Anow Podcast with the Appraiser Coach Dustin Harris
ANOW is excited to showcase a recent podcast aired on November 1st of last year. Greg of the ANOW team was interviewed for Episode 275 of The Appraiser Coach Podcast as hosted by Dustin Harris of theappraisercoach.com
Listen to the industry conversation on appraisal software
Listen to the podcast or read the transcript below, a great conversation between two of the most influential companies in the industry! Press play below or find it on iTunes right here.
Appraiser Podcast Summary and Highlights:
Most appraisers have been in practice for a while they have their way of doing things and it’s hard to change. So, you need a reason to change. And usually, that is you have to see some productivity enhanced with some great new tools and that’s really what Anow is about. Our background is we are appraisers, we thought there was a better way to run our office and so we started to write Anow. We’re a back office that runs we’re everything from your calendar to see where you’re going to be during the day to map in your locations, your history, to order entry, to workflow and tasks, to invoicing, accounts receivable, all the things that you need to actually stay on top of your business.
When a company like Anow starts integrating with others you’re saving time even if you are just a solo appraiser, a single guy out there. So, I think the features that you find either in our products or others as you said those are time saving measures. Probably the largest change that I’ve seen just to kind of get into a bit more detail is the pervasiveness of mobile. Now you don’t have to sit in front of your desk to be connected to your office. You can carry it on your iPad, you can carry it on your phone. I’ve heard people say oh it’s just a big chain to the office. It’s true! You’re chained to desk. You know what? It’s a really long chain you could be anywhere. I love that.
Anow helps appraisers be a little bit more effective, it’s easier, you don’t have to be tied to the office, you can log in anywhere. There was big discussion yesterday at the ValuationExpo about what the cloud is and after all the technical discussions yesterday it didn’t really matter the point is it makes your data available where you are and I think that’s a big benefit.
You know if anybody’s thinking about Anow software and thinking ok well there’s a “cost involved;” right? I hate that word I think you ought to look at it as an investment but nonetheless let’s say that the appraiser is looking at it that way and saying well yeah ok but I get a spreadsheet for free whether it be a spiral notebook or you know Google is free one of the things I think the appraisers need to look at and again this goes back to the investment comment is understanding that if you miss one due date meaning it’s overdue because you failed to look at something that Anow would have reminded you about two days ago; right? You’ve paid for the “cost of Anow” and then some because number one you had that thing in on time and number two you don’t have your score affected by the clients that you’re working for. Just one example of how Anow really does pay for itself.
Generally, the marketplace is getting a little more productivity, the tools are making things easier to get things done. Our average appraiser using Anow does 38 appraisals per month, that’s an 84% productivity improvement. Now does that mean that our customers are that much more experienced and all techie using the tool? No they are average appraisers is just we’ve simplified the process for them so they do more in the same period of time
Our mobile client is getting tons of adoption. We’ve got big changes coming for that product, it’s getting better and better as we go. You’re going to see an iPad version. When you have that screen size on a big tablet you can display a lot more data. So, that’s in the pipe you’ll get a lot more view on that, that I’m excited about. But that’s just on the mobile side.
In the app the most exciting things we’re doing and it really started about 4 or 5 months ago when customers asked us to start integrating to the report writers. So, we did our first integration was Total, or Total a la mode back to Anow and that was adopted like wildfire. It also set the technical basis for us to do that so we’ve gone very hard and fast down the integration roadmap.
So, what’s coming? Total is two way, we’re integrating to other report writers like ACI, we’re happy to announce as of this show so I know it’s to be in hindsight but the integration to Mercury Networks has now been announced. It’s in beta but it will be out after we’ve debugged.
The other big feature that we’ve had a lot of customers ask for is improved reports around accounts reconciliation, really statements. And so, you’re going to see in the next few months that not only can you see who owes you money for 60 days but press one button, send them an e-mail reminder not to think twice about it.
Full Appraisal Podcast Transcript With Greg and Dustin:
Field: Appraisal Software Development
Length: 27:31
Speakers: Mr. Dustin Harris, Mr. Greg Fandrick
ANOW is the central desktop for the appraisal office. Whether it be mobile tools or your accounts receivable or getting paid by credit card there are new ways to do things that make your business more efficient. And that’s what we offer.
