Shape Property: Shaping up for future growth with Maintenance Plus
With a clear vision of their future goal, the team at Shape Property are focused on growing the property management side of their business. Driven by a determination to create efficiencies, they’ve embraced property management apps and tools to streamline the maintenance process. Here’s how Property Tree’s Maintenance Plus solution is helping them bring their vision to life.
Jo Weir, Director at Shape Property, started in the real estate industry a little more than 10 years ago after a successful career in the corporate world.
“There’s an order and a structure that underpins the organisation of successful companies,” Jo says. “You’re dealing with contracts, suppliers, meeting with stakeholders, setting priorities and taking responsibility for delivering an end result. There are a lot of i’s to dot and t’s to cross.
“It’s much the same with property management. As a property manager, you’re constantly juggling lots of balls in the air – and working out how best to do this and, at the same time, create efficiencies and grow the business – this is what I really enjoy.”
Creating these efficiencies is a key focus for Jo.
“Our property management business has gone through a period of rapid growth,” she explains. “We’re now managing more than 400 properties and it very quickly became apparent that the time spent managing the maintenance process was disproportionately high.
“Each of our property managers was spending between 60 to 70 per cent of their time on maintenance in the management of their portfolios. In turn, this was having a negative impact on their ability to meet their KPI’s and on the overall level of service they were able to offer landlords and tenants.”
“The need to rebalance how the team were spending their time was critical.”
End-to-end maintenance solution
A long-time user of Property Tree, Jo’s interest was piqued when she received an invitation to register for a Maintenance Plus webinar.
“I was in the process of searching for an end-to-end maintenance solution that was both user-friendly and cost-effective, so I registered immediately,” she says.
“The primary thing I was looking for was visibility across the maintenance process. Unfortunately, because we lacked a transparent end-to-end process, jobs were getting lost here and there, and it was sometimes hard to identify where particular jobs were at. All of this was contributing to a huge drain on time.”
Jo says that Maintenance Plus has been the perfect solution for the Shape Property team.
“The fact that it brings all stakeholders in the maintenance workflow together in one place is brilliant because essential information is never lost and all records are available via Property Tree,” she says. “Importantly, with Maintenance Plus, we’ve been able to reduce the time the team spends on the maintenance process. It’s now down to 30 per cent – a massive time-saving!”
“To be able to grow our business, we needed to reduce the time spent on maintenance-related tasks – and, thankfully, Maintenance Plus has allowed us to do just that.”
Onboarding stakeholders with the app
While there’s still work to do, Jo has been delighted with Maintenance Plus since going live in May 2020.
“Our team have really embraced Maintenance Plus, recognising the efficiencies that it brings to their work,” she says. “They’re really looking forward to reaping even more benefits as we bring more stakeholders on board.”
Shape Property has taken a staged approach to implementing Maintenance Plus, starting with their trades.
“Our MRI Account Manager was outstanding in helping us work through this process,” Jo says. “Some tradespeople were familiar with the Maintenance Plus app, but others were not and needed some hand-holding while they became familiar with the new process. Nothing was too much trouble for our Account Manager and our tradespeople are now really comfortable with the new process and using the app.”
Jo says tenants are also embracing Maintenance Plus, with the majority having now downloaded the app to log and track maintenance requests.
“The next step for us is to bring our landlords onboard, so they can also have visibility across all aspects of the maintenance process for their property,” she explains.
Future growth with a complete maintenance solution
By better managing the maintenance process with Maintenance Plus, Shape Property has been able to create efficiencies and save time, and then redirect that time into value-add activities.
“To be able to grow our business, we needed to reduce the time spent on maintenance-related tasks – and, thankfully, Maintenance Plus has allowed us to do just that,” Jo says.
Developed by MRI Software, Maintenance Plus for Property Tree is a single solution designed to streamline the maintenance workflow from end to end. To see Maintenance Plus in action, book a free demonstration by calling 1300 657 700 or email apacsales@mrisoftware.com.
