications for the public to use. These devices are really handheld computers that have tremendous functionality. An iPhone-like device ultimately may be a person’s only personal computer. You’ll just plug that device into a monitor, keyboard and some pointing device like a mouse. Your computer is with you at all times. At the same time you’ve got WiFi, whether it be 802.11; maybe in the near future these guys introduce WiMAX to it so you’ve got even faster broadband available to you at reasonable prices.

What applications are you looking at specifically?For me it’s going to be the Web. I want to have a phenomenal Web browser that’s just there and ready to go. It’s going to be the tools that I use every day — e-mail, calendaring, the Web. I want to be able to see my benchmarking tools that provide me with business analytics and intelligence to make good decisions. I want very targeted content. I want to see how my key performance indicators are doing, and my systems. And hopefully the interfaces will get better on these devices so I can input data. I want to be able to input data on forms easier and faster.Any advice for others embarking on mobile data initiatives?As users come on the system, be able to support them, have the help desk trained and such. You should also go out into your workforce and understand what their needs are. Look at what their functional requirements are and try to find applications that will help them. I think we’re going to go though a renaissance in how software and hardware is looked at from mobile devices, now that the enterprise is quickly becoming very fond of the iPhone. That’s going to generate just huge demand for new software tools. It’s a matter of the IT department talking to the business units, understanding the requirements and being able to support it.

Getting personal: Mike Koval

Title: Senior Vice President & CIO

Company: Long & Foster Real Estate

Responsibilities: All technology in the organization, working with senior executives on business strategy, aligning technology with business needs, and using technology to create new business.

Number of IT staff: 76

Education: B.S. Finance, University of Maryland; master’s degree in IT from Johns Hopkins University

Previous jobs: Worked at Bearing Point (previously KPMG Consulting) for seven years as a senior manager focusing on software selection and implementation for midsize to large organizations.

First computer: “For college graduation, my parents bought me a brand-new Macintosh 512K.”

Home network: A gigabit LAN, both wired and wireless, runs through the house, supporting five Macs, six or seven PCs and a full-blown Windows Server 2003 “running the show.” There’s also satellite-based DirecTV HD, Comcast 8M cable modem, VoIP phone service and a VPN connection: “You name it, I got it.”

Words to live by: “I’ve got two personal slogans: ‘Nothing is impossible. The impossible only takes a little bit longer.’ And ‘It wasn’t raining when Noah built the ark.'”