Creating Value Behind the Scenes

BLUE SPRINGS, MO—When it comes to providing true value to customers, there's a lot going on at Xceligent that the customer never sees. But that doesn't mean they don't benefit. There's a mission at the company to continually enhance the user experience. That drives much of the changes taking place for the data provider, says chief research officer Nate Lipowicz, and in a recent chat, he brought many of these methodologies, typically hidden from the view of its customer base, to light--and what such improvements mean to clients.

GlobeSt.com: What does it mean when we start to discuss internal tools that drive customer value?

Nate Lipowicz: It's a never-ending quest for us to do our research as efficiently as possible, and we're constantly looking for tweaks that will help us redefine the process.  Each improvement to a research process or to the tools used for the process allows us to widen the types of data we collect and deepen the comprehensiveness of the data. For example, say we created a 30% cost savings; we would choose to reinvest that in additional content like layering in additional tenant data with the same dollars spent. We're always challenging ourselves to bring in additional content and improve the quality of that content. That provides a better experience for our customers, and that's what moves the needle.

GlobeSt.com: So, what are you currently working on to create efficiencies and how will that translate to customer value?

Lipowicz: We're actually building a new research interface and database on entirely new architecture, from the ground up, which will allow us to streamline the workflows of our different research departments and add productivity techniques. Right now, each of our research departments (properties, availabilities, sales comparables, tenant, field research, etc.) has its own system. Our research analysts call brokers and update listings in one system, the sales comparables team enters salient transaction points in another system, and so on. Now all of that data rolls up into our customer-facing product, but it makes for difficulties in communication between the research departments and slows down the processes.

Our new Research Center is a unified platform that each department will work in and includes workflow queuing and gamification to increase productivity and quality. This translates directly to customer value by creating much more rapid content delivery, cross-verification for accuracy, and real-time data auditing. So a customer has the most accurate and timely information of any provider in the market with increased confidence to make informed decisions on behalf of their clients.

GlobeSt.com: We recently did a story on your new Direct product. How do the internal tools you describe inform that?

Lipowicz: The level of cross verification allows us to ensure that the customers' website is more accurate and timely, as it is being proactively updated rather than reactively. With many providers, you're looking at up to a 48-hour turnaround between when you have given them a listing update and when that is reflected on your website.

Now let's imagine that ABC Commercial is using our Direct product. Our research analyst calls the broker at ABC Commercial to update the availabilities and learns there is a lease transaction for a suite at 100 Main Street. The Xceligent researcher adds the lease comparable and changes the listing from available to leased, and the listing is automatically updated in real-time on ABC Commercial's website.