APL Real Estate
APL is a real estate agency with an area of influence within several provinces of Argentina. It currently provides complementary services to real estate activity and development.
Gamification of sales with mobile application
APL Inmobiliaria asked us to develop a mobile application that will integrate with its internal systems. This tool allows sellers to access the property catalog, manage their schedule of visits and contacts, and have complete control over the queries received through various sales channels, as well as earning “sales points” to obtain future benefits . The app also makes it easy to post new properties and provide up-to-date information, all with the option to view properties on an interactive map. Integration with the phone's native calendar, email, and messaging apps allows salespeople to maintain their workflow without interruption.
Before starting the mobile development stage, we carried out a review and analysis of the impact of the new application within the existing real estate ecosystem, which already had a website, internal property management system and server connected to external databases. With this information we were able to define an integrative plan that managed not only to have a new tool for sellers but also to improve the quality of the information that the real estate agency has, this allows both sellers and property owners to achieve Better user experience with property management systems.
The mobile application was developed from scratch using solid and secure technologies combining React Native for the application and Laravel for the backend system running on the server. Among the most important challenges, we can highlight the integration of Google Map with real-time synchronization of properties based on geolocation of the seller's device (delimited by a radial area) that allows knowing and having all the properties of the system to manage data, upload photos, edit information or schedule an appointment with potential interested parties. The system validates and avoids human errors, such as avoiding overlapping citations.
Launch of mobile application on Google Play
In this first stage, the client's request was to focus on the Google Play platform for Android users, because all sellers have this platform. In 2025, the iOS version is planned to be implemented and subsequently published in the Apple Store.
Within the publishing activities, Serfe was in charge of all the technical aspects, materials, icons and photos necessary for correct publication on mobile platforms. A training session was also held with the sales team to ensure that the new application has adequate acceptance for the new challenges of the APL company.
Integration between public and internal systems
As part of the initial stage, we complete an exhaustive analysis of the requirements and systems that had to be interconnected. At this stage we decided to integrate the mobile application and its seller base server with the existing real estate services as another service of the existing ecosystem. To do this, we used Apache Kafka, which allowed communication between these services and facilitated direct calls through the new REST API developed with Laravel. This coordination between systems allows sellers to access, interact with, and enrich existing data from relevant information from other systems without needing to replicate information across multiple platforms. This improves communication between salespeople in the field and the central office, facilitating more agile decision making.
Among the interconnected systems, Mercado Único stands out, which stores information on properties available from both APL and other real estate agencies integrated into it. The new system developed by Serfe allows extracting and displaying information, in addition to adding new entries and updating data synchronously by events (EDD technique, Event Driven Development). Which allows for agile updating photos or characteristics of a property, directly from the interface of the new mobile application, with its subsequent propagation to the rest of the shared databases.
For user management, we integrate the application with the real estate agency's internal system, which allows you to manage the application's users, assign properties and manage permissions. Additionally, if a visitor leaves their contact details on the website, the app notifies the relevant salesperson, giving them direct access to calls, instant messages or emails, improving lead tracking and reducing response times.
Organizing work and coordinating inter-system implementations
Given that some systems did not yet have all the communication methods implemented and presented technical limitations, our team designed a flexible plan that would allow the mobile application to be developed and tested, while in parallel the integration of the server with existing systems was progressing. This allowed having functional versions of the application from early stages, facilitating progressive integration as the rest of the systems were ready. This approach was also very convenient to see progress with vendors and thus obtain feedback on some important functionalities of the application.
QA and final testing phase
To ensure system consistency in the face of constant changes, we implement automated integration tests at each stage. This allowed us to quickly detect and resolve any issues caused by modifications to dependent systems.
In the initial testing stage, we used the Digital Ocean platform to deploy a Docker container with configuration and code, without the need to execute commands manually on the server. This solution was seamlessly integrated into the internal continuous integration system, allowing for an agile flow of feedback between the client, our team, and external integration teams.
To anticipate possible usability issues in the application, we implemented Sentry error monitoring platform. This proactive monitoring allows us to obtain contextual information and quickly diagnose any problems, both in the application and on the server.
