National Real Estate is a South African real estate business dealing in residential and commercial property management, lettings, and sales. With 2000 residential lettings, 10,000 sectional title clients, and 350 commercial clients, National Real Estate is an evolving and expanding company.
Business Challenge
As the company was continuing to expand, the service provided by National Real Estate’s previous management software, was no longer able to keep up with their growing needs.
The server-based system did not allow for flexible working, had limited reporting functionality, and of the business’s team of 100 staff, could only cope with 15 users to simultaneously log in remotely.
Solution
After the acquisition of PropSys, the team decided on MRI Property Central, an end-to-end suite of commercial and financial solutions that enable real estate owners, operators, and investors to boost occupancy, mitigate risk, and maximise portfolio performance.
The system is a step up from their previous solution, as it is cloud based, has extensive reporting functionalities, and is designed to cope with the business’s growing team and ambitions for the future.
Flexible
Being a cloud-based system, MRI Property Central allows for more flexibility within the National Real Estate team, which was greatly advantageous when the COVID-19 restrictions were put in place and many staff members were required to work remotely.
Their previous, server-based system would only allow 15 staff members to work from home at any given time and could have posed great difficulties during the pandemic.
Accounting-Friendly
Financial transactions make up a large proportion of the work National Real Estate undertake, with over 17,000 tenant statements going out on a monthly basis. It’s therefore important that their management software is able to cater for multiple bank accounts of new branches created and bank reconciliation.
Their previous system meant that bank reconciliation work was done manually, costing the company valuable time and resources. With MRI Property Central, the team at National Real Estate are not only able to automate this process, but can also take control of their credit and finances, and draw reports to demonstrate performance to their clients and stakeholders.
Time Saving
Many processes are streamlined and simplified with MRI Property Central, allowing the team to save time and refocus their resources on value-adding activities.
Previously, at month end the team would use large amounts of overtime completing their month-end system roll-over process, due to the long-winded processes that caused a risk of system instability. However, after a period of testing and working with the MRI technical team, with MRI Property Central these tasks can now be completed in about an hour.
Integration
MRI’s open and connected ethos means that the team at National Real Estate can integrate numerous third-party solutions into MRI Property Central, allowing for a customised experience that allows for a wide choice of products to suit their needs.
National Real Estate are currently using FixFlo Facilities management, Property Inspect, and Docuware, all of which help to create workflows that aid National Real Estate’s business processes and efficiency.
Paperless experience
For the past 5 years, National Real Estate have been investing time and money into developing a completely online and paper-free experience for their tenants, clients, and staff.
With their integrated third-party solutions, the team manage paperless lease sign-ups and signings, and tenants can give notice via a web form. MRI Property Central cloud-based system and the clever use of an API allows for seamless paperless management.
Paperless experience
Throughout the implementation of MRI Property Central, the teams at National Real Estate and MRI have worked together in partnership.
“The migration process was done extremely professionally. The way the checklists are communicated, working closely with us to make sure we do everything right, plus the training sessions on-site or via WebEx are all extremely positive and professional.”
“We received great support throughout the implementation process. The team at MRI are open, willing, professional, friendly and happy to help. When we’ve had issues, the team made themselves available over the weekend to support. Awesome support received.”
Going forward, NRE are looking to expand their operations to a national level, and are investigating the national franchising model. However big National Real Estate grow, they can be sure their management system will grow and develop with them.
At MRI, our suite of property management software helps to streamline operations and add real value to businesses. Get in touch with our team to discuss your needs.
