TheREALM: The Message Is Integration

Cash Management Tool... Last week in New York City, Greg Spevok, Vice President of Marketing at TheREALM toured me (virtually) around TheREALM's first E-business offering, REALMCash.  Cool.  REALMCash is a "rent collection and invoice clearinghouse service."  You've heard of a "lockbox" service, right?  That's when your tenants send their rent payments to a PO Box, and a service deposits them directly into your bank account and sends you a report.  Well, REALMCash is a lockbox service on steroids  -- tailored specifically for the real estate industry. 

Through a web interface, you instruct REALMCash exactly how to handle each tenant's payment, which may be in the form of a paper check or an electronic transfer.  REALMCash then encodes the check, deposits the funds into your account and uploads this information to your property management program.  (This is a great simplification of a very complex process.)  Lots of neat features -- like front and back images of the check.  Currently, REALMCash only works with TheREALM's own property management programs -- CTI, B.J. Murray and Newstar Solutions.  But TheREALM plans to build links with other property management programs in the future. 

REALMCash relies upon TheREALM's "Integration Hub," an XML-based conversion application to transfer the data from one program from another.  For example, you can import data directly from CTI to Argus for a financial analysis through the Hub.  Spevok says that TheREALM's XML data tags will be compatible with those currently under development by the Data Consortium -- managed by Mike Young. ... So REALMCash gives you a taste of our integrated future -- when new applications will enable data to move freely between property management, financial analysis, transaction management, and listing services -- to name just a few.   That sure will be slick.   

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