PROFILE
RamblingRural Retreats M
ost company bosses would say that the most important part of their business is their staff. Fair enough; without good staff
you have no business, so the staff, from the most junior member right up to the CEO, do indeed make the business work. However, its clients are also, obviously,
vital to the success of a company. A diverse range of reliable clients provide a secure base while seeking growth and exploring new markets – that is absolutely crucial. ‘Diverse’ certainly applies to the range
of clients who are lovingly managed by Landmark Systems, making them not only important, but fascinating. Nigel Parsons, MD of Landmark
Systems says that they first started writing software for farmers. Encouraging men of the land to leave the fields and sit at a computer was never going to be easy, (they have fat fingers and outdoors minds) so the systems needed to be clear, easy to understand, quick to use and, most especially, they needed to work. There’s enough to do on a farm without having to be a computer expert.
Providing software for farms soon
developed into writing systems for rural estates, with businesses from tea rooms to country gardens, caravan sites to farm offices. The farmer client led to large mixed portfolios of land and assets, with software users based in cottages and castles. Now, Landmark Systems’ client list reads like a Who’s Who of this green and pleasant land.
Mixed portfolios, coMplex needs Large estates also tend to own portfolios with both residential and commercial properties, presenting interesting challenges in integration and presentation of data. Managers need to be able not only to access and understand the vast array of data relating to their properties, their tenants, their leases and their yields (and much more besides); they need to be able to clearly demonstrate the financial state of play to the owners, be they corporate bodies or dukes. The diversity of the Landmark clientele
means that far from providing an off-the- shelf property management and accounting solution, almost every client
Sheila Manchester meets a man who’s ploughing his own furrow in land management software.
needs a software modification, which may be small and simple, or incredibly complex. It also needs to be available at an acceptable price. This is where it gets really interesting.
Landmark deals with… chartered surveyors, land agents, estate agents, letting agents, managing agents, rural estates that are directly managed, castles and manor houses that are let in part for events and also on tenancies, maybe ASTs or otherwise. Their properties may be all on one site or they may be located in every county of the UK. Agent clients may be offering general services across several platforms, some will be commercial/ industrial, some commercial/retail, or even residential/retail. It’s a complicated profile.
‘Encouraging men of the land to leave the fields and sit at a
computer was never going
to be easy.’ niGel pArsons Md lAndMArK sYsteMs
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