Hawaii Information Service

HIS Partners with MEV to Take Their Product from Good to Great

HIS wanted to innovate but their team’s hands were completely full with the existing roadmap. They turned to MEV to take on delivering a completely revamped & new vision for their suite of products.

Solutions

SaaS
Web
Mobile-Friendly
Desktop

Services

Team Service
Engineering and Product Team
Core software development team

About HIS

Hawaii Information Service (HIS) a Hawaii-based Multiple Listing Service (MLS) provider for the Kauai and Hawaii Islands, as well as a data provider for businesses across the state and beyond. The company offers the most accurate and up-to-date real estate information for all properties in the State of Hawaii. Founded in 1984, HIS helped its member realtors navigate from printed and bound MLS books to mainframes and modems to the modern web.

Today their multi-sourced database houses over 300 data fields of information for over 600,000 properties in Hawaii, giving their clients the depth and flexibility that they need to do their jobs effectively. HIS also provides web links, data feeds, and custom reports for a variety of industries.

Client Challenges

In an attempt to modernize their business, HIS needed to overcome a few challenges:

Start new without losing existing

HIS original system had its history and value but needed a lot of care and time to keep it running smoothly. While Clients’ team took great pride and care in making product work, they wanted to keep up with the rapidly evolving real estate market and innovate while eliminating or minimizing any disruption to their existing business and clients.

Execute new vision and strategy

The Client had a high-level idea of where their company wants to be in a few next years minding that they need to improve their approaches and infrastructure to stay ahead of a rapidly changing market. HIS needed guidance and a partner to make that big picture complete and then execute the vision.

What We Did

MEV built a strong foundation of trust by experimenting with a single project and owning a few tasks to serving as HIS’ outsourced technology innovation lab that brings life to new products, features, and ultimately drives business value.

Product Renovation

The client’s MLS System serves as a single data entry point and storage platform for critical real estate-related data. Working hand in hand with the client, MEV completed critical changes including changing the search logic, making updates to the workflow, and integrating with Esri maps. To support its large volume, the database was optimized and updated with Change Data Capture (CDC).

Gold Certification for the Client

MEV helped HIS engineer a system of Web APIs that conform to OData rules and Real Estate Standards Organization (RESO) rules for fast integration of 3rd party applications with their systems. As of 2020, HIS is 1 of only 6 MLSs out of 600 in the United States to receive platinum certification of RESO’s Data Dictionary Standard and gold certification of RESO Web API.

Improved UX

MEV team helped HIS with the design and development of their portal. A mobile-friendly web application was designed for agents to create a client’s personalized place to show listings, chat with clients, and review their personal references. This user-centric design is supported by full integration with the existing MLS system. To enhance the outbound communication experience, chatbots, flexible email templates, and SMS notifications were built.

Executing new Vision

Once MEV team gained a deep understanding of the real estate market, HIS’ business, and their new vision, the journey began. From the ground up, we started making the Client’s vision a reality by building a completely new and redesigned set of all major components of HIS’ product suite.