Core service offerings for MLSs continues to evolve and expand as MLSs look for ways to help their subscribers save money while serving the needs of their clients better. According to the 2009 CMLS MLS Operations Benchmarking Survey, nearly 60% of MLSs now provide Electronic faxing and Document Management as a core service offering.

CMLS-Core-Services-Offering-GraphAs noted in the 2009 WAV Group Transaction Management Adoption Study, usage of methods for processing transactions online continue to grow.  Agents first become comfortable with processing forms online. That process worked so well that they are now quickly adopting other online tools to make the process of closing a transaction easier.  Electronic Faxing is one of those tools that is exploding.  Whenever we conduct satisfaction surveys with MLS subscribers, Electronic Faxing is consistently ranked as one of the most highly valued services available through MLSs today.  Agents love the fact that they can actually “read” the fax when they get it. They especially value electronic faxing when they can automatically upload executed documents into an online file folder in a document management system so they can easily store and distribute all of their transaction documents in one place.

MRED is the latest MLS that has listened to the needs of their customers and has adopted Electronic Faxing.  According to today’s announcement, Midwest Real Estate Data, LLC (MRED) and Instanet Solutions have reached an agreement that provides all MRED subscribers with the InstanetFaxTM service

as a member benefit. MRED, based in Chicago is one of the largest MLS organizations in the country. Instanet Solutions is a leading international provider of paperless technologies to the real estate industry.

“InstanetFaxTM will be deeply integrated with MRED’s MLS system providing users with a single and seamless interface”, said Martin Scrocchi, Instanet Solutions CEO. “We are providing MRED with extensive features including unlimited toll-free inbound and outbound faxing; uploading paper documents into the MLS, Smartphone access to fax, email or view documents and printing electronic files to fax or email all in one step. This combination enables MRED members to move one step closer to going truly paperless.”

“Having the Instanet faxing capabilities incorporated directly into our MLS and Transaction Management applications will be a great advantage to our customers, and demonstrates MRED’s commitment to a paperless environment. The collaborative approach between MRED’s technical team, Instanet Solutions and

MLS provider dynaConnections is a great example of cooperation within the real estate technology ecosystem that the rest of our industry should follow.” said Russ Bergeron, MRED’s CEO.