managingagents
that enables collaboration without the need to attend its central services office in Worcester. “This gives everyone the ability to look at the same document at the same time and to ask others to join the meeting as necessary,” says associate director, Phil Johns. “It’s also great for reducing our carbon footprint.” Johns joined Mainstay eight years ago, initially as IT manager, and now oversees its four regions and the mobilisation team. “As the company realised technology is a business enabler with real value, we are now more IT led which is quite a culture change. Internally we want people to be very comfortable with new systems before we roll them out externally.” Recent discussions with residents’ management companies demonstrated a real appetite for greater use of technology. “A lot of systems were financially driven now it’s about demonstrating value for money, how many calls we’ve received about a site, how many actions arose and what else we’ve done in the period. It’s all about transparency and these systems provide that.” Mainstay has recently installed VoIP system to enable call transfers between their London and Worcester offices, which will be extended to remote workers. They have a webinar licence enabling them to reach up to 100 people at a time for issues that require more than a faceless email.
“Our full website restructure means customers can log into the website, make payments, and check site updates in a secure area. After email updates were introduced we had complaints there was too much information going out so we introduced
THIS IMAGE Phil Johns of Mainstay
RIGHT Tom Bainbridge of Amber Management
ABOVE Amber Management Team photo
an opt out clause,” says Johns. Mainstay provides its site inspectors
with an iPad or iPhone as clipboards and pens become an increasingly rare sight on site. “We’re now looking at integrating any resulting actions into our maintenance system, so a job gets raised to resolve the works.” On site IT benefits extend to resolving
problems. Amber Management gives both iPhone 5s and iPad2s to its staff in the field which prove invaluable, as operations director, Tom Bainbridge, explains: “Investigations can now be done instantly by taking photos and sending them directly to the office which gives a much quicker, clearer understanding of the issue and speeds up the process. It’s effectively our eyes and ears on site.”
Many of Amber’s contractors use the
same systems, some using mobile CCTV to demonstrate an issue to office-based staff, which can result in works being approved while the contractor is still on site.
IT still has its limitations however. “The days of the paperless office are still a long way off, despite scanning documents to pdf and the use of iPads,” says Bainbridge. “Good old fashioned hands-on conversations will always be most effective. I quite like the personal approach, people do still want that.”
Underpinning all the IT advances
remains a continual drive to understand where the value for the customer lies.
sh CONTACTS
Premier Estates
www.premierestateslimited.com
Trinity Estates
www.trinityestates.com
Watson
www.watsonpm.co.uk
ARMA
www.arma.org.uk
Mainstay
www.mainstaygroup.co.uk
Amber Management
www.ambermanagement.co.uk
86| May 2013 showhouse
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