Biz-cen - Real estate online platform

Biz-cen

Real estate web service

Biz-Cen.ru realized that renting office space is a big hassle for smaller companies. The process of identifying business centres, visiting them in-person, and eventually sorting out all the contractual necessities did not seem like an especially client-friendly way of managing this journey. Having the idea of creating a platform to connect business centres and potential tenants, Biz-Cen.ru asked Vasterra to turn their vision into the final, ready-to-launch platform.

php

TensorFlow

JavaScript

PostgreSQL

jQuery

HTML

PostCSS

www.biz-cen.ru

Office rental platform for businesses

Biz-Cen.ru has been the first to offer a sophisticated platform where businesses can search office space online by seeing their location visualized on a map. Moreover, they were the first one to focus not only on tenants requiring hundreds of square meters of office space but also start-ups and small and medium sized companies. While traditional agents were not able to serve the niche due to the common brokerage fee structure in the industry, Biz-Cen.ru recognized the opportunity of accessing the niche of low-value tenants on a large scale through an online platform.

Add to favourites Name, class, metro, address, phone free offices

Simplifying complex structures

Prior to Biz-Cen.ru, companies had to send people to the various business centres and view these personally. Further, no price comparison was possible and led to a high degree of non-transparency. Vasterra created an extensive CMS containing all necessary information of each business centre available on the platform. Moreover, we organized pictures of each business centre both from inside and outside as well as created detailed floor plans to provide the most comprehensive user experience on the final platform. This enabled an enriched user experience which truly lives up to Biz-Cen.ru’s promise – the simplified renting of office space.

www.biz-cen.ru

Monetizing the platform

Initially, Biz-Cen.ru planned that business centres pay to be discoverable on the platform. However, once Vasterra established the relationships with the business centres, it became clear that a significant part of the centres will not change their modus operandi.

Vasterra proposed an adapted monetization strategy based on the traditional brokerage fees

Based on our suggestion, Biz-Cen.ru built their sales team to not only focus on business centres but also on tenants. Recognizing this strategic detail has ever since been crucial to the success of Biz-Cen.ru.

Beyond matching

Vasterra went beyond the initial requirements and identified the opportunity to employ advanced analytics modules across the entire platform. We were able to focus the platform design on collecting as much data of the customers as possible. By anonymously tracking the user journeys, we were able to integrate an additional service offering predicting the occupancy levels for each business centre. More precisely, we enabled Biz-Cen.ru to predict how long a vacant office will remain vacant at a specific price. Our client was enabled to consult business centres on what price scheme is appropriate based on their location, their interior standard and – most importantly – their competition. This initiative enabled Biz-Cen.ru to not only become active in the brokerage business but to provide analytics services to business centres.

IP Telephony to thrive analytics

Biz-Cen.ru decided to open a call centre focusing solely on potential tenants. As these tenants will be in touch with sales agents earlier or later, calls are a valuable source of additional insights. Vasterra implemented IP telephony, recorded all calls, and anonymously analysed the conversations.

The data generated from these conversations was used to further thrive the analytics service offering.

Our software enabled Biz-Cen.ru to access the entire wealth of their data in the most efficient way possible.

Process automation at the forefront

Our client operates in a niche market. The opportunity lays in the extensive number of small businesses requiring a simple way of finding office space. However, these prospective tenants are not the most profitable ones. Vasterra understood the vision behind Biz-Cen.ru as well as the requirements for the platform to be successful. Therefore, process automation enjoyed one of the highest priorities among our developers. We automated repetitive tasks to free sales agents up from these and to focus on selling office space to clients instead. Vasterra’s initiative led to a cost reduction of 169% compared to prior the implementation of the final automation.

tenants per year

offices viewed per month

reducing production costs

A platform made to succeed

Biz-Cen.ru started off in 2010 and since then, Vasterra has been on the forefront of their digital journey. Today, more than 1’770 office spaces are viewed through Biz-Cen.ru every single month and a current tenant base of nearly 30’000 tenants is cared for. The platform has become the market leader in the rental office market in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. Moreover, expansions to Europe are being evaluated.

The relationship between Biz-Cen.ru and Vasterra started in 2010 and evolved into a strategic partnership over time. Today, we are proud to be the digital partner of Biz-Cen.ru and responsible for the entire analytics and platform side of the business.

Here at Vasterra, we understand ourselves as partners enabling our clients to achieve their vision with the most efficient and effective solution possible. What is your next project?