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OrangeTee pushes digital frontiers with new tech initiatives

By Charlene Chin

/ EdgeProp |

February 22, 2019 10:53 AM SGT

OrangeTee unveiled three new tech initiatives at its annual OrangeTee Business Conference 2019 on Feb 20.

The company will be rolling out new features for its in-house agent app: a ride-hailing option, a component for its agents to create a marketing website, and an e-learning platform. These will be launched by the second quarter of this year.

OrangeTee will be working with ride-hailing service TADA for the first feature. Property agents will be able to book a ride within the agent app, with access to TADA’s 28,000 vehicles.

“It will be a seamless experience for the OrangeTee agent,” says Kay Woo, CEO of MVL, the startup behind TADA. Instead of exiting the agent app to book a cab, the agent will be able to hail a ride from within the app itself, he explains.

OrangeTee hopes to improve its customer service with this feature. “Agents can provide better customer experiences by conveniently hailing a ride for their customer to a property on sale,” says Steven Tan, managing director of OrangeTee & Tie. “They can also call for a ride themselves easily through the app on which they are already doing work, saving much valuable time in the process.”

For the second feature, agents will be able to create a marketing website in three steps, customise the colour and design, as well as modify the URL link. Agents can create as many websites as they want for the properties they market, for free at this stage. The websites will be hosted under the domain name of OrangeTee.

This feature will save agents the trouble of updating various websites as developers announce changes to new launches. Instead, OrangeTee will update the information on the back-end, and all agents’ websites will reflect those changes automatically, Tan explains.

He compares having a marketing website to owning a “virtual shop front”. “It is very difficult and time-consuming for agents [to] build and maintain their own websites,” he adds. It is also costly. “If agents pay $400 to $600 per website and they [market] 10 projects, that could cost $6,000.”

Lastly, OrangeTee is also shifting some of its agent courses to an e-learning platform. Currently, agents have to attend three-hour sessions at the OrangeTee office, which may disrupt their schedules, points out Tan. “If we can help agents to learn on the go, at their own pace and whenever they have any spare time on hand, without the need to come back to office to attend courses or seminars, that would be an ideal situation for them.”

The company is working with KPMG Business School to design the e-learning platform. The courses will be structured in bite-sized sections, with quizzes along the way to help agents retain new information. “E-learning is more effective, because when you attend a class, you sit there for three hours and may not even absorb new information,” Tan notes.

However, not all modules will be replaced with the e-learning option. Those that require guidance and mentorship through experience are better off taught in a class, he says. The Continuing Professional Development (CPD) courses will have to receive accreditation from the Council for Estate Agencies.

EdgeProp Singapore is one of the sponsors for the OrangeTee Business Conference 2019

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