Sieena - Case Study - I Want An Offer

1. Case Study
Sieena Jumpstarts Launch of First Social
Networking Site Dedicated to the Real Estate
Community
Sieena’s Nearshore Outsourcing Approach Expedites Time to Market, Reduces
Total Cost of Engagement for IWantAnOffer.com’s Scalable Web Platform.
Overview
Designed to fill an information void in a challenging market, IWantAnOffer.com recently
launched as America’s first social networking site for the broad - based real estate
broad-
community,
community including buyers, sellers, agents, investors and developers. Established by
entrepreneurs Michael Abraham and Scott Lurie, IWantAnOffer.com provides a platform
for sellers to promote properties; buyers to review potential homes and locations; and
agents to publicize their services and current listings.
IWantAnOffer.com members can upload listings and video tours of properties, create
personal profile pages, and blog about current issues or a specific property and its
location. At the same time, home seekers can make use of the platform to ask
questions, send a message to sellers, add homes to their personal property watch list,
run a mortgage calculator, and most importantly, make an offer directly from the site.
The goal of the platform’s founders was to create a non-intimidating online
environment, with ease of navigation a top priority every step of the way. By providing
free registration and free property listings, Abraham has drawn a large following to the
community. Yet by keeping the site simple and helpful, he has been able to grow and
maintain that following.
The Challenge
After coming up with the initial plan for the social networking site several years ago,
Abraham began seeking out a technology partner that could help him bring his ideas to
fruition. He interviewed several potential firms, each offering solid resumes and proven
skills. Yet only one candidate made a commitment to start on the project immediately:
That company was Sieena, a Los Angeles-based application developer and Microsoft
Gold Certified Partner with nearshore development offices in Monterrey, Mexico.
Motivated to get the site up and running, Abraham chose Sieena not only based on
its ability to get to work quickly, but also because of the many stellar
recommendations that its references offered.
www.sieena.com
Phone: (310) 455-6188 | Fax: (310) 564-0344
1901 Avenue of the Stars 2nd Floor; Los Angeles, California, 90067

2. Case Study
Sieena Jumpstarts Launch of First Social
Networking Site Dedicated to the Real Estate
Community
“Sieena was very responsive to our needs right from the start,” recalls Abraham.
“They realized that we were in start-up mode and they immediately became a
part of our team, with a dedication to our timelines and go-to-market deadlines
that was refreshing.” When Abraham came across Sieena, he had already put
together the front end of the IWantAnOffer.com interactive Web site. What he needed
from Sieena was a robust back-end design. What he got was a powerful Web application
capable of supporting tens of thousands of participants, secure transactions and RSS
feeds, along with transparent access to third-party real estate sites such as ZipRealty,
Point2Homes.com and Zillow.com.
The Solution
In developing a full-featured Web platform for IWantAnOffer.com, Sieena drew from its
years of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) experience, along with its expertise in deploying
mission-critical Web sites. Relying on Microsoft ASP.NET, Sieena built the backbone of
the site’s user interface. Then, using the Microsoft C# development language, which
offers everything needed to build a robust and scalable solution, the Sieena team
seamlessly connected database elements, controls and other components for the site.
With Microsoft SQL Server 2005, Sieena also implemented a powerful data repository for
IWantAnOffer.com, storing both user data and property information in a highly secure
fashion.
The most challenging phase of the development process involved setting up data-
sharing with third-party sites such as ZipRealty, Zillow and Point2Homes, including the
capability to accept large data feeds from those platforms. When individual agents
submitted feeds to the site, Abraham also wanted to be able to regulate the number of
listings to be syndicated. Further, he wanted to be able to automatically populate
ZipRealty and Point2Homes directly into the IWantAnOffer.com database, while also
facilitating email exchanges between agents and prospective buyers regarding
particular properties, regardless of which third-party site the property emanated from.
The first step that Sieena took to accommodate these requirements was to create a tool
capable of handling any XML schema: It came up with an XML builder that allowed the
development team to define each node and then associate those nodes with a field in the
IWantAnOffer database.
www.sieena.com
Phone: (310) 455-6188 | Fax: (310) 564-0344
1901 Avenue of the Stars 2nd Floor; Los Angeles, California, 90067

