BREAKING PROPERTY NEWS – 10/11/2022
Daily bite-sized proptech and property news in partnership with Proptech-X.
Homeflow acquires Area Technologies to help agents convert leads into sales
PRESS RELEASE: Homeflow has today announced the acquisition of Area Technologies, the lead management and automation business, thereby further expanding its product suite focussed on helping estate agencies to generate, manage and convert leads.
Homeflow powers hundreds of estate agent websites and provides lead generation software and services to clients covering thousands of offices across the full spectrum of the property market. This acquisition underpins Homeflow’s strategy of empowering agents, through software and services, to make them more effective at finding and winning new business, by adding powerful additional capability to the process of lead qualification and lead management.
The Area Technologies software provides an automated branded response to all leads, qualifies them through a series of online questions, and helps organise and manage a negotiator’s workflow as they convert leads into new business. Once qualified, agents can inject the enhanced customers directly into their agency CRM.
Video Interview about the acquisition
With this acquisition, Shawn Zvinis, Managing Director of Area, joins Homeflow as Head of Product, and Area CTO Erol Ziya joins Homeflow as Head of Solutions Architecture. They will lead the development as Homeflow invests further in the product and in its deeper integration into the Homeflow websites and product platform.
Nik Chotai, Managing Director of Homeflow, commented: “Homeflow has worked closely with Area for several years, and shares a number of mutual clients. We’ve been hugely impressed by the team and the product they’ve built, and we’ve heard first hand from numerous agencies how much it’s transformed how they handle enquiries, qualify those leads and turn them into customers. We can’t wait to introduce it to more agents, and we will be investing further in developing the product. We look forward to welcoming the entire Area team to Homeflow.”
Shawn Zvinis, Managing Director of Area Technologies, added: “After a period of exciting growth, and establishing our market leading position in lead management systems, we are delighted to be joining the Homeflow team. This will enable us to focus on rapidly expanding our footprint and offering our lead management capabilities to many more estate agents. We expect this to be through new product initiatives and we have an exciting roadmap with further product innovations.”
US NEWS: Carats & Cake’s Financial Operating System Implemented at Five Loews Hotels & Co Properties
PRESS RELEASE: Carats & Cake, the financial operating system for property groups, today announced that five Loews Hotels & Co properties have implemented the company’s platform. Carats & Cake added new revenue optimization solutions to its platform in January 2022, each of which is designed to drive fast conversion and increase in spend for property groups.
The platform includes an administrative dashboard, standardized cross-property financial reporting, marketing and sales solutions, as well as contracting, invoicing, and payments products. With Carats & Cake, properties also benefit from valuable data and insights — information that property owners and sales / marketing teams cannot easily get elsewhere — to better inform future marketing strategies. The company’s approach adds value throughout the full customer lifecycle, from acquisition to conversion, which yields increased spend.
The five Loews Hotels & Co properties to implement Carats & Cake include Loews Coronado Bay Resort, Loews Miami Beach Hotel, Loews Chicago Hotel, Loews Ventana Canyon Resort, and Loews Coral Gables Hotel.
“Bringing on hotels from a brand such as Loews Hotels & Co is a huge milestone for Carats & Cake. Throughout the pandemic we listened closely to the pain points of our 4,000 property partners on Carats & Cake, we knew that in order for them to rebound quickly — which Loews & Co. properties have already successfully done — and continue to grow they needed to streamline sales operations, contracting, and digital and mobile customer experiences. We’ve built the end-to-end platform to meet those unique needs,” said Jess Conroy, CEO and Founder, Carats & Cake. “Purpose-built solutions are necessary in the events industry — it’s a high-touch market where every impression counts. Large, special events are high-cost moments yet have long lacked sophisticated payments and financing solutions. We’re excited to deliver the B2B platform for properties to modernize and maximize the revenue potential of events.”
Carats & Cake sits at the nexus of marketing, sales operations, and financing. The solution enables properties to benefit from event booking, management, and financial reporting in a standardized way. Most properties maintain a point-of-sale system on the hotel side of the business, but those are valuable systems with their own requirements distinct from the needs of special events and small group sales. As evidenced by Carats & Cake’s rapid traction, it’s clear property groups have an appetite for improving their operational performance through turnkey software solutions.
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