What Do Busy Real Estate Agents and Truckers Have In Common? Both Need Better Data

At a glance, there don’t seem to be many similarities between selling real estate and trying to keep a fleet of long-haul trucks on time and on the move, but there is at least one area where these two bustling businesses both need to improve: data management.

According to Chris Palmer, chief financial officer of Renren, Inc., a publicly traded company that owns Chime Technologies and Trucker Path, it is all about automating tedious tasks for busy individuals.

Chime Technologies, based in Phoenix, is a customer relationship management platform for the real estate industry, and Trucker Path is a platform that connects truckers, carriers and brokers.

For long-haul truckers, Trucker Path allows drivers to communicate with each other and brokers to look ahead on their trip, so they can plan the truck stop they’re going to go to and their availability.

“It gives them a lot of insight as to what’s going on, on the road,” Palmer said. “We’re integrating with a lot of different platforms with the idea to provide an end-to-end solution that allows a driver to identify loads, book the loads, transport the loads, deliver the loads and take a lot of the administrative burden off their back.”

See also: By Land or Sea, Shipping Woes Worsen Amid Crew Shortages

For the real estate industry, Chime offers a marketing automation platform and a customer relationship management (CRM) system that helps manage everything from lead identification to closing.

“There’s a lot of different things that we’re looking to do on that side,” Palmer said. “We’re also looking to engage with brokerages again through the enterprise side that are innovative in the way they think so we can understand their needs and their workflows and start to solve those problems.”

Enabling New Business Models

Both industries are critical and have been front-page news, with the real estate market being hot and truckers’ services in the supply chain being in demand.

The real estate industry is going through a transformation, Palmer noted. Buyers are taking more control with the information they can access through platforms like Zillow. At the same time, real estate is the biggest purchase consumers are going to make, so the relationship between buyers and agents is changing.

“We have to enable new business models that are probably going to reside in a world of lower commissions, lower touches — but still meaningful touches — and probably an even increasing professionalization of the real estate market,” Palmer said.

In the trucking industry, there’s a massive shortage of drivers, so drivers have a lot of the power in the supply chain. There’s also the chip shortage reducing the availability of new trucks, and then the ports have their own issues.

“I see that industry being constrained,” Palmer said. “I view that as an opportunity for technologies like Trucker Path because what we’re trying to do is take friction out of the process of procuring and delivering loads and help truckers become more efficient and more effective in what they do.”

Building a World-Class Finance Organization

To collect subscription fees, Chime has an internal, proprietary billing system that is tied to one of the big payment processors, while Trucker Path largely goes through the Google Play and Apple stores. On the enterprise side, which will be much larger, it will probably be more traditional, with invoices and checks. There, the goal will be to automate everything.

“My goal is to build a world-class finance organization,” Palmer said. “I want an organization that leverages the power of technology and directs its energy toward helping the business grow effectively and builds out control environments that are nonobtrusive but effective.”