[Music00:14-00:46]Dustin Harris
And welcome everybody this is Dustin Harris, hanging out in the podcast chair at the 2017 Las Vegas Valuation Expo and you are going to hear a little bit of ambient noise in the background simply because I am on the showroom floor sitting down with a great individual can’t wait to introduce you to. But first, want to remind you, of course, we are sponsored by ANOW software. ANOW is the software that I use to manage my entire business and I mean that sincerely you’re going to hear more about that today and in why it works the way that it does. But for now, go to www.anow.com/coach, again it’s anow.com/coach.
Well folks speaking of ANOW software I have the man, Mr. Gregg Fandrick from ANOW all the way from the Great North Calgary where it’s very cold this time of year; right?
Greg Fandrick
Unbelievably it snowed this week, even though it’s going to warm up we actually had snow in Calgary.
Dustin Harris
Very cool. Very cool. Well Greg welcome you know I should set this up and just say that you know here we are at the valuation Expo 2017, we are in Las Vegas we’re on the showroom floor every time I look up I look over and just over there I see your booth ANOW set up, you’ve got a line out the door, people wanting to know more about ANOW software. So, I’d appreciate you taking time away from your busy selling schedule over there to talk to us a little bit about the software. Tell us first of all, let’s say people have been living under a rock and they don’t know what ANOW is. The biggest question I get Gregg is why should I stop using Excel or Google sheets or some other spreadsheet to pay money for something that is going to virtually do the same thing?
Greg Fandrick
That’s a great question because most appraisers have been in practice for a while they have their way of doing things and it’s hard to change. So, you need a reason to change. And usually, that is you have to see some productivity enhanced with some great new tools and that’s really what ANOW is about. Our background is we are appraisers, we thought there was a better way to run our office and so we started to write ANOW and now we think we’re software tycoons but that’s what we’re doing. Just like a dentist buys software to run their dentist practice or a lawyer needs lawyer software, we believe appraisers need appraisal software just to keep their business running. Why do it? It’s about productivity, it’s about doing things faster and better. Shows like this talk about how fast our industry is changing.
Dustin Harris
Sure!
Greg Fandrick
It is! New tools, new integrations, data moving faster, ANOW is the central desktop for the appraisal office, whether be it mobile tools or your accounts receivable or getting paid by credit card there are new ways to do things that make your business more efficient and that’s what we offer. I think we are unique in that we focus on software written just for the appraiser. There are lots of people in our ecosystem but our product is for the appraiser.
Dustin Harris
You know even as somebody who coaches other individuals to utilize more technology it’s a huge asset, it can be to an appraiser to be able to do more with less.
Just a few minutes ago I had somebody at my booth and he said you know I’m a single person entity, I’m really not interested in hiring anybody. I’ve done it in the past I’m not you know that’s just not in the wheelhouse for me. He says how can you help me to be more productive? How can you help me to do more with less? I said let’s talk technology, let’s talk things like ANOW, let’s talk things like other programs, other software, other online tools that allow you to be able to do more with less.
Appraisers are resistant to that. I don’t know why other than we’re human beings we don’t like change. And Greg I’ll just be honest with you, when I first heard about ANOW software it was not the first company that had approached me with something and said, hey will you try this out? We want you to try this out. And I was skeptical! I thought you know I’ve got a spreadsheet, ANOW is not a spreadsheet.
Greg Fandrick
No we’re actually quite a back office that runs we’re everything from your calendar to see where you’re going to be during the day to map in your locations, your history, to order entry, to workflow and tasks, to invoicing, accounts receivable, all the things that you need to actually stay on top of your business. So, yeah, it’s a much more larger suite. I think appraisers will have… we have about 50% of our customers are solo appraisers, single guy. He may not use all those features that we have but he’s going to use some of them that will be productivity enhancements.
