Week 38 in review

As another week comes to a close we look back at the achievements of the team and the plans for PDFx, Addressable and even this blog!

A week full of webinars, proof of concept handovers and resource planning has almost brought Q3 to a close. We can't wait to get Q4 started.

What's happened this week?

PDFx

Datascience in Llanes

This week the datascience team met up in the picturesque region of Llanes, Spain. As well as sampling some exquiste local food, the team discussed a number of core elements as we look to accelerate development on both PDFx and Addressable in the coming weeks. The hit list for the meeting was;

• Improved training capabilities
• Improving and extending the utilisation of semantic recognition
• Improved table recognition & extraction for problematic tables
• Further improvements to OCR capabilities to get it to a production ready state.

Whilst the data scientists explored Llanes the rest of the development team stayed at home to discuss how we can quickly iterate the User Interface based on the feedback that we are receiving from clients. As anybody who has worked in tech will know, there comes a time when 'tech-debt' must be paid. This isn't a negative thing, infact its the complete opposite. The team have been releasing at such a cadence that we must now complete a retrospective to ensure that we are still alligned with our roadmap and that any future blockers can be removed before the team come face-to-face with them.

• For those like me that didn't know, it's pronounced Yanes not Lanes or Yanice.

Addressable

PropTech embraces the UPRN

This week Dan Hughes hosted a Geospace Webinar titled UPRN - the golden key to unlock value in the property chain. A recording of the webinar should be available in the coming days. The tech team found it hugely insightful and also reassuring that the questions asked by the public are solvable via the use of Addressable as a framework to connect datasets.

A few of the team reached out to other attendees and speakers to discuss UPRN's further and we were blown away by the reception that we got not only to Addressable but also those that thanked us for releasing the PPSM data on a regular basis.

UPRN match rates

Following the webinar our Head of Data Dr. Lee Mollins produced a high level report on the UPRN match rate for OGL datasets using the Addressable framework as a backbone. Whilst not yet finalised B217 is already showing it's advantages.

Even more connections

Further connections have been made within the data - adding a new set of connections for not fully address matched records, this allows us to include them in all their possible contexts. At present, no matched addresses are included in street and postcode views. The new connections will be for building polygons, toids, land reg titles & estates.

Misc

• Included in the PropTech 100 landscape Proptech 100
• Alligned socials with the brand
• Confirmed facelift for the website with more content pages
• Finalised a number of PoC pieces of work for outstanding tenders

HARNESS listed in top 100 Proptech companies

We're delighted to announce that we have been included in the Proptech 100 2021 technology landscape. We have been listed alongside 99 other #Proptech companies. HARNESS was entered with 250 other companies and managed to make it into the top 100.

Grown-up market? While the total number of new proptech companies is decreasing, the number of venture deals and the total amount of proptech venture capital is increasing across Europe. As the proptech market is b2b-focused, it will be of essence to quickly land deals with leading real estate companies. As Covid-19 led to a freeze of external innovation projects, it will be interesting to watch if real estate incumbents will continue and strengthen their transformation journey with proptech companies.

Technology will continue to change the way people work, live and socialize. BUILTWORLD identifies the most relevant challenges and topics of the future. We navigate through the fast and ever-changing real estate technology landscape. With the PropTechMap 2021, we utilise our innovation ecosystem to provide a unique perspective on the builtworld world of tomorrow.

Alligning the brand

We have spent a little bit of time this week alligning the brand to ensure that the message being sent across all socials & articles is corresponding. You will notice that LinkedIn, Twitter & Facebook have all received a makeover.

As well as updating the corporate accounts we are also encouraging staff to reach out and become active in the industry communities. We have produced the below banner for staff to update their personal accounts should they wish.

In other news

Whilst discussing Addressable in an internal meeting earlier. Our CEO, Edwin Groenendaal said;

"Whenever I see the full network that is ADDRESSABLE expand with a new dataset we've ingested, I think of one of my favourite scenes in JJ Abrams' Alias - where an excited Sydney explains to her CIA handler that with her inside information about SD-6, an elusive terrorist organisation, they can end it in one fell swoop - her face when she realises the full picture of what she's up against... priceless."

The video of Alias SD-6 can be watched here

Releases

PDFx

Algorithm Training improvements have been rolled out to the core extraction algorithms, these benefit the following datapoints

What's coming up

PDFx

There are of UI enhancements that will be released next week. These enhancements will not be workflow impacting, but will instead just add the shine to the UI as a whole.

Addressable

Build 217 will be released in the coming days. Our data scientists will analyse the data and prepare the upcomming PPSM data release.

Product Blog

We fancy a new look, what do you think?