Property & IT fair in Sweden

Finally, (five years since the last one) today there was a fair in Sweden entirely focused on smart use of IT within the property industry. This Property & IT fair in Stockholm was arranged by the Seminar Design Group.

IT-Dagen_Utstallning_200px.jpg(Actually the name for the day was, in Swedish, "Sänk kostnaderna genom EFFEKTIV INFORMATIONSHANTERING i ditt fastighetsföretag", i.e. "Reduce cost through efficient information management in your property company". That's not a catchy name!)

 

More pictures are to be found at Flickr.

 

The day attracted some 150 attendees and 6 (?) exhibitors. I was impressed by the former number (being the first one in five years) but not the latter number.

The overall impression
As one of the exhibitors I had a great day with a number of potential customers and a possibility to meet up with other companies in the business. (There were more suppliers attending then exhibited).

The speakers
The ones to be remembered was Bo Tyrefors, who had a great presentation about the work on a XML standardization done be Fi2 organization, and Niklas Walldan's presentation on the focus on processes within AP Fastigheter (one of the biggest property companies in Sweden). (My humble opinion is that some of the other speakers need to focus on improving their presentation skills.)

The exhibitors
The following companies where present;
Datscha     Online information and analyse solution  (full disclosure)
LEB             Property Management Software
3L                Property Management Software
NSI              Building automation systems and HVAC controls
Zon56        Outsourcing partner
CAD-Q       CAD consulting

Hopefully, this will be an annual fair.
There is a need in the market.
However, maybe not an interest...

 

Blogs covering the Inman event i NY

Ongoing in New York this week is the InmanNews event "Real Estate Connect NY 2007". I didn't have the opportunity to go there myself but with the benefits of other bloggers I could be able to (at least) take a sneak peak.

Here are some bloggers covering the event.

The Sellsius blog   (http://blog.sellsiusrealestate.com/)
As always a very active blog and so even at the IN event. For a walk through of the exhibition area, take a look at the video below. Inman_NY_v2_317px.gif

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

(By the way, I like the name of this company....)

FOREM (http://www.futureofrealestatemarketing.com/)
I'm sure Joel will be adding post at an ongoing rate.

The IM event blog   (http://nycblog.realestateconnect.com/)
A way for attendees to set up a personal blogging account.

3Oceans (http://3oceansrealestate.com/blog/)
Kevin is adding comments on the different presentations.

TrueGotham (http://www.truegotham.com/)
Sums up the day.

Redfin (http://blog.redfin.com/blog/redfin/2007/01/at_real_estates_big_inman.html)
Glen Kelman at Redfin has a great post about the experience to be on the panel head on with Alan Dalton from the Move.com. Here is a follow up from 3Oceans. Another one at TechCrunch.

Keep up the good work fellow bloggers.

 

Update 13th January

I missed one blog that has done a great job to cover the Inman Event.

RealTownReport    (http://realtownreport.realtownblogs.com   )
Frances Flynn Thorsen has put together a number of posts about her experiences from the Inman Event. Includes a large number of photos.

I also noticed that Inman News picked up the list above.

ARGUS and Circle merges

Full disclosure: I'm the Product Manager for a Swedish DCF product. Read more here.

RealmCircle.gif

 

 

 


A MAJOR supplier of DCF (Discounted Cash Flow models) solutions has been created when the UK based Circle Software Ltd and US based Realm Business Solutions Inc have decided to merge (The press release).

"Two leading providers of software solutions to the commercial real estate industry, London-based Circle Software and Houston-based Realm Business Solutions, today announced the merging of their respective firms into one global entity.

Based in London , Circle Software was founded in 1990 by Adrian Katz, a designated member of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors. Circle’s flagship product is Visual Investor, a property and portfolio valuation software program that is the current industry standard in the UK and is broadly used in many countries within continental Europe and the Asia Pacific region where the UK capitalisation approach is employed. Circle also produces and markets CircleDeveloper, the worldwide standard for development appraisals and pro formas.

Realm’s flagship product, ARGUS, is the industry standard among those countries and companies that employ the discounted cash flow (DCF) methodology to value real estate assets. Pioneered and made popular in the US , DCF methodology is quickly gaining the endorsement of many international standards organisations and universities. Realm’s product suite also includes popular tools for property management, portfolio management and budgeting, automated leasing, business intelligence and collaboration and workflow management. "

This merge will indeed be interesting to follow.
I don't have any numbers but this new company has to be, by far, the number one on the market. Any directory of Investment Analysis Software is too be long but I doubt any other supplier is even close.