You know an example of that is what we’re talking about is the integrations. So, what is integration means? It just means a way to work with another provider out there. Any time you can stop typing addresses once, twice, three times you’re saving time. So, when a company like ANOW starts integrating with others you’re saving time even if you are just a solo appraiser, a single guy out there. So, I think the features that you find either in our products or others as you said those are time-saving measures. Probably the largest change that I’ve seen just to kind of get into a bit more detail is the pervasiveness of mobile. Now you don’t have to sit in front of your desk to be connected to your office. You can carry it on your iPad, you can carry it on your phone. I’ve heard people say oh it’s just a big chain to the office. It’s true! You’re chained to a desk. You know what? It’s a really long chain you could be anywhere. I love that.
Dustin Harris
So, one of the things that has been different for me this past year is the mobile app and the opportunity for me to log on. I know that we’ve always had the ability to be able to go to a web browser and pull up ANOW and look at it that way the app makes it so much easier because anytime… so I’ll be honest with you Greg before the app I used to message my office and I would say how many appraisals did we do last month? How many non-lender appraisals did we do last month? How are we doing this month as compared to you know the same month last year? And they would go into ANOW and they would figure it out and they’d give me the message back. It’s just as easy now for me as an appraiser even though I’ve got the assistance back of the office and they’ve got in front of them now again that also on the cloud. That’s not a software that you put on your computer but they can look it up or you know it’s as easy for me to pull it up on the app and look for myself as it is to message them. I love that about ANOW.
Greg Fandrick
Yeah, I think that’s a lot of feedback. So, I think that’s an example of productivity enhancements. Things that make you a little bit more effective, easier, you don’t have to be tied to the office, you can log in anywhere. There was big discussion yesterday at the valuation Expo about what the cloud is and after all the technical discussions yesterday it didn’t really matter the point is it makes your data available where you are and I think that’s a big benefit.
Dustin Harris
So, let’s talk a little bit you said this company was started by appraisers talk to us a little bit more about the roots there. Marty Haldane a successful appraiser in Canada wanted a better way to manage his office and then ANOW kind of sprung from that; right?
Greg Fandrick
Yeah! That was the roots of it. So, Marty is our founder, a very smart man, had a great vision but really it started with a problem, everything always starts a problem. And his was he wanted to buy software that helps schedule his team, in fact, he wanted to find a better way to invoice and he couldn’t buy it dedicated to our industry. So, he thought I can write this. So that really was the foundation, it took us about a year to get the first modules kind of up and running and out on the marketplace because we were targeting just appraisers we didn’t really care about the ecosystem of the lenders and the order management platforms. We just wanted a tool for the appraiser. We got take pretty quick including eventually things like the appraiser coach in your office Dustin. That started to spread like wildfire and we’ve always had a philosophy at least Marty’s had a philosophy that he’s put his team around is that we respond to our users demands. We offer free support like little things like that but we listen to our appraisers. And as such we’ve collected about a year’s worth of “hey I need this, I need that” and we’ve added them. So, a small flat team the only reason I mention that to our listeners is when you’re small, you’re flat, you’re connected to our customers and we’re releasing new feature requests once every 2 to 3 weeks. This summer we released 6 new features and all those features weren’t…. “Oh, I think this is cool” … it came because a customer said, you know what would help me? And so, we built it and I think that’s what is driving the philosophy for our company it comes from Marty, it’s appraiser focused which I know that I’m saying this over and over but I think that’s the difference.
Time stamp [08:58].
When we hear our appraisers, our customers say and I say it’s not just appraisers, it could be your office manager saying I need a better way to do a accounts receivable. It could be the lady who’s doing the bookings I wish I could visualize this on the map or whatever. That feedback is important to us and so we’ve been really quick with releasing it and we’ve got more coming. Like we’re releasing fast.
So, the company is, we’re small yeah, we’re still small we’re only about 16, 17 people right now. We are based in Western Canada because that’s Marty’s home. It is actually in a very small town called Red Deer. A couple of the other staff are distributed in the cities around and about but it’s a fairly short drive and other than that we are reaching out really across North America. We are getting our first international customers, so it’s an exciting time.
