Innovation: Why speed and choice for consumers are key in today’s digital age

Speed, choice, and innovation; the recipe for future success

By Isabelle Harris

Business success is centred around the consumer and how one might can best serve them, considering everything from industry-specific needs, to speed and choice.

Of course, this just doesn’t happen overnight; evolution is crucial to get to this point.

Geoff Rohrsheim, entrepreneur and Co-Founder of Australian tech incubator Hatch Creations knows from experience that for any business to survive long-term, they must constantly be on the move.

“It’s really important that any business at any stage of life is considering innovation,” Rohrsheim said.

Ready to be revamped

Australia’s $8 trillion property industry is integral to the national economy. With digital settlements now accounting for 80% of the country’s property exchange, a major evolution is being undertaken industry-wide, priming the sector for continuing innovation.

“There’s all kinds of people looking at all parts of the property supply chain and thinking about how they could innovate,” Rohrsheim said.

This has been the origin for recent industry developments including digital settlements, virtual inspections, and online sales.

Rohrsheim says that for the property industry, moving away from the paperbased system across the board is essential for further innovation and ease of use for everyone involved, including customers.

Tech-based creatives looking at individual aspects, as well as applying their thoughts across the board, are also essential to continuing innovation, especially moving into the fully digital space.

“If it’s on paper, there’s not a lot we can do to innovate.”

An exciting and innovative future

Several up-and-coming digital transformations in the property space are utilising the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) or blockchain technology to improve both speed and choice for consumers and businesses.

For example, PointData is using AI to do the first step in valuing properties, predicting land values, and forecasting market trends, reducing human workload.

Not only is this useful to real estate agents for identifying target sales areas, but also to banks to use for market research, as well as buyers who want an accurate and impartial valuation of their property.

“We want really good, powerful information available to you without any research. It should just be there,” Rohrsheim said, adding that this should be the nature of future buying and selling.

Eventually, smart agents would be harvesting information for buyers that want to purchase in their area, cutting the work down for the buyer significantly. “At the moment, there’s just too much friction in the system, and that’s where innovation can remove that and make it easier.”

Meeting consumer needs

Ultimately, these technologies are designed to reduce inconvenience and work for consumers.

“We’re seeing so much change because the consumer is at the centre,” Rohrsheim said.

And as consumers expect better experiences and more convenient technologies, the industry adapts to improve their options for speed and choice.

This means moving to an entirely digital process.

“They want to fill out a rental application on a coffee break, they want to communicate digitally, and they want to keep track of everything wherever they are, as it should be.”

For example, Real Estate Sales Online (RESO) can produce a report that allows sellers to keep track of their sale in real time, while popular platform 1Form allows online rental applications.

“If paper-based providers stay that way they will eventually fall off the perch, because they won’t be appealing to their customer.”

A property market of the future

Rohrsheim says AI, blockchain, and other digital technology will likely form the backbone of most businesses in the future, including within the property industry.

“The fundamental requirement is that it needs to be digital. Once we’ve got rid of the paper, that’s when smart people can come in and innovate,” Rohrsheim said.

Improved and more widespread use of augmented or virtual reality are also in the pipeline, especially for inspections where future buyers or tenants can’t attend in person.

“Machine learning and AI used to be too expensive for most people to take advantage of, but now you can rent those services from cloud providers and use them to look at your data to come up with usable insights.

“It’s very early days of this kind of tech, but we’re probably going to see more of that appearing, because it’s no longer just the realm of the big guys.”