Just over ten years ago I was offered the opportunity to take on the franchise of Brighton Le Sands with a business partner and I haven’t looked back ever since.

The industry has changed a lot over ten years because technology has just taken leaps and bounds to what we do. Everything that we did when I started almost 30 years ago was a manual process. These days everything is tech-savvy and we’ve had to adapt to all the technology that has come through.

As we were onboarding Ailo, part of the process was to talk to our high-value customers, our long term clients, and bring them on the journey before we actually migrated and rolled it out. We told them what was coming, we gave them a little sneak peak that something new and exciting was coming so once we rolled it out we could have a conversation about doing it together. We took them on the journey with us and they embraced it really well.

Some of the best experiences we had were people who resisted initially because they weren’t tech-savvy and once they saw how easy it was they actually complimented us on what we had done. One of our clients actually asked us if we had invested in this ourselves because it’s such a good system and they were that impressed by it and they thought it was amazing.

One of the benefits we’re seeing from Ailo is the conversations we’re having with people about what we do and being able to resource our team to focus on the property rather than the accounts.

We don’t talk about ‘collecting rent’ we talk about ‘servicing properties’. We’re not talking so much about ‘why you have to pay us’, we’re talking about ‘what we give’. Therefore, fee doesn’t become part of the conversation.

We’re also looking at increasing our fees in the short to medium term. That’s the next part of the change and it will be a challenge but I look forward to doing it because it will give us the opportunity to speak to every client individually about what Ailo is doing for their property and therefore why it’s worth the investment.

Having a single source of truth in Ailo means that everyone can be across everything that happens. There’s no more hiding behind “I’m not sure where it is” or “it might be on my email or my texts”. Everything comes through Ailo so all communication with clients, tenants, landlords is all through Ailo.

We can pick up the pieces for any one of our clients at any time. If one of our team is off, if they’re sick or something happens, we can help make sure they deliver their service. That’s powerful for us. It means we don’t drop the ball and nothing gets swept under the carpet.

Ailo has been great with new business as well.

Traditionally, most competitors have been fee based. We like it to be about the service rather than the dollar. Where others are fighting for point two or point four of a percent difference in fee and that’s their point of difference - Our point of difference has become the service we provide because of what Ailo does for us.

We go out and we actually show potential clients how Ailo works. We show them what we see, we don’t just show them what they see. We show them our dashboard, our tools and how effective that is for us to be able to manage their property. Once they see the transparency, that our team is across everything, that gives them the confidence to come with us.

We’re finding it a lot easier to get new business by being able to show our clients what we can do for them.

If we didn’t have Ailo I would still be working longer hours. I would still be having sleepless nights. I would still be worried about whether things were being done or not and I wouldn’t have that single source of truth to be able to watch my whole team and make sure everything is being covered.

We’ve got no reservations. In fact, I think we should have done it a little bit earlier. But, you know, we’re human and we resist change. Once you overcome that little bit of resistance then you can see that anything is possible.

It’s been fantastic to be on this journey. I haven’t looked back. It’s actually reinvigorated both me as a business owner and my team because we’re back to doing what we love and that is talking to people and dealing with property, not being an accountant.

I think the future of property management is a combination of high level service, transparency, and making sure people are getting value for money. The only way to do that is to make sure that you are actually delivering and not pretending. The only way you can deliver is by having the tools to do so and Ailo provides those tools in one solution.