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Spotted: Although online commerce has been growing by leaps and bounds, it is still largely restricted to transactions that require very little negotiation or individual products that can be shipped by mail. Most large-scale, complex transactions don’t really have the technological support needed to occur in a fully digital medium. The DocuWalk platform from ShelterZoom is hoping to change this.

DocuWalk is a software platform that allows almost anyone to manage contracts and documents in a highly secure, easy-to-use environment. The SaaS platform was initially designed to allow real estate agents to manage all the required documentation, virtual negotiation and end-to-end transactions on one platform. The latest iteration takes an “industry-agnostic” approach with added features like the ability to create uniform document and contract templates.

Today, most online contracts are just a digital version of a paper contract. However, one key feature of the DocuWalk platform is that it allows the seamless connection of the data and the text in each document to other contracts, allowing them to be transported, analysed and compared without additional data entry. With many now reluctant to travel or negotiate face-to-face, ShelterZoom has also built in a real-time negotiation feature that helps everyone involved in a transaction to collaborate remotely and move the process forward.

Chao Cheng-Shorland, co-founder of ShelterZoom explains some of the benefits, saying, “We can have side-by-side negotiation and real-time messaging  … all stored in the same place which no one else’s prying eyes can access. … I can’t keep track of which house had an easement for the electric company or had grandfathered clauses for certain rights of way. But if I have that information all saved in the DocuWalk library, it doesn’t take me more than a few seconds to look it up and impress my clients with the fact that I still have the information about their house.”

To provide security, and prevent types of real-estate fraud that have become all too common, DocuWalk was built using blockchain technology. In doing so, it joins a growing list of applications for blockchain, including checking the provenance of “green” clothing and as a way to tokenise natural resources.

Written By: Lisa Magloff

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