Vail Williams strengthens consolidated tech portfolio and enhances customer experience with MRI Engage
Vail Williams sought a single, high-performing technology platform to manage the portfolio. Following successful implementation of MRI Horizon, the business has further added to its technology stack with MRI Engage to support greater customer-centric service.
About the business
Since 1998, Vail Williams has provided property management services for commercial and residential properties. Over time the firm has acquired other businesses, and is now an 180- strong team of property professionals in 11 offices across the UK.
While Vail Williams successfully manages other tenure types, the core portfolio has always been commercial property – predominantly office and retail sites – including prestigious locations like Grosvenor Street, London.
The business operates several portfolios for local authorities and enterprise clients. Covering both investor and occupier clients, Vail Williams’ offers a full-service property service including commercial agency, investment and development advice, building consultancy, valuation, planning, lease advisory, asset management, business rates and occupier consultancy.
Consolidating systems
As a result of acquisitions, Vail Williams used two client server-based systems for the team’s property management and accounting requirements. They decided to go to market with the aim of consolidating the management of the portfolio into a one technology platform to meet the business’s needs.
Following this process, Vail Williams chose to implement MRI Horizon to support tenants and to handle all its lease and landlord management, property management operations and accounting; all of which is now delivered on an end-to-end, scalable web-based platform, fully developed and supported in the UK.
Moving to a cloud solution was a significant change for us. We looked at the solution in detail, as well as the roadmap and the direction MRI is taking. This showed us that the technology is more forward-looking than other suppliers. We were happy that MRI Horizon provided the best platform for what we need.
Carl Grint, Partner and Head of Property Asset Management | Vail Williams
Vail Williams has been successfully managing its operations using MRI Horizon since, ensuring the team gets the best performance out of the software. Carl added:
“MRI Horizon offers great prospects for the business. We now have the advantage of getting associated profit and loss and balance sheet reports, which was difficult to get from our previous systems.”
The team is looking forward to the addition of MRI Horizon’s Home Hub capability to provide expanded client access to the system.
“Having a dashboard that shows properties on the map with all their associated information, like break dates, is really helpful. The EPC data in reports is great – we feel this is an offering our clients can’t get anywhere else.”
Focus on customer experience
Increasing emphasis on engaging with customers and enhancing experience has seen Vail Williams working further with MRI to add MRI Engage to the technology portfolio.
MRI Engage is a self-service customer portal that integrates with MRI Horizon, to increase satisfaction and reduce operational costs.
The business sees the growing importance of customer-centric services at the heart of operations. “Building tenant communities and engagement in multi-occupied buildings will continue to be of importance for us. By expanding our MRI ecosystem and adding MRI Engage, we can facilitate this much more easily for our valued clients,” said Carl.
Vail Williams has an exciting future ahead; I’m delighted MRI continues to be the business’s technology partner of choice. It’s great to see more solutions added to the developing MRI tech stack and we look forward to further supporting the team at every opportunity.
Dan Foryszewski, Director – Investor Solutions | MRI Software
