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With leases that include castles and country clubs as well as the Waitrose supermarket chain and numerous department stores, the property needs of the John Lewis Partnership are many and varied – and growing.

So when management restructuring gave them the chance to upgrade their systems, they quickly opted for a property management solution that was modern, robust – and above all, highly flexible. That system was o6ix.

Says Programme Support Manager Hilary Davidson: “we operate around 560 leases and they’re all astonishingly varied. We wanted a system that could record all those details, but that was also flexible enough to adapt to our existing systems and the various companies we have within the group”.

As o6ix installation and training proceeds, its more advanced features are growing in importance. Flexible reporting and the ability to export to Excel will allow optimisation of items like maintenance charges. The software’s Insight module will give branch managers easy internet access to the property database. And eventual integration with other systems will cut down dramatically on paperwork.

“We’re eager to use o6ix to its full capabilities”, says Hilary. “It’s not merely a case of adapting the software to the way we work. We also want to take full advantage of the system’s more powerful features.“
 

John Lewis website

Countrywide plc is well known as Europe’s largest estate agency operation, but its business is considerably broader. Its property management arm, for example – Countrywide Managing Agents (CMA, formally trading as Countrywide Property Management) – is unrivalled. It employs 230 staff in 15 offices, and manages 40,000 properties in the UK and Ireland, ranging from residential blocks and houses to industrial estates, shopping centres and multi-occupied office buildings.

As you might expect, Countrywide Managing Agents is also one of the longest established users of TRAMPS, Trace Solutions’ market leading software package for managing agents. In fact, they began using TRAMPS as long ago as 1976.

Back then, of course, it ran on a steam-driven mini-computer with a proprietary operating system. But it certainly proved highly resilient, because (despite a number of ports to more advanced hardware) it has continued to be the bedrock of CMA’s management business right up to the present day. It has of course been updated and regularly maintained by Trace over the years to provide the huge expansion of Countrywide’s Database and business demands.

However, no company can rest on its laurels and in 2007 it was decided to put the contract for property management software out to tender. Countrywide wanted to test the market and ensure that it was benefiting from all the latest advances in software, hardware and ‘best practice‘ in property management.

I wish we’d upgraded years ago!

And so began a period of intensive research by a dedicated project team from Countrywide with experience and expertise. This led initially to a shortlist of 6 potential suppliers, which in turn was whittled down to 4 – and then 2. Trace, unsurprisingly, was one of the finalists – and TRAMPS (the latest, greatest, Windows-based version) was the eventual winner.

“The new Windows-based TRAMPS is a real step forward for us”, says David Walton, CMA’s associate director, who led the tender process. “It will help us to improve our business processes dramatically and bring a real increase in efficiency to both ourselves and our clients, and importantly facilitate our growth plans. I wish we’d upgraded years ago!”

Trace are also adding numerous enhancements and extra facilities to the system, including industry-leading web services for both tenants and clients. And, naturally, CMA’s many years of experience of the reliability and support they have come to expect from Trace has been highly influential in the decision making process.

Ultimately, though, it is the power of the underlying code that has most impressed David Walton. “Trace really do understand property management, and their software reflects that at the deepest level. This new contract represents a massive upgrade in our management capabilities, as well as a massive vote of confidence in Trace Solutions.”
 

Countrywide Estate Management website

The Habro Group are fund managers who help Danish clients invest in major UK properties. Until recently, most of the Group’s portfolio was looked after by a variety of managing agents based across the UK.

But then, two years ago, Habro decided to bring all their property management in-house – to give themselves greater control.

“When I joined, we owned 45 properties, but only 4 of them were under our direct management control” says Mark Mason, the property specialist hired to set up their new property management division. “That arrangement didn’t make it very easy to monitor what was going on”.

Even worse, the 4 properties that Habro did manage were all run using ad-hoc systems – a combination of spreadsheets and standard accounting packages.

it’s the only logical solution if you want to grow your property management business

“There was no way we could have run our entire portfolio like that, and it was always my intention to bring Trace in. Trace software may be a big commitment at first but it’s the only logical solution if you want to grow your property management business.”

