EPMEPM: Case Studies

From Strength to Strength

I ask how ‘systemised’ property management is at Coronis and Jodi explains that most of the day-to-day operations are based on the ‘perfect week’. “So it’s very systemised; we break our perfect week down into hourly timeframes where certain tasks are regularly performed. Property Managers, even the most organised ones, sometimes jump ‘backwards and forwards’ between job roles, and there is a loss of productivity in doing that. So they have their day broken down, for example, Monday morning they return all their calls from the weekend, complete bond finals, exit reports, vet applications and so on. The top priority on a Monday morning is always getting vacant properties rented by going through the weekend applications.”

Do property managers make good business developers in their experience? “Not necessarily,” Jodi laughs, “It’s funny, there is the odd one who is more sales-focused, but that’s rare. We have an ex-sales person who is our BDM at the moment, and she is doing extremely well; we have another lady who did a little bit of property management, and with her personality – well, she is doing great in new business also. Our new business leader actually comes from a cosmetics background, where she was a regional leader, and because her previous role was predominately sales-oriented she has been perfect in this role for us. As long as the person has good sales skills and they are likeable, they usually become good business development managers. We have tried all sorts of people in that role, but the ones who do well are sales-oriented people.”

The Coronis ‘Cockpit’ is pretty famous in its own right, and I ask both Jodi and Andrew to tell me a bit more about the role that this and technology in general plays in the success of the business. “Technology plays a massive role, and we use it to bridge cultural gaps between offices. It’s quite hard when you grow as a company, and we don’t like to use the term ‘head office’, but we do try to create equal amounts of excitement when something great happens by using the cockpit as a way to communicate with everyone,” says Andrew.

Jodi continues, “In each of our offices, every time a person gets a result within any office within the company it actually goes up on our score board with their picture, and the office theme song plays. It’s fantastic. Sometimes Andrew and Craig will send silly messages, I sometimes do little videos to recognise my team and they get recognition across the entire Coronis network.”

What about keeping on top of KPI’s and financial reporting? “It’s sometimes hard when you need to keep on top of the day to day running with so many offices, so we use REST reporting processes extensively; from a management perspective you know where each portfolio is at in real time. I can tap into my computer at any one time to see how much money each portfolio has received in commission to the minute. To have that kind of control and knowledge is fantastic. I know that I can see instantly how many properties have been let, which are vacant, average rent, statistics on individuals within the company. From my perspective as a leader, I couldn’t live without it.”

“Our trust account management is centralised, and we try to be as paperless as we can. We couldn’t operate with masses of files, and this is one of the reasons that we also love Filesmart. It has changed our lives for the better – I remember the days when we had a thousand statements that we would have to carry manually, stapling invoices to the back of them; it was pretty time-consuming and I don’t know how we ever did it. I am pretty excited about the next development that’s coming: a new Rockend product which will allow us to scan barcodes of rates notices and have them entered directly into REST. That’s going to save us days of productivity. When you’re dealing with that many companies and that many company managers, that will save us maybe four days’ work a month. So that’s incredible.”

What is the goal for the future? Andrew responds, “We want to be at twenty-five or thirty offices by the middle of next year. And then after that we hope to really take off, open one office a month until we get to 50 offices”.

“I think my focus in the next six months will be the business development area,” says Jodi, “Currently we have four business development managers, I would like ten within the next six months and then would like to take this to twenty. That will be my focus in the short term, because I really think that with our business as strong as it is, and with the referrals that we are receiving, we can grow organically very quickly. I just think if that’s working we’ve got medians who are hitting their targets, so why not have more?”

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Samantha McLean

Samantha McLean is the Co-Founder and Managing Editor of Elite Agent and Host of the Elevate Podcast.