Dustin Harris
So, let’s talk features for just a second. In fact, I want to go back to how I set this up in the beginning and that is I talked to appraisers who are like me skeptical. You know I’ve been doing it this way forever. I’ve got a spiral notebook you know I just write down the address, I write down the order number, I write down the fee and I cross it off when I get paid; right? That maybe the old school way but you know somebody like me who is using Google sheets to keep track of my orders, we’re going to be skeptical. And you’re talking about all these features, let’s talk about obviously we don’t have time to talk about all of them but give me some idea of some of the things that make ANOW software different than say an Excel spreadsheet.
Greg Fandrick
So, I think the functionality is generally the same and what I mean by that is what we have is a book of orders. Appraisers have a book of appraisals they got to get done and whether it’s a spiral notebook which we had at one-time in fact the pictures are on our website, it could be an Excel spreadsheet as you said. The functionality is the same, the difference is the availability to work on that collaboratively and to take it with you. Are you a person who is going to travel with your laptop to stay on top of things or use one on your mobile phone? I think we’ve added the key feature to just that tracking you know that Excel, imagine Excel set of lines across. Because we’ve added things like workflow tasking which sounds like a big word but all it is, is what’s my To Do list to get that appraisal done on that particular order? I can go in and make that To Do list whatever I want. ANOW calls it workflow and tasking but I just think of it as a To Do list. But now I’ve got something that reminds me that it needs to be done. You say wow it’s my job to stay on top of it, that’s true but we’re all human.
Dustin Harris
How does it remind you?
Greg Fandrick
So, does just every morning. It sends you a quick e-mail, I think we’ve queued up 5 in the morning Eastern Standard Time. Our appraisers wake up they get a quick e-mail like, hey good morning Dustin and this is your day you got two appraisals due, oh that was due yesterday, you’ve got two appointments this afternoon. I never get that one. So, that’s where the information kind of provides that value.it just organizes your day. So, you’re saying yeah there’s you know the functionality that much different than a notebook or an Excel spreadsheet in the essence of the job is performing it’s the same function. It’s just faster, more automated, it’s got those visual reminders that goes with you on your phone and that’s what gives you those productivity enhancements.
Dustin Harris
Right! Right! And I know what you just said you know if anybody’s thinking about ANOW software and thinking ok well there’s a “cost involved;” right? I hate that word I think you ought to look at it as an investment but nonetheless let’s say that the appraiser is looking at it that way and saying well yeah ok but I get a spreadsheet for free whether it be a spiral notebook or you know Google is free one of the things I think the appraisers need to look at and again this goes back to the investment comment is understanding that if you miss one due date meaning it’s overdue because you failed to look at something that ANOW would have reminded you about two days ago; right? You’ve paid for the “cost of ANOW” and then some because number 1 you had that thing in on time and number 2 you don’t have your score affected by the clients that you’re working for. Just one example of how ANOW really does pay for itself.
Greg Fandrick
I think it pays for itself too. Like we like to talk about this a lot, we’ve printed a little brochure about it but I think this replies to the industry in general. It’s about productivity enhancements, there’s the National Survey Appraiser Survey 2015 said the average appraiser in the United States in 2015 was performing 19 appraisal orders per month as an average I know some people are way more productive some people are part time but it is an average. That average changed in the 2016 survey by 1.5 appraisals, up to 20.5. So, you say oh well that’s good!
Generally, the marketplace is getting a little more productivity, the tools are making things easier get things done. ANOW customers during that same average like agnostically, agnostically so no person that means we just pulled it up, our average appraiser does 38 appraisals per month, that’s an 84% productivity improvement. Now does that mean that our customers are that much more experienced or are all techie trains the used tools? No they are average appraisers is just we’ve simplified the process for them so they do more in the same period of time.
Dustin Harris
Without cutting quality and that’s a key. I think most appraisers think if I’m going to do more volume then I have to cut corners. ANOW keeps you from in fact not just keeps you from cutting corners but actually enhances the quality in my opinion.
Greg Fandrick
That is our belief. So, I think that goes directly to yes, that we charge a fee for a service. Absolutely we do!
