HARCOURTS INTERNATIONAL AIMS to become the number one real estate franchise in the world. The plan over the next two decades is to be operating in 100 countries, says its CIO Jason Wills.Wills says analytics plays a key role in meeting this goal. “We must have two and a half thousand websites across the world, because we build a website for each of our sales consultants,” he says.Harcourts has its headquarters in Brisbane, Australia, but the technology department is run from Christchurch. It now has nearly 800 offices across the globe, with sales consultants in Australia, Dubai, Indonesia, China, Hong Kong, South Africa and USA. This year, the team is helping with the group’s expansion in Canada. “Harcourts are industry leaders in real estate technology,” says Wills.A major ICT project is the centralisation of Harcourts’ global database. “We are also rebuilding our public websites using responsive technology,” says Wills. He says the main website has always been mobile friendly but he needs to ensure this is the same for the systems in the office and those of the agents. Thus, customer experienceand user interface are key skills within the ICT team.“We have got analytics across all those environments because what we find is we need to understand how our clients work,” says Wills.“For instance, they may have mobile phones but they may be on an Android device, so we need to work out how to make our sites work for each device,” he says.Harcourts also tracks the paths of clients when they navigate the website.“Whether they are going to the residential, commercial or rental sites, we try to steer them through the right section using analytics.”A project that is paving the way to achieve this global operations is moving Harcourts’ server infrastructure to Azure Cloud. Wills says Harcourts is also restructuring its systems to get into one database as the foundation for its business intelligence program. “We have got property sales for the last 25 years so we should get some really good analytics to look at some trends.”Wills says ICT budgets, projects and staff numbers will go up this year. Apart from the earlier projects mentioned, Harcourts will also invest in infrastructure consolidation and virtualisation, mobile technologies and enterprise architecture. Related content BrandPost Leadership superpower: Succeeding sustainably As today's great leaders recognize, true success is not solely measured by the bottom line but also by the impact a business has on its stakeholders, including employees, partners, and the environment. By Marie Kalliney, Practice Leader, Digital Transformation Services, Broadcom Mar 28, 2023 5 mins IT Leadership BrandPost Helping the C-suite leverage their network as a business-boosting asset By Tanya O'Hara Mar 28, 2023 3 mins IT Leadership Opinion 5 hard questions every IT leader must answer Strong leadership is vital to IT success — and shouldn’t be taken for granted. Continual self-reflection is essential for knowing whether it’s time to restructure your approach to leading IT. By Thornton May Mar 28, 2023 5 mins Business IT Alignment IT Leadership Feature CIOs address the impact of hybrid work Assessing how some of the most progressive CIOs strive to provide both technological and emotional support for a dispersed workforce. By Pat Brans Mar 28, 2023 8 mins CIO Remote Work Employee Experience Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe