The team at Rochester, Minn.-based DoApp just announced its new iKenex real estate platform for agents and brokers built in collaboration with California MLS software firm Concentric Mobile.

iKenex brings all the real estate data a Realtor or agent would ever need directly to his or her preferred mobile smartphone device, whether it is an iPhone, iPad, Android or BlackBerry. Taking advantage of the mobile device's built-in Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) technology, the iKenex app pinpoints where you are and delivers a home's complete listing details in seconds.

That data can then easily and instantly be provided to consumers, or that potential buyer can quickly connect directly with the Realtor listing the home. With a single tap, the consumer can connect with agents or their agencies via phone call, email, text message, instant message or through a social network.

This sort of innovation is sorely needed in the real estate marketplace today primarily because of the collapse that has occurred in the housing market. With its capability to make the process of selling and buying a home considerably more efficient for both buyers and real estate agents or brokers, iKenex promises to remove much of the typical lag time for Realtors and buyers to communicate about properties or shorten the time it takes for buyers to get more information from a real estate agent when on the hunt for that perfect home.

What might not be obvious from looking at the features of iKenex is this: DoApp and Concentric Mobile have done a remarkable job of creating a platform adept at aligning incentives in the residential real estate marketplace for real estate agents and brokers and making the process of communicating with buyers fast and easy.

Unless you're a Realtor or a seller of a home, why should you care if some local Minnesota mobile apps company has delivered a more efficient method of selling and buying a home? That real estate collapse is why. Buying and selling is much harder than it has been for years and anything that can help move things along faster and better in that process is in demand.

Whenever there is great flux in a market or economy, there is great opportunity to do things differently and find ways to make processes more efficient, and iKenex promises to do both. If you're selling your home, having your Realtor be connected with other Realtors (or buyers) ensures that the entire process moves along quickly. With homes on the market longer than ever these days, this can make the difference between seeing that real estate sign in your front yard or having it with a SOLD sign hanging underneath it!

Smartphone usage is exploding and consumers (along with Realtors & brokers) are using them for research and communication on-the-go.

Of course, the key to any platform is to provide an on-ramp to a market or technology that savvy businesspeople and developers can leverage. My impression of the iKenex platform is that it strongly aligns with the incentives of local, regional, state or even national companies that want to participate in the mobile/GPS real estate app space, but clearly can't "play" with providers like Zillow and, most likely, couldn't obtain decent return on investment by building its own app. In addition, Realtorss incentives seem obviously aligned with iKenex and now they can easily leverage what's happening with their local listings and the geographic areas within which they sell houses.

I asked DoApp CEO, Wade Beavers, if my assumption that its strategy about aligning incentives with iKenex was on the right track.

"That is a fair way to position it," said Beavers, "What we have found is that products developed for a local market do well. They never reach numbers that dazzle you but when you aggregate them they are very high. Real Estate is still a local service and the idea that we are trying to work with agents, associations, etc., to maintain that level of service with technology is key.

"We like to think we are helping them reinvent themselves on the service side but that is only us self proclaiming that and time will tell. I do know that agents use these tools to make their jobs more efficient too. The thing that is amazing for us is we are able to take an MLS and put them in market with their own branded app in 30 days or less which says a lot."

iKenex (and the other apps DoApp delivers) is one to watch since it undoubtedly is offering a better way for Realtors and agents to be responsive to customers, more efficient in the way the entire real estate process unfolds, and is aligning incentives in the industry in a new and innovative way.