When you’re doing let’s just say you’re doing 80% more work for that fee you’re paying for it it’s an investment in your firm.
Dustin Harris
Absolutely! Absolutely.
Greg Fandrick
And I think what comes out of that is the biggest value. And this work goes a little bit back to features but appraisers actually are massive data collectors they don’t realize it. When they use ANOW we collect that data and present it back to them. So, we have a module called an Analytics, some people call it business reports but without doing anything you’re getting a travel log of every address you’ve traveled to in a distance, that’s great for your taxes; you’re getting your accounts receivable; you’re getting a payroll module if you’re working with a contractor or an employee; you’re getting the intelligence reports of, where my key clients? Where are my key regions? You’re doing nothing to enter that, so argumentally you might say well that doesn’t make any difference in my job 9 to 5 today but the at the month or at the end of the quarter you have to sign up to your accountant and that’s a huge time saver.
Dustin Harris
It makes a big difference. I want to pause here just remind you that we are of course sponsored by ANOW software, kind of awkward here I’m interviewing Mr. ANOW himself but you guys have been a sponsor here for a long, long time from the very beginning of our mini shows, you’ve been a sponsor here. Which I appreciate because the great thing about sponsors here on this program is that I don’t have to make up stuff. I have a very strict criterion I’m not going to allow a sponsor to be on this program unless I stand behind their product unless I’m using their product and I stand behind their product. It’s easy to do that with ANOW software. So, folks if you’ve not checked out ANOW software, you need to. Just go to their website and you know when you go anow.com put a “/coach” at the end of that. That will allow you to get 3 free months of the all-star team which will allow you to get more tips and tricks and ability to be able to increase your workflow and be able to enhance the quality of your reports at the same time. Again it’s anow.com/coach, one more time anow.com/coach.
[Music 16:05-16:24]And we’re back folks! We’re sitting down here at the valuation Expo 2017 in Las Vegas Nevada with Mr. Greg Fandrick of ANOW software. Welcome back, Greg.
Greg Fandrick
Thanks.
Dustin Harris
I appreciate you coming on today. I think it’s important for appraisers who don’t really get the vision of what ANOW is to kind of see the broader scope and I want to focus in on a couple of other features that I think are important. They seem minor as you talked about the workflow what are they called?
Greg Fandrick
The workflow task list.
Dustin Harris
Ok the task list; right? So, some people say well yeah but you know how does that really affect me? I’ll give you a couple of examples. I’ve got a couple different assistants working for me. One mainly works in the morning, one mainly works in the afternoon. They do some overlap. the one in the morning might get a call from an AMC and let’s say they put a report on hold for example. We’re going to use the notes section of that process and now it’s automated in the sense that we already know where that appraisal is in the overall lifecycle, if you will, of the report from inception to delivery. We can see that at a glance. But the other thing that I love is the fact that we can put notes in the section. ANOW tells us who put the note in there, what time, what date they put that note in there so that when my assistant comes in the afternoon and gets a call say from the borrower, from someone else saying hey what’s going on this? They can quickly have a glance, start typing in the address it automatically pops up, it auto-populates you don’t have to type the whole address to search for something. You click on it immediately you’re drawn to the notes, you can look at and say oh it looks like there was a phone call this morning at 10:13 and the lender put this on hold for this reason. immediately we know what’s going on with that report. It’s amazing!
Greg Fandrick
Yeah, that little feature is a major time saver. I get a little bit of a just customer feedback, we have a customer in Vancouver BC that felt they e-mailed or phoned the field appraisers 30 times a week. Just on that communications back and forth it’s on hold; what’s the status? What’s the latest date? The Notes field has taken those phone calls down to 2 a week. Just cause you are logged in your seeing the thread, there it is.
Dustin Harris
Yeah! Absolutely. The other thing I want to point out is the tags. I think that’s a little-used feature that most appraisers at top 2 don’t use the tag, they should! And here’s why. One of the things that we do, well we use a la mode. Their sponsor here everybody knows I use a la mode software.
