| dc.description.abstract | Information Technology is now being viewed as an organizational core competency that is
necessary for organizations to survive and prosper in rapidly-changing, competitive, business
environments. Today, the real estate sector is grappling with a number of challenges such as
shortage of skilled manpower, escalating project cost, prolonged construction period, lack of
proper record keeping strategies, competition, loss of files, duplication of data, slow access to
information and use of outdated ways of analyzing and storing data. Technology holds the
key to not only address some of these issues, but also a promise for the sector to react to the
changing market conditions more effectively and efficiently.
This study aims to examine variations in firms‘ responses, and how increasing use of
Information, Communication &Technology (ICT) impact on firms‘ operational and activities
that include productivity, staffing structure and requirements, adoption of working practices,
quality of customer service, and sales. The primary data were collected in a questionnaire
survey conducted which involved a sample of 153 firms randomly selected from office
buildings located in the Central Business District (CBD) and other key submarkets in the
fringe of CBD in Nairobi. The firms‘ perception of ICT impact on real estate needs was
asked in the survey, andthe variations in their responses were analyzed with respect to factors
like business types,firms‘ attitude towards ICT use, and their ICT strategies.
Utilizing data from 96 real estate companies, this study examines the impact of information
technology in real estate and the extent of applications implementation within an
organization. The findings from the analysis of data provide evidence that Information
Technology has a significant, positive impact on the way real estate firms carry out their
activities. Also, Kileleshwa, which is a part of Nairobi city, has been selected as study area in
developing Real Estate Information Management System (RIMS). The Geographic
Information Systems (GIS) technology was implemented in the development of RIMS to
pose the geographic questions made by the user in house hunting. The study reinforces the
importance of Information Technology infrastructure to organizations as one source for
sustainable competitive advantage. | en_US |
