How Metro MLS Simplified Contract Management with Self-Service Search for Executives

Bringing 600+ data feed contracts in-house from a CLM nobody outside the contracts team could use

Metro MLS is the largest multiple listing service in Wisconsin, founded in 1962 and serving more than 9,000 real estate professionals across 10 REALTOR® associations. The Milwaukee-based organization is, at its core, a real estate data company: it powers the listings that show up on the public websites of REALTORS® and brokerages across the state. Samantha, Director of Data Feed Licensing, manages the contract function for those data feed agreements and for the rest of Metro MLS's vendor relationships.

Data feed contracts are the heart of Metro MLS's contract portfolio. In the MLS world, these agreements license listing data to real estate professionals so they can pull it into their public-facing websites through IDX and syndication arrangements. Each contract typically involves multiple parties: the brokerage office, a technology vendor, and Metro MLS itself. The agreements are audited annually.

Samantha estimates that 80 to 90 percent of the contracts she manages in ContractSafe are data feed agreements; the rest are vendor contracts and other operational documents for Metro MLS.

Before ContractSafe, those contracts lived in two very different places. An affiliate company managed the data feed contracts in a different CLM, a system Samantha had used directly. Metro MLS's other vendor contracts were scattered in desk drawers and on individual desktops. When Metro MLS decided to bring the data feed function in-house, Samantha needed a single platform that could absorb the migration and serve a small contracts team alongside executives who would only log in a handful of times a year.

"Although I used our affiliate's CLM product every day, it wasn't the right fit for our executive team. I knew that ease of use would be critical, and if the system wasn't simple to navigate, it wouldn't see regular use. ContractSafe was exactly what we were looking for."

- Samantha, Director of Data Feed Licensing, Metro MLS

Samantha demoed nearly every major CLM on the market before making the call. ContractSafe won on accessibility, in-product help, and a clear sense that day-to-day users would not need a training course to get value out of the platform.