In4Velocity: Transforming the Real Estate Business Processes Date:   Friday , July 26, 2013 The real estate sector is a major contributor towards the Indian economic growth. With the government's policy allowing Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in this sector, the industry has also witnessed the arrival of several foreign real estate investment companies, the attraction being the high returns on investments. But even when there is no dearth of talent and capital, the Indian real estate industry is struggling to use the resources efficiently. The need of the hour is solution providers who can organize business processes for the optimum use of resources. In4Velocity Systems, India's leading real estate and construction management software company realized this potential market and built apt solutions to cure the woes of the Indian real estate industry. Based in Bangalore, the company is making business processes simpler for their clients under the able guidance of Rahul Chawla, CEO. The idea behind the company's foundation was the unavailability of a specialized enterprise resource management platform for the real estate sector. The company developed the revolutionary product called In4Suite, which is today used by a plethora of real estate developers to transform their business processes for the better. Spread across 11 cities in India the organization is 150 people strong. Like in any other sector, every project in the real estate industry has a life cycle which consists of various stages and each of these stages has its own limitations when it comes to execution. In4Velocity caters to every stage of this life cycle and deals with all the challenges by breaking down the problem into parts and deducing an efficient and faster method to speed up the processes and avoid wastage. "We are like a real estate business built into the software," says Chawla. The company's competence can be adjudged from the industry accolades won by In4Velocity. The company was named Best Product of the Year 2009 by SiliconIndia; Red Herring Winner, Asia 2011; Nasscom Top 50 Product Company 2011 and is the 2009-2011: CREDAI Preferred Partner for Real Estate ERP. Overcoming the Challenges of Real Estate Market In4Velocity's In4Suite is a web based platform which provides end-to-end solutions for real estate developers and infrastructure players. It provides a real time view to the users of all their business processes. It is a good example of how being more informed can help companies shape the business processes in an aerodynamic manner so that the end result reaches the end user in lesser time while at the same time being cost-effective. Living in the age of information has made this industry very robust and the customers are experiencing a new sense of faith. They are involved throughout the process to such an extent that there is visibility in entire process of delivery. Using the product can enable clients to automate their business processes right from land acquisition to engineering, from purchase to sales, and from rental to property management. It delivers detailed functionality for all the key business processes related to this industry. A few of these miscellaneous processes are land acquisition, legal documentation, interaction with government and regulatory bodies, sales/CRM and collections among others. The company works to reduce the cost by preventing pilferage. It allows clients to track the progress at any stage from the point of purchase to the point of consumption. This helps in reducing the loss of materials which is mostly excused as unpreventable. For example, right from the delivery of cement to the consumption of cement, the balance reports are continuously sent to the management. The architecture of the In4Suite consists of database at the core and four layers; users, managers, executives and administrators. This chain of information flow brings transparency. In4Suite has also several advantages over the traditional Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) as it has a strong process and service orientation. Making things simpler and easier for its clients, the product has core web architecture and uses browser as front end. It also requires low bandwidth and has low maintenance costs. Thus, it has replaced the traditional methods of resource planning which are less informative and less versatile when it comes to taking into consideration the indirect business processes. Future Avenues With such a strong product in place Chawla aims at taking the company to be a truly international entity. The company already serves clients from Sri Lanka, Africa, Dubai and Middle East and is working to extend its presence in the rest of the international real estate market as well. The company shows a way to move forward, leaving behind the traditional features of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) which is holding real estate companies back. The model of cloud based solution has still not reached its maturity curve, but Chawla sees bright future prospects with this model. "With the penetration of internet in the business processes increasing day by day, there is a lot of hope in the real estate sector. There should also be emphasis on developing products which are globally compatible to diverse environments of the same culture of real estate and thus making your mark in the international arena," he adds.