Strata Choice saves 15 hours per week and automates meeting commitments with StrataVote and MRI Software
Introduction
Over the past 35 years, Strata Choice has grown from the kitchen table of company founder Maria Linders to employing more than 100 people in four office locations across Sydney, servicing over 24,000 property owners. It remains a family-owned company with Maria’s sons Daniel and Geoff in senior leadership roles.
Tim Sara, Associate Director of Strata Choice, joined the company straight out of high school in 2009. He now manages a team of 13 including strata managers and support staff. “Strata management makes a difference because we’re looking after people’s homes and investments.
“From managing disputes among property owners to resolving financial and legal matters and planning building remedial works, it’s a career that presents a broad range of challenges. My main goal in life is always to be consistently learning and strata management keeps me on my toes.”
Business Challenge
Covid-19 created a steep learning curve for Tim and his team. The challenge of running committee meetings, Annual General Meetings (AGMs) and voting activity created a “sink or swim” moment for the strata industry.
“Covid-19 pushed us all into the water at once. It forced us to adapt and created an opportunity to manage AGMs in a way that we had envisioned for a long time but hadn’t really experimented with before.”
A huge portion of the population being told to work from home put unprecedented strain on buildings and made residents more aware of maintenance requirements.
“Renovation activity increased, bringing with it the associated administrative processes to approve building works. Financial management also became more challenging. Property owners were financially stressed, and Strata Choice did a lot of work around the impact of job and investment losses on the payment of levies.”
Strata Choice established a dedicated page on their website to cater for financial hardship applications and worked with strata committees to establish payment plans. “Where people were suffering, we did everything we could to support them through a difficult time.”
Solution: StrataVote and MRI Strata Master
As a leader in the strata management industry, Strata Choice requires software that supports agility and adaptability in a highly regulated, ever-changing environment. Strata Choice had already been using MRI partner StrataVote for electronic voting, and during the pandemic they began using it to run all their AGMs. The combination of StrataVote and MRI Software’s strata management solution added even more efficiency to their processes.
“The integration with MRI Strata Master means the process of extracting scheme and lot owner data is automated. This is a great feature as it saves a heap of time and reduces the likelihood of data entry error.”
Business impact
“StrataVote is giving our strata managers their lives back. It’s streamlined the entire meeting process, not just in physical attendance at meetings but also in the preparation and follow-up. We can set up meetings, create agendas and prepare minutes with the click of a few buttons.
Our strata managers are saving 10-15 hours each per week, allowing them to spend more time building quality relationships with our clients, and time at home with their families.
- Tim Sara, Associate Director, Strata Choice
“It’s been successful because some of the tasks that AGMs deal with tend to be administrative in nature and don’t always need lots of discussion. Previously we might have explained every motion during the meeting but now most can be dealt with in advance.
“As a result, we’ve found that we no longer need to run so many AGMs at night. The majority of an AGM can be run entirely through online voting reducing the need for a physical meeting to attend. Property owners can vote at any time, from the comfort of their own homes.”
The continuous collaboration between MRI and Strata Choice ensures the achievement of desired outcomes, resulting in an improved experience for their staff and clients.