3. Case Study
Sieena Jumpstarts Launch of First Social
Networking Site Dedicated to the Real Estate
Community
The XML builder provided a flexible engine capable of populating any feed from any third
party into the IWantAnOffer.com database. Next, Sieena wanted to ensure that the site
would be able to process massive information in a short amount of time. With the
content-rich XML data provided by Point2Homes and Zillow (containing property listings,
images and more) scaling up to 500 megabytes (MB) and occasionally up to one gigabyte
(GB) or more, the Sieena team knew that processing ongoing data feeds could create a
challenge. The developers therefore took an approach that involved dividing the process
into parts to facilitate data flow, using an XSLT parser to streamline activity. With one
process inserting massive information into the database and another process
downloading the images and storing them in the correct place on the site, Sieena was
able to ensure that IWantAnOffer.com operated both efficiently and effectively.
Another step toward achieving Abraham’s goals was to publish the IWantAnOffer.com
site properties in a feed format. Sieena took advantage of an RSS engine, allowing
Abraham’s site administrators to define their schemas and publish them on the site. To
help regulate listings, Sieena also set up the site so that the administrators could
quickly and easily establish a maximum for the number of properties published by each
user. With so much data flowing into the site, the challenge of balancing server
resources also became an issue. Massive information processing, along with image pre-
processing, presented challenges. Sieena resolved the issue by creating night batch
processes for operations that consumed significant server resources, leaving the more
simple information processing to occur during the day.
To complete the project, Sieena also made provisions for Google ads as well as
Authorize.Net, a gateway that enables Internet merchants to accept online payments via
credit card and e-check.
The Benefits
In working with IWantAnOffer.com, Sieena provided all the advantages of nearshore
outsourcing, making use of its award-winning development team in Monterrey to deliver
on-time, on-budget results, according to Mauricio Duran, president of Sieena. “Our
nearshore outsourcing model benefits North American clients such as
IWantAnOffer.com in many ways,” says Duran. “We operate in a similar time zone,
our offices are in close proximity and our developers have an excellent
command of the English language. On top of all that, Sieena maximizes results
www.sieena.com
Phone: (310) 455-6188 | Fax: (310) 564-0344
1901 Avenue of the Stars 2nd Floor; Los Angeles, California, 90067

4. Case Study
Sieena Jumpstarts Launch of First Social
Networking Site Dedicated to the Real Estate
Community
by accelerating time to market and decreasing total cost of engagement, while
also remaining committed to the highest quality of workmanship.”
With the IWantAnOffer.com social networking platform now fully launched, Abraham
says he is very pleased with the outcome. More than a quarter of a million listings are
posted, and 10,000 unique visitors come to the site each month. Currently, as many as
5,000 registered users participate in the community on an ongoing basis. This growing
community has offered extremely positive feedback about the value that it gains from
IWantAnOffer.com, which continues to play a unique role in the real estate market.
"Sieena's execution of our strategy was flawless. I couldn't be happier with the
quality of their work. Best of all, their get-it-done attitude allowed us to achieve
our goals both on time and on budget." says Abraham.
About Sieena
Since 2004, Sieena a Microsoft Gold national corporations. To learn more
Certified Partner has provided about how Sieena can meet your
comprehensive IT support and software development goals, please
comprehensive nearshore software contact us.
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internet applications and customized
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built and maintained business-critical
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businesses up through large multi-
www.sieena.com
Phone: (310) 455-6188 | Fax: (310) 564-0344
1901 Avenue of the Stars 2nd Floor; Los Angeles, California, 90067