A la mode is great for a lot of things. One of the things that I don’t like about a la mode is that you can’t tag reports. And what I mean by that is let’s say I do an appraisal on a property scope Waterfront and let’s say I don’t know 6 weeks down the road I have another property that’s on Waterfront and I remember in the back of my head doing some regression analysis, doing some comparative analysis really coming up with a pretty good value on what that Waterfront was. In other words, take a similar home that doesn’t have that Waterfront and there’s a difference, there’s an adjustment there. And I remember doing the report, I go into a la mode I don’t know if I’m to be able to find that unless I remember the address or remember the subdivision. I mean they have search features absolutely. But to be able to search for example Waterfront is going to bring up nothing; right? ANOW software we are tagging each and every one of those unique properties so that when I need to find a report that I’ve done in the past I simply go in there start typing in the word Water, boom! the tag comes up, I tag it that’s the one, that’s the report I can pull it up.
Greg Fandrick
Yeah, it is a great feature to find things. Never shows up in a report but it’s the way you think.
Dustin Harris
Yeah
Greg Fandrick
It’s the way you search. Sometimes we see some pretty interesting things used in the database. My favorite is seeing someone tag an appraisal as “big dog in yard.” If you remember that for the next trip.
Dustin Harris
Absolutely. Absolutely. So, let’s shift a little bit. We started to talk a bit about the analytics side that to me is the favorite part of ANOW. Most people that listen this program know that honestly, I’m not in ANOW that much that’s more my assistants. They’re the ones logging the orders, they’re the ones keeping track of things if I have a question about something I can certainly go in and take a look at it. But where I really use ANOW is the times that I each week work what I call on my business rather than in my business. This is time that I schedule outside of working on appraisals to sit down, to turn off the phone, to turn off the internet and simply focus on what my business is doing and what I need to do is a business owner to increase that business. ANOW is an intricate part of working on my business. I often get asked by individuals who know a little about this “oni” is what I call it, on it, not in it that I work on each week and I schedule it on the calendar and I make sure that I do it on a pretty consistent basis. It’s not every week but it’s probably 3 times a month. And they say what do you do during that time? Well I’ll tell you lot of that time is spent in the analytics side, the analytics tag of ANOW. Talk to us more about that. What do appraisers find in that side of things that will help them as a business owner?
Greg Fandrick
Well first it’s gratifying to hear you use it that way because that’s what was intended. I think alluded to earlier in our discussion that appraisal offices generate a ton of data. So analytics just remembers that data for your company whether you’re a sole preneur or you’ve got a few people in the field or stuff like your group does Dustin.
When you log in what you’re presented with is your history. So, you can pick a sample period, what I’ve done last month? What did I do at this period a year ago? You can compare those and what the system will do a search out who are the clients you are surveying. It will break them down by name, you can break it down by categories. So, if you want to know how much direct lender work I’m doing, versus lawyer work, versus AMC work, you can break that out, you can quickly visualize that. You want to find out if you got appraisers on your team, who’s been the busiest and running the most? You can find that out. You maybe need to balance workloads that’s where you’ll find that just to balance that out.
I think a couple of other features that we put a lot of stock in and would love to see our customers use it more is look back at your order sources. Maybe you owe that broker a lunch because he’s really been pumping the volume to you and you’re just getting the jobs done. You don’t recognize that that business source is valuable to your company.
Dustin Harris
Absolutely.
Greg Fandrick
Conversely, that may have been a guy that you did a lot of work with 6 months ago and all of a sudden, it’s dried up.
Dustin Harris
Exactly!
Greg Fandrick
Why? You know so those little graphs they pop up we believe that’s kind of our hidden value. Run your business, we putting a lot of work into analytics. I’d love to tell the audience I know we’ve gotten a ton of requests and feedback for different reports that come out of there. They’re all in our queue, they’re being driven out, some of is already been added to maps if you haven’t looked at it you can now get all your history on a map view. It’s really cool. We’re going to see what you’re doing, where you’re concentrating maybe that shifts the way you schedule yourself.
Dustin Harris
Exactly.
Greg Fandrick
Good! So, that feature has been released. We got some accounts receivable, changes coming, some better accounting platform integration coming just because our customers have asked for it but that all comes from managing your business and understanding….
