C&W Outsources Data Collection to India

Calling New Delhi... Last week a New Jersey property manager (and PikeNet reader) sent me the following e-mail.

"I received a call yesterday from Cushman & Wakefield's research center. When I returned the call, I found out that I was talking to a woman in India, not NJ. ... The first thing that tipped me off was her accent. I then asked her where she was calling from, and she said New Delhi..."

Wow, I thought to myself. Could this be true? Is the real estate brokerage industry finally joining corporate America's drive for efficiency through outsourcing?

Yes, it is true. Here's the story as released by Maria Sicola, Senior Managing Director, Research. "...Cushman & Wakefield is supplementing its Research data collection force through the hiring of 45 professionals in India. These highly trained and continually monitored professionals are enhancing the value of C&W's in-house, proprietary database, SiteSolutions II.

NIIT SmartServe Trust Us to Find the Way

"Initiated in late 2004 through a contract with NIIT SmartServe, a training and software development firm in India, this initiative has been beta tested successfully in eight markets across the United States. The result is a more efficient and effective data gathering system that maintains and enhances the quality of C&W's information and is an extension of Research in India, which works in harmony with C&W Research in the U.S."

The idea is to increase the productivity of C&W's 80 research professionals in the U.S., "allowing a number of them to move to more analytical and product development positions within Research in support of clients. ... Additionally, as of December 2004, C&W signed a new multi-market renewal agreement with CoStar, which provides our professionals with information on every CoStar market."

So now I'm wondering, How comprehensive will C&W's proprietary database be? Will Indian researchers communicate successfully with American property managers? Have any other service providers outsourced data collection?

-- Peter Pike