 

Hus.se to be an informationportal for house owners

Martin Edenström at What.se published a great post about Internet services for the real estate market (in Swedish).

Hus_se_140px.gif
One of the services covered, to be released later in 2007, is hus.se (in English that would be house.com). There aim is to be an information portal and community for house owners.

Behind the initiative is Quality Unlimited AB in Umeå, which started of by purchasing the domain www.hus.se for 400 000 SEK (about 60 000 USD).

Skandiamäklarna invests in online marketing

The Swedish brokerage firm Skandiamäklarna will, according to an article in Dagens Media, shift the marketing to focus mainly on online for 2007.

A starting point is a new site, valkommenhem.se (Welcome home), aiming to inform and inspire home buyers.

SkandiaMaklarna_Intro_450px.gif

For example, the site gives you the opportunity to see the effect of home styling.

SkandiaMaklarna_Value_Low_300px.gif

SkandiaMaklarna_Value_High_350px.gif

 

 

 

The Swedish consulting firms need to pay attention to Google

The Swedish commercial real estate market has been very popular for many years to international investors. For example, some  years up to 70% of the investments have been done by non-Swedish investors.

Today I went through the statistics, provided by Squarespace, for this blog regarding 'Search Engine Queries' (that is, phrases used by people that eventually end up at this site) and to my surprise I found that quite a few had been using "Swedish real estate 2007 outlook".

Of course, I tried it and to my surprise I made it to number one!
Shouldn't that place be 'owned' by some of the larger commercial consulting firms in Sweden? I guess they don't do to much of Search Engine Optimization...

Swedish_Outlook_450px.gif

 

 

 

How Salesforce could boost their sales in Sweden

While attending the Salesforce Event in Stockholm on the 7th of December I realized that Salesforce is doing the sales rather complicated for themselves.

Salesforce_Sthlm_2006-12-07_200px.gif

First of all, use examples that are familiar to the audience.
Running a demo with names like 'Universal Containers' and a user named ''Adam Perot' doesn't make it familiar to business people in Sweden. Why not have names like 'Stockholm Transport AB' and 'Sven Johansson'?

Secondly, use the Swedish language version of the tool.
If Salesforce is available in Swedish (as I was told by a salesman), why running the demo on the English version?

Finally, local presence is great, but you also need to make it obvious.
One thing that really impressed me what the number of Salesforce people attending the event. (Even if I assume quite a few were brought in from the London office.) This is not the impression you got while surfing the Salesforce site. For example, you are able to choose 'Svenska' (the word for 'Swedish') in the top menu, but that only takes you to the UK version! (Why even bother having the choice?) The same with all the material, none in Swedish.

Does it matter?
I believe it does. Most(?) managers choose suppliers that they believe understand their business situation and will be there if something happens. How about support and training? If they don't even has sales material in Swedish, will they have manuals in Swedish? 

My tip to Salesforce, if serious about their business in Sweden, is to make it obvious for everyone that the service is available in Sweden/Swedish. Don't have us guessing.

The event in total?
It was great. The presentations by Mats Gustavsson from Wednesday Relations was inspiring. Moreover, the highlight of the event was to hear first hand experience of Salesforce from a customer. Göran Möllebo, Sales Development Manager,  at Pan-Nordic Logistics seems to be a very satisfied Salesforce customer

I also had the opportunity to exchange cards with Salesforce customers. The best source for information since I'm going to evaluate the system for a potential switch of CRM supplier. Especially since the demo of Winter 07 release looked very impressive.

No Real Estate winner at SIME 2006

SIME_06_350px.gif

HemOnline didn't win the Award for Best e-Commerce Company at the Scandinavian Interactive Media Event (SIME 06) last week. (It went to TailorShirts.)

I didn't have the opportunity to visit the event, but below are some reports from the blogosphere.
   - Photos on flickr or Glife  
   - Lotta about Tariq Krim and Netvibes
   - Martin Varsavsky entry on his speach (founder of the free WiFi network fon)
   - Lummaland (in German)
   - The winners of the SIME Awards

SBAB launches a residential information service

The Swedish residential mortgage lender SBAB (www.sbab.se) launched a residential information service (named "Storstadsguiden") this Friday. It's a free service that shows medium price per square meter for apartments in Stockholm, Göteborg and Malmö.

SBAB_StorstadsGuiden_350px.gif

Each town is divided in 15 - 30 sub markets. Each sub markets has a value based on actual transactions provided by Ljungqvist Information, which also runs the comparable sales service Ljungqvist (previously named treF).   

The pressrelease is found here (in Swedish).