Company
Solutions
Part of US-based CoStar Group – with a presence in the USA, Canada and Europe – Belbex.com is an open portal where tenants, buyers and investors can find their ideal property quickly, easily and securely.This real-estate information and marketing platform specialises in offices, warehouses, plots of land and other properties, as well as rental and sales for small private buyers and large investors alike. Most of Belbex.com’s business is currently centred in Madrid, although expansion to other Spanish cities is being planned. The CoStar Group portals are visited by 37 million tenants and buyers around the world each month. With nine million daily searches, searches on CoStar Group portals make up 83% of all Internet searches for offices, warehouses and venues. In 2016, their users closed over one trillion dollars’ worth of transactions through internal and third-party portals.
Confidentiality, tracking and security
The company was looking for a way to allow portal users (suppliers) to maintain data privacy, while also providing end-to-end tracking of contacts made through online ads. In the first phase, Colt needed to provision enough phone numbers to assign a unique one to each real estate ad.
This meant having access to a lot of available numbers, implementing a system to manage those numbers, and applying security measures to prevent external threats to the platform.“The challenge was to create a fast and easy-to-manage dialling system, a service that only a carrier could provide,” explains Juan Ramón Trujillo, Chief Technology Offer at Belbex.com. Having the Regulatory Authority allocate such a large range of numbers to a single business — in record time — was also paramount to the success of the project.
“Colt’s help was invaluable, thanks to the ecosystem of relationships that they maintain in the public sector.”Belbex.com also needed to track all telephone activity for every listing on the portal, while simultaneously maintaining confidentiality for all ads. Once the ad is removed, the advertiser no longer receives calls. Such commitment is costly for Belbex.com, since each ad has its own unique number. “We currently have a high volume of numbers, and this will only continue to grow.” With Colt’s ability to provide numbers in different markets, Belbex.com can now expand the service to the 13 countries where Colt operates.
This will make it possible to send and receive calls from anywhere in the world through a single web interface. Data security was also a key requirement for which Colt deployed an end-to end private link with a Colt Ethernet connection between Belbex.com and the Colt INteractiv platform. This private link also helps deflect DDoS attacks since INteractiv can only receive data from the Belbex.com link.
Service and routing integration
Another critical point of the project involved managing the integration of the Colt services with the Belbex.com technology platforms in a reliable, secure and scalable way. INteractiv’s dedicated professional services team helped Colt design a bespoke solution to make the integration process easy and secure. “We needed a partner to help us develop an application that could integrate with our system, and route calls and information easily,”says Trujillo. Using the Belbex.com application, Colt developed an Application Programming Interface (API) to be integrated into their portal, allowing for all information on Colt INteractiv solutions to be sent in real time and serving as a portal for dialling management and routing. This makes it possible to assign numbers to new customers in real time, including all data needed to create voicemail messages for missed calls (contact numbers, email addresses, etc).
For Juan Ramón Trujillo, the success of the project should not be based on any specific business metrics, but on customer and user satisfaction.“ROI was calculated for the productas a whole,” says Trujillo.“Colt’s comprehensive solution frees us from managing all of the active telephones as well as their programming, statistical control and consumption. We receive actionable insights for the entire flow of communication, which in turn simplifies technology management and drastically reduces operating costs.” Juan Ramón Trujillo explains that Colt was chosen for their reliable and secure solution, but also for their ability to accelerate implementation and provide customised support. Another key factor that played in Colt’s favour was their ability to scale the solution to other European countries. “The experience has been excellent, even more so when we consider that they have changed their own internal operations to respond to our needs.”
Colt’s comprehensive solution frees us from managing all of the active telephones as well as their programming, statistical control and consumption. We receive actionable insights for the entire flow of communication, which in turn simplifies technology management and drastically reduces operating costs.” Juan Ramón Trujillo,CTO at Belbex.com
