Kaizen, Brokers, Technology and Virtual Properties

The Economist:

Like several other Japanese business concepts of the time, kaizen begins with the letter K--like keiretsu, kanban and kakushin.

Kaizen has three underlying principles:

• that human resources are a company's most important asset;
• that processes must evolve by gradual improvement rather than by radical change;
• that improvement must be based on a quantitative evaluation of the performance of different processes.

Kaizen lost some of its shine with the slowdown of the Japanese industrial bulldozer. Even Toyota, one of its most devoted exponents, came to acknowledge that kaizen had to be mixed with more radical reforms. In an interview in 2007, the company's boss, Katsuaki Watanabe, said:

Fifteen years ago I would have said that as long as we had enough people Toyota could achieve its goals through kaizen. In today's world, however, change ... may also need to be brought about by kakushin.

However, Watanabe also acknowledged that "when 70 years of very small improvements accumulate, they become a revolution".

Effective, quality software requires Kaizen, along with Toyota's observation that periodically a bold step is necessary. In our case, the bold steps might include

• significant interface improvements that reduce user steps,
• extensive automation to replace manual processes,
• pervasive mapping tools that are faster and more useful than traditional searches,
• first to market with branded iPhone, iPod Touch GPS HomeFinder tools,
• a sophisticated, redundant approach to mls data error management and
• professional photography, vr and video that differentiates your listings, websites, leads and agents.

We began working on Main Street in the mid 1990's. Today, in 2009, the software is extraordinarily capable, flexible and modern. The foundation has been rewritten and updated no less than five times, a process that is essential to constant improvement.