Business systems have long served to automate tasks, facilitate data capture, and enable new opportunities. These processes have crept into virtually all businesses and business processes. RE/MAX real estate agent Rosemary Chiaverini remembers well business 20 years ago and the rather cumbersome process of coordinating key exchanges with fellow agents. “It really limited the number of houses we could show in a day.” A key safe increased productivity by allowing real estate agents to open a key safe at each property. The key locked inside the key safe then provided access to the residence. Showing agents would then leave a business card behind to indicate that they had shown a property, but the listing agent would have to retrieve these cards personally. “I just didn’t know for certain who was seeing my homes or what they thought of them.”
GE Security’s Supra iBox has changed that. Rosemary now uses an electronic, infrared key to open GE’s new key safe, and the key records the transaction. When she synchronizes her key online to update her key’s codes, this information goes up to GE’s database and is shared with the listing agent. With most agents in her area subscribing to this system, Rosemary has Internet access information about who visited one of her listed homes and when. She uses this information to follow up on each visit and gain valuable insights. “Before, I would waste a lot of time calling busy agents who had arranged to show a home but hadn’t.”
a. Use a search engine to look up the Supra iBox. Describe the product’s capabilities.
b. Use a search engine to look up Sprint and the Supra iBox. How has Sprint taken GE’s product one step further?
c. Describe the next-generation product you might sell Rosemary once keyless locks become commonplace.