All the company’s properties are now managed using the BlueBox property management system; and users in both the UK and Denmark have been trained in its use. So now Mark can start to take full advantage of its more sophisticated features.

“Dealing with tenants, acting as VAT agents on behalf of Habro, reporting back to the fund managers – all these are now relatively simple routine tasks. But BlueBox is actually helping us to grow the business too. For example, we recently acquired a shopping centre and are having to deal with a fairly complex service charges. Which, of course, is a function that's already built in to the system.”

“It’s all about confidence really. With BlueBox, we know we can easily double in size without missing a beat.” 

Habro Properties website

Food retailer Pret A Manger uses Trace Solution's o6ix to manage its chain of 220 food outlets in the UK.

Pret A Manger website

Industrial estate developer, the Langtree Group plc owns some 4 million square feet of space in business parks and office blocks across the North of England. From its offices in the North West, the Midlands and Yorkshire, Langtree successfully manages a portfolio with around 1,500 tenants using the flexible, fully integrated and Windows-based BlueBox system.

Phil Duckett, Langtree’s Finance Director, says the decision to buy from Trace was an easy one: “We looked at a lot of other systems when choosing BlueBox and have a product that we are perfectly happy with.” Langtree is very careful to keep on top of all aspects of its business, from development projects and hands-on property and lease management to sensible financial control – all of which is well supported by the BlueBox software. Phil feels that the option to implement BlueBox “was a very practical decision for us.”

it gives us the platform to successfully grow our business

Good after sales support is one of the most important areas to consider when getting a new system and when Langtree experienced one small problem, Trace’s engineers were quickly on the case - scrutinising both the software and the hardware. “They listened carefully to us and they sorted it out very quickly,” says Phil. “Trace has the best reputation in the marketplace for supporting its clients.”

And does the flexible BlueBox system now provide Langtree with the speed and features it needs? “I was always confident that the product could deliver what we wanted.” Says Phil. “BlueBox gives us the platform from which we can successfully grow our business. It supports our business processes very well and because it is always being developed and upgraded, we should never have to change systems again.”


“Overall it’s a very good product indeed. I’m very happy with it.”
 

Langtree Group website

St John’s College owns approximately 18,000 acres of agricultural land around England as well as a large and diverse property portfolio encompassing shops, offices, leisure facilities, industrial units, residential properties and ground rents.

Prior to purchasing BlueBox, the St John’s team used a Dolphin system. The primary concern they had with their old system was that it was not Y2K compliant. However it also had a couple of other problems: it was not capable of holding the full range the property data that they required for their portfolio and so a paper filing system had to be run in parallel. This meant that updating and searching for information was very time consuming and involved duplication of effort. Even when the information had been found, the system’s basic reporting functionality meant that outputs from the system were limited.

The team looked at other systems including ECS (Qube) and Manhattan. They compared a number of factors including functionality, flexibility and ease of use. In the end they decided that BlueBox was the best fit for their needs as it covered the full range of their requirements and provided flexibility for growth in the future - without being unnecessarily complex.

St John’s College is an owner-occupier as well as a landlord for different parts of its portfolio. The team use BlueBox for all their properties and for the wide range of tasks associated with them. Financial processes include preparation of budgets, rent billing and forecasting the rental income they expect to get in the forthcoming year. They also record repairs and improvements, track rent reviews, store contact details, property descriptions and ERV's and use the Custom Data feature of the system to record very specific aspects of the portfolio such as a house purchase scheme. They make use of the extensive reporting facilities and find the smooth links to Excel a particular bonus.

“Overall the staff at the college find the system provides a huge time saving benefit” said Carol Ingram, Bursar’s Agent for St John’s College. “It also offers us better flexibility and the option of expanding our use of the system in the future.”

St John's College website

In recent years, the expansion of logistics company Wincanton across Europe led to increasing demands on their property management systems. It became clear that a new solution was required, but only one piece of property management software could meet all their needs: o6ix.

o6ix now manages their huge network of warehousing and storage facilities. It controls rent payments, lease obligations and scheduled maintenance – as well as coping effortlessly with multicurrency transactions.

