A push to re-platform with Zoopla
Industry: Real Estate
How we helped: Delivery Leadership, Technology Leadership and Coaching, Product-led Delivery
Key Takeaways
Renewed technology infrastructure
By simplifying and streamlining the developer experience
Providing advisory and delivery leadership
Through a mutually beneficial partnership
Enabling product-led delivery
For more effective business scaling
About Zoopla
Zoopla is a British real estate company based in London. As one of the leading portals in the UK for listing, buying, and selling properties, it also owns 60% of CRM tools that estate agents use nationwide.
Just before partnering with 101 Ways, Zoopla’s parent company ZPG was acquired by the US private equity firm Silver Lake Partners.
“We’ve still got tons of plans. You haven’t seen anything close to what the Zoopla business is capable of yet. 101 Ways has been a big part of that success.”
Paul HammondCTO, Zoopla
The Challenge
ZPG had large growth ambitions for the company after its acquisition by Silver Lake Partners in 2018. Paul Hammond joined in 2019 to lead the engineering team but, despite the undeniable growth opportunity, he quickly encountered some unique challenges. For one, a series of acquisitions had left the business with a variety of distinct core systems. Each of these had a loyal customer base that was familiar with the respective toolbase, making updating these systems difficult. The tech team was also understaffed and running on a tight budget. All this coupled with the inevitable change of leadership following new ownership led to an environment that Paul could only describe as “tumultuous.”
The Solution
Paul had long admired 101 Ways, and respected it as a firm as well as the agile development and delivery philosophy of its founder, Kelly Waters. Paul knew that 101 Ways’ focus on people over just tech was exactly what Zoopla needed. As they began their partnership, 101 Ways and Zoopla set out some key principles for their relationship. These included value-additive support, maintaining a whole-team mentality, and keeping in mind that this is a partnership, not a transaction.
The result was Project Bedrock, a push to re-platform by focusing entirely on a simple, modern stack that did everything a software engineer expected of it. A year later, Project Bedrock had delivered a new rendering stack, a new content management system, a new multi-variate testing tool, had decoupled front- and back-end development, and launched a new and improved property search page.
101 Ways also helped Zoopla improve their capabilities around listing properties, engaging with estate agents, enhancing search results, and increasing conversion rates of property enquiries to estate agent follow ups.
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