Village House

Website Development
Geo data API Integration
Multiple language setup
CRM Custom solution
Consultancy
Maintenance & Support
Hosting

Japan
2017-Current

Real Estate

About the Client

Village House Management Co. Ltd. offers affordable rental housing in community settings throughout Japan. The company manages and leases over 100,000 low cost units, in 1,000 locations across 46 Japanese prefectures

Challenge

There were a number of challenges we faced, and resolved, during this exciting project. Firstly, the diversity of languages spoken by visitors to the site; these include English, Japanese and Portuguese. We also had the task of making it easy and straightforward for users to find properties of interest across all of Japan. Finally, support staff needed the ability to ensure that all enquiries are captured accurately, and that each case is processed in a professional and timely manner, thereby achieving customer satisfaction and higher occupancy rates.

Solution

Cerebrum's design partner has extensive experience in Japan. We worked together to design and develop a modern, clean, mobile-responsive TYPO3 website, which is easy for editors to maintain in multiple languages. We enabled language and location detection, to provide a user experience which allows visitors to find, bookmark and enquire about properties easily. To support easy search and location of properties, we worked with a partner specialising in geo-located data. This collaboration resulted in a tailored propertysearch/filter functionality: by area, map, transport and free text. All this is supported by property data exposed via API; this is synchronised with business master data for easy maintenance and up-to-date availability information.

At the same time, we worked closely with Village House stakeholders to design and develop a custom client relationship management system (CRM), to meet the specific needs of managing customer interactions across multiple call centres and activity groups. With industry-specific models and relationships, the system provides workflows and interfaces to make it easy for staff to respond to customer enquiries, to access full interaction history, to set reminders, and to follow up as required, ultimately supporting higher occupancy of properties. The system also deals with unique aspects of Japanese business, such as dealing and searching Kanji and Kana, single- and double-width input, and so on. Extensive import, export and reporting functionality, as well as integration with other business systems, allow for greater insight into call centre performance, and can highlight opportunities for ongoing optimisation.

Cerebrum and our partners continue to work closely with Village House staff to improve systems as new opportunities arise. We continue to assist users as required via our support system, email, and video conferencing when needed.

Applications are hosted and maintained in specifically configured instances, with a range of security and redundancy settings. This provides a robust platform for business-critical tools.

Results

  • Enterprise open source content management system.

  • Self-managed content.

  • Geo-located property search.

  • Property data via API with sync to business systems.

  • Custom-developed client relationship management system.

  • Ongoing support and maintenance.

  • Enterprise hosting setup, featuring SSL/TLS, CDN (content delivery network), etc.