Says Property Administrator Ziv Mashasha, “o6ix integrates beautifully with our existing accounts and calendaring packages and lets managers interrogate the system remotely through the Internet. It’s a truly powerful solution, and the more we get to know and use its features, the more we’re optimising our property usage across Europe.”
 

Wincanton website

Optical retailer Vision Express uses o6ix to manage its portfolio of over 300 nationwide stores, including the acquired GC Bateman chain.

Vision Express is one of the UK's leading and most trusted opticians and was the first to offer a genuine ‘one hour’ service in 1988. Since then they've gone from strength to strength by focusing on customer service, lens innovation, professionalism and quality. 

Vision Express website

TRAMPS property management software is the de facto industry standard for UK Managing Agents. So, if you can reassure a client that TRAMPS will be used to look after their portfolio, you gain an instant marketing advantage.

That’s what Peter Fowles discovered when he set up his new Managing Agent business, PNF Chartered Surveyors, late last year. As he now says, “I needed my clients to have confidence in my business and the mere fact of using TRAMPS gave me that.”

But there’s far more to TRAMPS than just a well-known name. It can help you win business in other ways, too; for example through the quality of its reporting. TRAMPS will help you give clients the information they need, how they want it, faster and more accurately than any other system.

It’s so much easier to use these days

Says Peter “I hadn’t used TRAMPS for at least ten years. But when I saw the new version it had changed out of all recognition. It’s so much easier to use these days. It used to be largely an accountancy tool, but I’m a surveyor and and I now use the surveyor sections all the time. It’s really useful, really powerful.”

Ideal for the smaller managing agent

TRAMPS is often regarded as a product only for the largest managing agents. But nothing could be further from the truth.

Peter looked at many different property management software packages before opting for TRAMPS.

“It’s not the cheapest system, but Trace managed to sort me out a deal that made it affordable. I look on TRAMPS as the product that will carry me through the rest of my Property Management career.”

“The training is very good too - it’s showing me all the things I can do with the system. There are infinite possibilities I can use this for! I get buoyed up after every session – the system seems so understandable, so useable - so we use it! But at the same time it’s really comprehensive. There’s a massive amount it can do - far more than other systems.”

“With a start up business you don’t want to worry about your systems, you want to have peace of mind that you’ve got the best. But TRAMPS is so much more. It sends a message to my clients about the professionalism and competence of my business - and it gives me the confidence to grow.”

PNF website

'We want everyone to use the software, not just super-users'

Trace Solutions' new user interface has faced one of its stiffest tests within the property management department of the Co-operative Group's head office in Manchester. 

Financial Controller Rob Moore was one of the earliest clients to see the new interface, and it chimed precisely with his own objectives. "It came along at just the right time. We wanted to simplify all our processes and the software was doing very much the same thing."

Rob Moore

The Co-op's Financial Controller, Rob Moore

Recently they decided to consolidate all of their property management using Trace software, as part of a planned reduction in paperwork and bureaucracy. "We're moving to new offices in 2012 and we didn't want to take any more paper with us than was necessary".

If you make software easier to use, then it gets used

Even more importantly, he wanted the power of his property database to be available to a far wider range of users. "A lot of information held by our surveyors was in all sorts of formats - paper, spreadsheets and the like - and was mostly inaccessible. So we scanned it and put it all into the property database. Now everyone can access it and make use of it at the click of a console button."

"If you make software easier to use, then it gets used, by a wider group of people. They see the benefits and it becomes the fount of all knowledge."

We're starting to see it as a building block for the future

"We're also starting to see how we can use it strategically as a building block for the future."

Following a decade of acquisitions the famous Manchester-based Group now runs one of the UK's largest property portfolios through its subsidiary Co-operative Estates. Rob Moore and his team manage everything from retail properties to funeral parlours, as well as a significant investment portfolio.

The Co-operative website