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Lightstone's strategy is to build an ecosystem of virtuous
data platforms and multi-sided transaction platforms that
complement and support each other. The model is self-reinforcing
in that each client interaction gives us more data, and
the more data we can gather, the more valuable our products
and solutions become. So, the more customers we get, the
more data we gather, the better our solutions, the more
customers we get, and so on.
In addition to the
fundamentals of our business model, we invest heavily in
ensuring strong industry expertise in each of our businesses
to ensure that we are solving each industry's most important
problems. Our goal is to ensure that our clients can consistently
make the right decisions by having the right tools and information
in the right place at the right time - thereby unlocking
enormous value in their key profit pools.
Through
our various subsidiary businesses, we provide industry-leading
data and decision-support tools across the property, motor,
business and consumer sectors. We believe our tools create
a great platform for our customers to use in their decision-making
and business-enablement environments. Our clients are able
to overlay their own proprietary data sets and insights
on the Lightstone toolkit to create unique tools that deliver
significant efficiency and meaningful competitive advantage
- tools that would be too expensive or difficult to
build by themselves.
Lightstone Auto
(www.lightstoneauto.co.za)
is a data platform business that aims to become the industry
standard for data relating to motor vehicles in South Africa.
The business offers an award-winning range of vehicle verification
and valuation solutions, and is the industry standard when
it come to strategic information tools for the broader motor
industry. Lightstone Auto's products include:
- A mobile application
(LIVE) that enables motor dealers and other users to
scan both a vehicle license disk and a driver's license
to verify the details and identify the potential risk
in a transaction.
- A valuation solution
that enables lenders to adjust loan pricing based on
what a vehicle would likely realize in a future auction
process.
- A comprehensive sales
and market share analysis tool that enables OEMs and
large dealer groups to do detailed planning and forecasting.
- A spec and pricing
tool that enables OEMs to spec and price new vehicles
that they bring to market.
Signio (www.signio.co.za)
was founded in 2003 and is now the market leader in the
provision of electronic workflow and signature solutions
to the South African vehicle finance, motor insurance and
motor value added products (VAPs) markets. The Signio system
enables dealers to process applications for finance and
insurance on behalf of customers, and facilitates the addition
of 'extras' such as tracking devices and warranties. It
is paperless (electronic) and easy to use, meets key compliance
requirements, and provides feedback to the dealers on important
performance areas via accurate and meaningful reports.
The platform is widely used by motor vehicle dealerships
(both independent dealers and dealer groups), banks, insurance
companies, VAP providers and other participants in the SA
motor vehicle industry. The system currently has more than
1 700 motor dealers as customers and processes more than
30 000 successful finance applications a month.
From a consumer perspective, Signio's platform enables an
individual to go into a dealer, choose a car, arrange finance
and insurance, sign the relevant contracts, and drive a
new car home within a couple of hours.
Lightstone
Property (www.lightstoneproperty.co.za)
was founded in 2006 with a focus on developing mortgage
risk management solutions using property data. The business
has grown substantially since those early days and is now
the leading provider of online residential property information
in South Africa. Lightstone Property's solutions include:
- An online 'Property
Toolkit' for property professionals such as estate agents,
developers, property valuers and investors who require
property related information (e.g. deeds office data,
comparable sale data, maps, imagery) on a regular basis.
- A range of online and
offline solutions for lenders that enable lenders to
assess market potential, analyse competitor performance,
assess property risk, value individual properties and
improve the efficiency and accuracy of their lending
decisions.
- EZ-Val - an end-to-end
valuation platform that allows customers to run all
valuation types (including physical) through a single
access point.
In addition, Lightstone Property is investing in some exciting
new areas:
- A range of risk assessment
tools for the short-term insurance market based on a
geo-spatial mapping of risks such as flood, lightning,
landslip and crime.
- A suite of products for the commercial property
market.
Lightstone Business (www.lightstonebusiness.co.za)
aims to be the leading provider of company- and director-related
information in South Africa. The company is still at a relatively
early stage of development, but already has a number of high
profile reference clients on its books. Underpinning Lightstone
Business's various offerings is a comprehensive, profiled
(e.g. location, industry, size, risk, lifestage) database
of company information that is at least twice as large as
any of its direct competitors. The database is grown and
maintained on an ongoing basis, using a broad range of sources
(e.g. CIPC, SARS) and techniques (e.g. call centre verification,
web scraping).
Specific services include:
- Cleanup and analysis
of B2B customer bases to reduce errors, mitigate risks
and identify profitable opportunities.
- Comprehensive reports
profiling any company or director - valuable when taking
on a new client or extending credit.
- Leads - high quality
lead generation against specific criteria - enabling
targeted, high conversion prospecting.
- Watchlist - monitoring
of changes in the risk/opportunity status of key suppliers,
customers and competitors.
Lightstone Consumer (www.lightstoneconsumer.co.za)
combines the expertise, knowledge and experience of Lightstone
Retail, DPA and the consulting division of RGT SMART under
one unified brand. The business is located in Johannesburg,
Cape Town and Port Elizabeth. As a result of its proprietary
data sets and technology, advanced analytics, deep industry
insight and extensive experience, Lightstone Consumer is
a recognized leader in spatial analytics, multi-channel
customer engagement, social media monitoring and customised
consumer research.
The business is particularly
strong in the motor sector, where it does the customer satisfaction
work for Mercedes-Benz, Chrysler, Fiat and others. It also
runs the customer satisfaction tracking programmes for most
of the OEM-approved panel beaters in the country, and has
helped most of the OEMs with dealer location analysis.
A big recent development for the business has been
the integration of real time, social media analytics into
the traditional customer engagement environment. Customers
can now see both solicited (traditional) and unsolicited
(social media) comments in real time, and respond instantaneously
where it makes sense (www.echoecho.co.za).
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