OSCRE and eBusiness. Why?

Trace Solutions' Managing Director, Mick Flynn also sits on the board of OSCRE.

Below is an article written by him about OSCRE the organisation and the standard.

eBusiness is defined as the use of information and communication technologies in support of all activities of the business and as usual, the property sector sadly lags behind other industries. The last two years have hardly been enjoyable but if it has taught us anything, it is that we all need to run our businesses leaner and meaner and better use technology to bring about efficiencies and cut costs.

VHS and Betamax were both video tape systems that held the same data but in incompatible formats. Remind you of anything? Yes, property data held in different software suppliers’ systems.

Over  time, suppliers have developed modules that allow the exchange of data via a common medium, Excel but when you bring data in, you have to go through a manual transformation exercise e.g. my code for English Quarter Days is ‘EQD’ but you used Usual Quarter Days ‘UQD’. Human intervention is required to iron out all of these inconsistencies. Inevitably this increases the scope for errors, additional cost and time.

What happens when an external party needs your data for some reason? Maybe it’s a transfer of management, sale, purchase or valuation. Wouldn’t it be great if all software systems used data that was held in a common format that they could understand without the need for human translation?

This is what brought about the formation of an organisation that became known as PISCES which transformed into a global data standards body earlier this year and is now known as OSCRE.

OSCRE is a not for profits organisation that exists to help the property sector and is reliant on annual membership fees to develop and maintain these data standards. OSCRE operates in the investment, corporate real estate and home buying sectors. It provides a facility and framework for its members to decide how to address industry data exchange problems.

From a request that originated from our user group, Trace drove the creation of a work group to define a standard for the exchange of property management data and this became known as PIE (Portfolio Information Exchange). After much input from industry experts, a standard was agreed, published and Trace participated in a pilot development to prove that data could be exchanged efficiently between disparate systems. We have gone on to convert this pilot into ‘industrial strength’ software. Having the ability to import and export data in a recognised data standard format gives Trace and its clients many advantages.

OSCRE has facilitated the creation of an Investor Forum which is supported by the likes of Legal and General and ING with a view to drive through industry adoption of this standard.

One day, all data will be exchanged this way. The IT industry has matured over its relatively short life and we now think it is normal that different suppliers’ hardware and operating systems can communicate with each other. Standardising data is the missing piece of the IT puzzle.

I sit on the OSCRE board and am a fervent supporter of what OSCRE exists for. We need you to adopt this technology and OSCRE needs your support too. You can find out about OSCRE at www.oscre.org .