How Harcourts Solutions standardised its whole team in five weeks

When Jodie Stainton and Jess Calvert moved Harcourts Solutions to Ailo, they achieved in five weeks something they hadn't managed in the three years before. Every property manager in the team was doing the same thing, the same way.

Ask the team whether they would go back to their old system and the answer is unanimous. They wouldn't.

The decision wasn't taken lightly. Harcourts Solutions had been through five major system changes in ten years, and the team had real concerns about another one. Three things made Ailo worth it.

"Team happiness is really important to us," says Jodie.

Client satisfaction came next. "It's really critical that we get everything right, and Ailo's allowed us to do that."

The third was growth, both organic and through acquisition, and this is where Ailo stood apart for Jodie.

"The fact that it allowed the databases to all from the front end look the same, and everyone to be able to work on the same system, that was an amazing thing that we hadn't seen in any other system."

That has since been put to the test. Harcourts Solutions has grown from 2,300 properties to 3,500, including an acquired portfolio of 1,050 that moved onto Ailo in July 2026.

The moment came five weeks after go-live.

"There was this moment five weeks afterwards where Jess and I looked at each other and said, we have every single one of our team members doing the same thing the same way, and we've not achieved that in three years beforehand," Jodie recalls.

"Anyone in property management knows how difficult that is," she says. "But the reason that's so important is because of the continuity of service. It's team happiness. They're all working on the one thing and making it exceptional. So all of a sudden, the whole standard rises."

That consistency has changed how the team works day to day.

It has changed recruitment too. "We can recruit more property managers or greener property managers and really know that they have all the skills and all the tools they need to do the job, cause all they have to do is follow the bouncing ball," says Jess.

The contrast with a legacy system is clear. "Before, in a legacy system you had to know what you were looking for to do the job, whereas today I show up to work today and I have a list of all the things that I have to do today to be successful in my role and to provide great service."

After so many system changes, the team expected another hard move. It wasn't.

"I don't think that was too mammoth of a task. It still felt easy. We still operated the business really well," says Jess.

Jess puts that down to having a specialist on each part of the move. "What you had was someone actually working on the trust accounting area, someone working on the project area, someone working on the implementation of the data. We knew exactly what was happening."

Team buy-in mattered. Before the move, the Harcourts Solutions team visited other offices to see Ailo in action, and to "just look at everyone work" and see how it ran in practice.

The result was a team fully behind the change.

Looking back, the team can see how much they were "working around the system to make it work" before. "They see it now and they get why and they go, we totally get why you wanted to do this."

Investors took to it quickly. "Close to 70% of our investors jumped on the app and actually just started to change what they wanted," Jodie says.

With investors in the app, communication has moved into one place.

"They use the app more, which means their communication is central in one place. They're using the chat feature, which means the chat responses and replies are so much quicker, again, a greater experience for the client and for our team."

One of the clearest signs came from a tenant, after a routine inspection.

"She got a message from a tenant after a routine inspection... she sent this beautiful thank you letter to the tenant, and the tenant responded and said wow, in the 30 years I've rented, I've never been thanked for how I've cared for the property," says Jess.

For Jess, that is the point. "I think every property manager would like to offer that experience to a tenant. Now they're actually able to deliver it because it's so easy, seamless, all in one place."

Team happiness, client satisfaction and growth were the three reasons Harcourts Solutions moved to Ailo. Five weeks in, every property manager was working the same way, and the business has since grown to 3,500 properties on the same platform.

For property management businesses weighing up their own move, the message from Harcourts Solutions is that the risk isn't in changing. It's in waiting too long.