For reasons that are not too logical the property industry has historically regarded sales and lettings as different disciplines.  Although the matching of applicants to vendors is not unlike the matching of tenants to landlords, lettings has all the further complications of client accounting and property management which require an additional skill set.

The unfortunate aspect here is that although an agency may be involved in both sales and lettings there has been to date little alternative but to purchase two or sometimes three software solutions to handle everything involved.  This inevitably means a degree of "double entry" of data (the systems don't talk to each other) and there is no opportunity to cross sell.

From the agency point of view a customer on the lettings side who wishes to invest in more property to let is handed over to another department (sales) where there is no computer record of his historical dealings with the agency. From the customer's point of view he or she might find this a little difficult to comprehend - "I have been dealing with you for years now I am being treated as if I am a stranger".

Although there are cultural and other differences based on skill sets, one reason for this situation has been the preponderance of "desktop" database engines in residential property software solutions. As competent as they are in a single office environment they begin to run out of steam when the scope is widened to include all aspects of residential sales and lettings including client accounting and property management.

Aspasia is possibly unique in addressing this problem and has been designed to offer those customers who require it the ability to handle everything within one integrated package.  Of course if you just want to use Aspasia for one aspect alone (like residential sales) then it performs in the same way as any other solution. It manages to do this by employing an enterprise level database engine (Oracle). For more information on the impact of the different types of databases used in property based applications please click here.

For a more detailed discussion of the issues involved in the sales/lettings software debate please see the three highlighted menu options on the left of this page.