Why Your Brokerage Will Die Without a Great API

By Tiana Baur 

API stands for Application Programming Interface. It sounds complicated, but it’s actually quite simple. An API is the messenger that delivers the request you make to the provider you’re requesting it from, and then delivers the response back to you. It’s what moves your data from point A to point B. MuleSoft compares an API to a waiter or waitress at a restaurant. When you sit down, you are presented with a menu with a variety of options and variations. You place your order with the waiter who then delivers your choices to the kitchen and brings the food and drinks back to your table.

An API is what allows a brokerage platform to be truly open. And an open platform is what allows brokerages to have a choice in every tool and service they want to use. Here’s a look at the difference:

Open Platform: An open platform has an open API that allows brokerages to plug and play tools and services from multiple vendors, including multiple vendors per category (such as marketing, transaction management, advertising, gifting vendors, etc.), as they see fit.

Closed Platform: With a closed platform, brokerages are required to take the tools and services from one vendor and a very short list of partners, limiting choice and flexibility. Many will say that the brokerage has to use their website in order to get the “platform” with it. This means brokerages don’t get to keep the investment they’ve made into their current tools and services when they change them out for new ones. It means they have to start over.

The thing many brokerages don’t realize, is that data isn’t just a list of numbers. Data is what integration is literally made of. Brokerage data is the soul of the brokerage business that keeps its heart beating and its legs moving. This data is useless if it doesn’t work flawlessly together and isn’t stored in a shared environment. Without data, brokerages will cease to exist.

The Moxi Works API gives our approved partners an easy way to integrate with our open platform and helps provide a seamless solution to our brokerage customers, making them more profitable, and their agents more productive. Having all of their data in one center of truth, speaking to their unique variation of tools and services they’re plugging into their power strip, means they’ve future-proofed themselves for any and all technology changes to come. Why? Because they retain control of all their data.

The five core data components that the open platform has are:
1. Property data
2. Brokerage and agent data
3. Consumer data
4. Integration with the cloud environment with Microsoft and Google
5. An API allowing other companies to integrate

If a brokerage doesn’t use a powerful API to connect all of their tools and services, there is anarchy amongst them. A lack of integration gives agents and brokerages tool fatigue. The Moxi Cloud open platform and Moxi Works API work together to store and exchange data, and above all else, means brokerages can take the investment in their existing tools and services and integrate them using our open platform and API.

Want to know what our Moxi Works API is like? Here’s an idea of what our partners are saying about their experience with us.