BHHS Fox and RoachBHHS Fox and Roach REALTORS® is among the largest real estate brokerages in America, wholly owned by HomeServices of America, a Berkshire Hathaway Company. Fox and Roach is among the crown jewels of HomeServices in terms of size and volume along with Edina Realty, Long and Foster, Ebby Halliday and others. They have long maintained a commitment to delivering world class technology solutions to their agents and the customers they serve. Over the past two years, they have been focused on creating the most modern and best integrated platform for agents, rivaling any enterprise solution found in America today.

Introducing ACE – Agent Center of Excellence

Unlike traditional siloed agent marketing platforms, ACE seamlessly integrates multiple best in class marketing technologies into one cutting edge platform that is innovative, flexible and easy-to-use. The platform is designed to be agent focused and data driven, delivering powerful CRM, lead management, listing alerts, digital marketing tools and agent intranet from one centralized portal. As industry applications improve and evolve, the system will continually adapt and individual applications can be replaced with more competitive software.

The company intranet acts as a hub for all of their agents – but underneath it all is a system of data connectivity between applications and single sign-on. Customer records in one application are moved over to other applications using a network of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). Agents can customize home screen on the ACE Dashboard (developed by Reliance) with simple drag and drop functionality. This makes every tool they provide to agents accessible from a single place, and of course it works on any mobile device. No more hunting for tools, no more struggle with passwords, no more duplicate entry of data.

“After nearly two years of research, we realized investing in a best-in-class approach was the only way to continuously provide our agents with the most advanced technology to maximize their business. We are genuinely committed to providing best-in-class tools and services to our agents to service their clients through innovation and key partnerships in the industry. As agents begin utilizing ACE, they will find running their day-to-day business is easier, more effective and highly efficient.” said Rajeev Sajja, Vice President of Digital Innovation.

“Our primary goal is to help our agents form stronger relationships with their clients”

The primary components of ACE are:

  • Contactually® CRM
  • SmartZip® Pre-Mover Scores
  • RealScout® listing alerts
  • Reliance Network® custom agent and team websites.
  • ActivePipe ®automated, listing powered email marketing platform
  • Buyside® Property Snapshot™ campaign for Home Owners and other seller lead generation that can be started in Contactually
  • GSuite – with Sync to Contactually and the agents phone or tablet
  • LiveBy Community data that agents can include that information in the customer communications
  • Forms and Transaction integration with DocuSign® Rooms for Real Estate™

Obviously, Fox and Roach has more than these vendors – I did not list them all. And, I can tell you that they are some pretty significant ones. All vendors are hustling to get more integrations done, so this first generation solution that already does more than just about any broker solution, and it was just born in December! There is only so much that the agents can consume at a time.

Here is a little taste of the AI capabilities within ACE – a consumer saves their search anywhere. The saved search automatically adds the customer into Contactually, starts delivering the saved searches though RealScout, and enrolls the consumer into the Buyside Property Snapshot™ Report that lets homeowners know what their house is worth. Even an open house visitor captured on Spacio can trigger a listing alert from RealScout and / or a drip campaign in Contactually to power intelligent marketing automation.

If you are a broker looking to raise the bar on your tech, pay attention to Fox and Roach. If you compete with them, you really need to focus on your game. If you want to recruit their agents, you need something as good. If you want to retain your agents from their recruiters – you need to step up too.

We are beginning to see the HomeServices of America firms collaborate on best practices. I think that they benefit from not having one solution for every brokerage. Some may want to use something else, and those executives need to have the freedom to get what they need to compete in their local market. If you have the best brand, best technology, and competitive commission program – 2019 is going to be a breeze.