Wednesday, July 09, 2008

On standards and marketing....

Through work we interact with quite a few other businesses. Some of them are in a similar space to us - providing tools for valuers to get the job done.

The way we all talk is a mixture of LIXI, an xml standard for describing valuations and other bits of the loan process, and SOAP to do the transport.

Modeling a valuation report is a very complicated thing - it usually takes at least two developers around 3 months to get the most common flavor 95 percent correct. Even then, because of the intricate variances; it takes a real valuer, not a developer, to work out the last 5%.

I know there are several valuation firms who deal with us who have undertaken this, and gotten it right. I've generally enjoyed working with them, because they just get it.

That being said, I still spend large parts of my day ever cautiously alert for yet another complaint about something not quite working - and it's largely attributable to one product in particular.

So; it comes as a huge surprise to find google adwords appearing on this very blog claiming blatant untruths about their product's fitness, features, stability and general standards adherence.

This product has cost me many hours of my working life, the company owner appears to be nothing more than a profit focused salesperson.

This is a constant source of frustration for myself and many of my coworkers.

In summary, I would advise anyone who is looking for valuation firm software / valuation management systems to strongly research their available options and choose wisely - it's a hard thing to get right, and some of the better marketed systems around are certainly not the right choice.

No comments: