What is the vision and purpose of this new software?
Our current platform was innovative at the time, about 15 years ago, allowing clients to log on to a platform and order a survey. The new platform takes it to the next level. We wanted to focus on making it easier and more efficient for our clients to log on to a platform, see all their orders, see its status, and be able to make it more of a collaborative platform and bring it into the 21st century was our goal.
With the development came challenges. This was supposed to be a one-to-two-year development and we are now pushing year three. But we feel like it is at a good point now and provides more value to the clients. We are comfortable with the platform and providing more value to our clients than our current system can offer.
What are the key benefits of the new software for McSteen clients?
When clients are looking to complete a transaction – a real estate transaction or a title transaction – what they are looking for, in general, is efficiency and the least amount of potential issues for that transaction. So, when we thought about what kind of platform our clients would like to use, we looked at something they could log into, see real-time statuses of their orders, enter orders very easily, and possibly use third-party software title solutions and have it go into our platform.
You would hope that most transactions go smoothly and there are no issues – the real value of our platform shines when there are issues or potential problems with the deals so that they can see the status of it and talk with our team. When there is a rush order or something is going on with the deal, they can log in to the platform, communicate with us, and see it in real-time.
How does developing this software give McSteen an edge in the industry?
Lessons learned; how do you go from being a licensed surveyor to a software developer? It was a fun challenge for development. We made the decision to bring the software in-house, but we are surveyors, not developers. My background had a little software development in it so I was able to use that knowledge. But we are building a team, a whole separate division inside of McSteen, which is our software app development team.
It has been a challenge to bring that team up, to have them learn surveying, and then to develop an app for surveyor needs. I often tell them that the work we are doing is groundbreaking; there is nothing like this in the industry.
When other surveyors ask us, how are we able to do the volume of work we do in our system? I say we have this great app and a new one coming out that is even more powerful. It’s really cool to know that not only are we developing new software to make it more efficient and easier for both our clients and our employees, but it’s kinda cool to say that we are making a groundbreaking software platform for an industry that has nothing like it. While other companies are using Excel spreadsheets or pencil and paper, we’re developing a software platform for one of the oldest industries in the world. This transforms the way we do business.
As we look forward and continue to grow, having an internal software development team gives us a huge advantage. If there is a new opportunity, new technologies, and the potential of incorporating AI how that can help our team in the future, no one else is even thinking about that. That gives us a massive advantage. We already have the team on staff familiar with surveying and title so they can bridge those gaps very quickly and develop what we have now, what we are going to launch with, and where we are going to go in the future.
What is the timeline and strategy for rolling out the new software?
Year three of development means we have spent the last two years doing core development of the app. This year we focused less on how to develop the software and more on how to incorporate it into workflow and testing it. We have been testing the software for the past six months via internal micro-beta tests. We just completed our much larger beta test inside McSteen which went really well, and we are really excited about it.
Our plan is to launch this both internally and externally on January 2nd, 2024. We’ve been given great feedback thus far and the coming weeks will be filled with training sessions to smooth everything out. Our employees are excited about the launch of the software and as our clients get to see it, I think they will be excited as well. It’s a lot easier for them to manage their workflow. They are looking for convenience and they are looking for easier ways to make the work simpler. Our current system does a good job, but our new platform takes it to the next level.
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