Mitsubishi Estate House Net Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Mitsubishi Estate House Net) operates real estate sales brokerage and rental management services in the Tokyo metropolitan area, Chubu region, Kansai region, Hiroshima, and Fukuoka. Under the brand name "Mitsubishi Estate's Housing Relay," the company aims to improve the value of housing from three perspectives: asset value, comfort, and the joy of living.
For several years, the company has been actively investing in DX and IT, and one of its core initiatives is the complete migration of mission-critical system, core system supporting its real estate brokerage business to Salesforce. To realize a system that can integrate with various external data and centrally check and manage necessary information, DataSpider Cloud was adopted.
Customer Issues
- We want to be able to centrally access all necessary data in the new mission-critical system, core system we are building.
Benefits of implementation
We consolidate integration with various external systems and data into DataSpider Cloud
We aim to reduce development costs and time, and provide nearly complete support for data integration that meets the requirements.
We have created an "evolving platform" that can flexibly accommodate the addition of partner companies and other features.
Background: Aiming to improve the sophistication and efficiency of real estate brokerage operations, we migrated mission-critical system, core system to Salesforce.
The rise of Proptech (real estate technology) and the deregulation of electronic contracts are just some of the trends driving the digital shift that are sweeping through the real estate industry. Mitsubishi Estate House Net is also tackling DX as an essential theme for achieving significant growth, and as part of this effort, in August 2020, they launched a project to revamp mission-critical system, core system used for sales brokerage operations at their 38 locations nationwide (as of 2023).
"Our goal is to streamline and eliminate business processes and to improve and streamline our intermediary operations. At the same time, we wanted to create an advanced and sophisticated system so that we could become an attractive company that is a rewarding place to work for our employees (Mr. Ohara)."
Group Leader, Corporate Planning Department and Head of DX Promotion Office
Mr./Ms. Yuji Ohara
The new system, centered around Salesforce for managing customer and contract information, and integrating with various other data such as appraisal information, map information, and property information, was named "Acssy." A major challenge in developing the concept was integrating with external data.
"Previously, we had to input the same information into multiple systems, and check multiple systems for each piece of information we needed. Also, in the real estate industry, we often need to refer to information that is available on the market, not just internal company information. The key is how to consolidate external information in one place and link it automatically, along with automating processes that were previously done manually. Furthermore, from the perspective of accumulating usable data, it was important to have many partners and incorporate information into the company (Mr. Ohara)."
We adopted DataSpider Cloud as data integration platform that can efficiently aggregate external data.
Regarding data integration with external systems, Fujitsu, which is responsible for Salesforce development, proposed DataSpider Cloud. It is a cloud-based ETL tool with a wide range of cloud services it can connect to, and of course, it can integrate with Salesforce. Compared to development from scratch, it also has the advantage of reducing development costs and shortening delivery times.
"To be honest, when DataSpider Cloud was proposed to us, we didn't fully understand all of its features. Naturally, what we were most concerned about was whether we could meet our requirements within our budget, and I distinctly remember being attracted to DataSpider Cloud 's ability to efficiently aggregate information (Mr. Ohara)."
Thus, it was decided that external data integration would be implemented using DataSpider Cloud.
By using Salesforce and DataSpider Cloud appropriately for each situation, we can achieve a well-balanced implementation.
The development was led by Fujitsu. DataSpider Cloud is characterized by its ability to easily connect systems using a GUI, but this time there are many connections. With future maintainability in mind, the design aimed to standardize common processes as much as possible.
"When it comes to data integration with external systems, we struggled with defining the items that were necessary before implementation. We had to consider what format the data was in, what format it needed to be in, and how the data was stored, as these systems differed from one another."
Distribution Operations Department, Senior Manager
Mr. Makoto Nagasu
- The department names are as they were at the time of the interview.
"There were many aspects we had never considered before, such as whether the data was in list format or text format, so the adjustments were quite challenging. However, once we had defined them, we were able to handle data transformations on DataSpider Cloud side (Mr. Nagasu)." Data checks were performed in Salesforce, and transformations and processing were handled by DataSpider Cloud and other tools, using them appropriately where needed to achieve the best balance. In some systems that handle sensitive personal information, a special encryption format was required for data exchange, so a configuration was adopted where data is linked via an intermediate server for decryption. "In real estate, we handle sensitive data such as personal information, so security is an extremely important matter, but we were able to build a secure data integration foundation, including encryption processing (Mr. Nagasu)."
The new system infrastructure is in place. We aim for further evolution, including the addition of data integration partners.
"Acssy" went live in February 2022. Because the business system was completely revamped and business processes changed, there were initially some confusion among employees as they struggled to get used to using it. However, gradually, comments such as "It's convenient because the previously scattered information is now centralized" began to be heard. In particular, all the manual data integration processes, such as exporting data from one system and importing it into another, have been automated, significantly reducing the burden of administrative work.
"Until now, we've left all the development of DataSpider Cloud to Fujitsu, but the GUI is easy to understand, and we think we could implement automated integration and other features ourselves," (Mr. Ohara).
First, we will proceed with implementing some of data integration that we were unable to fully develop this time, while also listening to requests and opinions from employees. "The foundation of the system is now in place. We introduced it with the premise that it would be an 'evolving platform,' and we recognize that we are still at the starting point. In the future, we would like to evolve it while talking with people on the ground so that employees' work can become more sophisticated and efficient. (Mr. Ohara)"
Mitsubishi Estate House Net Co., Ltd.
Established in 1984, the company operates 38 branches nationwide and, as a member of the Mitsubishi Estate Group, provides real estate sales, rental management, and rental brokerage services. It offers a one-stop solution for all your housing needs: selling, buying, renting, and leasing.
- The content of this case study is current as of the time of the interview. The content of this case study may change without notice.