Dustin Harris
Yeah.
Greg Fandrick
We know customers are doing it.
Dustin Harris
I was driving down the road just last week and I in this bank came into my mind. It’s one that I’ve worked for for over 10 years and I thought I don’t remember the last time I had an order from them that’s weird. And so I message the office, I’m driving, I’m not going to pull up the app while I’m driving and just as a curiosity and I said Janet what’s the last time we did an appraisal for ABC bank? Within seconds she messaged me back and she said 10 days ago. You know how did she know that? Well ANOW software! I mean it’s so easy to be able to get answers to just questions that pop into your head as business owners that we need to be able to answer quickly.
Greg Fandrick
Right! Very cool. Gratifying to hear.
Dustin Harris
Tell us more about what is on the horizon for ANOW. What are some changes that you’re seeing some of the things that you’re starting to integrate into ANOW that appraisers might be interested in?
Greg Fandrick
I’m really glad you asked that question because it proves that we do listen to our customers. So, I’m excited to talk about some of the things we’re doing.
I’ll talk very briefly on mobile. Our mobile client is getting tons of adoption. We’ve got big changes coming for that product, it’s getting better and better as you go. You’re going to see an iPad version. You know there’s no real difference from the iPad and the iPhone except for the screen size. When you have that screen size on a big tablet you can display a lot more data. So, that’s in the pipe you’ll get a lot more view on that, that I’m excited about. But that’s just on the mobile side.
In the app the most exciting things we’re doing and it really started about 4 or 5 months ago when customers asked us to start integrating to the report writers. So, we did our first integration was total, or total a la mode back to ANOW and that was adopted like wildfire. It also set the technical basis for us to do that so we’ve gone very hard and fast down the integration roadmap.
Why would we do that? Again, it’s all about simplifying the flow of information. So, what’s coming total is two way, we’re integrating to other report writers like ACI, we’re happy to announce as of this show so I know it’s to be in hindsight but the integration to Mercury has now been announced. It’s in beta but it will be after we’ve debugged it, it’ll be out in about 2 weeks.
Dustin Harris
I just want to pause here because I want to make sure appraisers number 1 heard that and number 2 can you just explain briefly what that means? Because you talked about double entering, writing the address twice what does integration with Mercury do to solve that problem?
Greg Fandrick
Yeah very good. So, if I’m logged into the Mercury portal to accept my orders, I’ve accepted them. But now if I want to track them and use the ANOW system it’s got to get over to ANOW. So, by creating what we call an API, Application Program Interface with Mercury the moment I accept an order in Mercury it automatically will appear in ANOW. So, it’s logged for me. There is no data entry that is in beta today. On the other side of the beta, status updates will also go back to Mercury. So, that’s all information that you might have had to type or enter that’s going to be a completely automated flow.
Dustin Harris
Very cool.
Greg Fandrick
So that’s what we think is a big time saver.
Dustin Harris
By the way, Keith showed me that yesterday.
Greg Fandrick
It works great.
Dustin Harris
It’s awesome. It’s incredible.
Greg Fandrick
Yeah, we’re really excited. We do I’m using this word beta because it’s always best practice to make sure you fully debug it before it’s fully released. So, we’ve got a couple hundred users that are beta testing it right now. As of this morning no bugs I’m aware of but we’ll run through that cycle. But that’s a huge integration and there’s more like that coming. So, that’s what we want to look for into the future. The other big feature that we’ve had a lot of customers ask for is improved reports around accounts reconciliation, really statements. And so, you’re going to see in the next few months that not only can you see who owes you money for 60 days but press one button, send them an e-mail reminder not to think twice about, the systems has got…. run these reports. So, those are some of the things just in the pipeline plus I said there’s some I think the next month we’re going to be announcing some other really cool mobile add-ons which I touched on but really cool stuff.
Dustin Harris
Very, very cool. Greg Fandrick from ANOW software. Thanks for taking time today to explain a little bit of what the software is, where it’s going, and why appraisers should be interested in it.
Greg Fandrick
I am glad to do it.
Dustin Harris
It’s been a pleasure.