Remember when e-mail programs came in a shrink-wrapped packages? When you had to buy the upgrades to Microsoft Office to patch into your previous version? Today, you can access your favorite real estate applications via the Web.

At the forefront of the real estate industry are applications that are changing the way real estate practitioners do business. Contact, client, business, transaction managers and more are being packaged together in unified systems by application service providers (ASPs) like HomeAdvisor in its eRealtor platform and HomeAdvisor in its Realty Desktop.

ASPs make a wide range of softwares that can enhance your business. From customer, office and listing management tools to marketing tools and more, these productivity tools can also integrate with broker business management and loan origination suites that are all part of a network operation.

Your ASP now does the hosting of your application of choice for you so you don't have to upgrade your computer equipment every three months in order to store the latest productivity or listing management software. You can still download such programs to your computer for use offline, but when it is time for an upgrade, you can download it into your computer or access the program from its Web-based environment. This is significant to you as a Realtor because in the fast-lane of the information highway, you will be competing with other agents in the speed and accuracy of your data transmissions.

Basically, ASPs make software tools that allow customers to create, organize, access and manipulate information privately or in a shared environment with other individuals or organizations over the Internet. Sometimes you are the direct customer for the ASP, as when you purchase a client management software like Top Producer. Other times, you are the end user, such as when you tap into an MLS listing information management system purchased by your local board such as those provided by VISTAinfo, Inc., HomeSeekers, or Realty Plus Online. You pay a membership fee and use the system to get what you want, such as new listings to send to your customers via the Internet, but the application is hosted on the Internet by the service provider.

Suppose a customer e-mails you and wants to see listings in a certain area and price range. Your skill in accessing your MLS information database for listings, and populating your contact/client manager with your customer's name, contact information and search criteria will prove a timesaver as this same information can be autopopulated into subsequent documents such as contracts, disclosures and loan originations.

Applications such as contact and listing managers are usually available by licensing, but they can also be purchased by subscription, depending on the business model of the ASP and the product. Licensing simply means that you have licensed the right to use the product. Even though you may own a CD backup of the product, you don't really own the product. You own only the right to use the product. As a licensee, you are eligible for upgrades when the product is improved with new features or other enhancements.

ASPs spend their money up front in concept, design, marketing and deployment of their products. By the time a product reaches the end consumer, the company is interested in recouping its development costs with subscribers. Sometimes in the rush to market, a program will be identified to have significant bugs. Subscribers have an unasked-for responsibility, and that is to notify the company when a product doesn't work correctly. When that happens the company can provide a "patch" which can be downloaded to the customer's system over the Internet. Complaints are basically your trade-off for getting the latest applications so that you can do your job faster and better. Good companies will use complaints as a valuable source of information that can be used to design a better version next time.

ASPs have two goals - to build as large a subscriber base as possible and to get those subscribers to renew. Some ASPs are better than others and can be distinguished by how they treat customers. You. A good ASP is:

1. easy to find and easy to contact;
2. nurturing to newcomers to the company's products and to novices on the Internet;
3. strong in customer and technical support;
4. interested in customer feedback and in providing follow-up services, and;
5. as good as its word with useful applications that do what they are supposed to do.

How do you determine an application's value?

Today's competing companies have several ways to deploy their products to consumers. Some products are offered free for the customer to download and when the customer reaches a certain amount of Internet storage capacity or a certain time limit, s/he may be asked to upgrade for a cost. Other online applications cost pennies or dollars per month, while still others are hundreds or thousands of dollars per year. The answer to whether or not an application is worth the money depends on its value to you as an end user. Almost all products have competitors. Very few get and retain a lead in the marketplace for very long. Find out from other associates what the competitors to the program you want are so you can ask more questions.

No product is a good deal if you aren't going to use it to its fullest. When you are thinking of purchasing an application, learn all about it. Ask if there is a tutorial or class you can take. Find out what the company's policy is on upgrades. It's the little time-savers that are built into the product that have to be learned, but they will save you hours and hours down the road.

Another key to any online application's viability is that it can work with other programs. A transaction management platform may be licensed for use by a real estate broker, while a client management software may be licensed for use by the broker's agent. An ASP will code its products so that they can be used together, saving duplication of information for the broker or the agent.

You will see a dramatic change in the adoption of online applications as more companies integrate compatibility into their products and more brokers and agents get used to using them to manage their businesses.