Why great businesses choose to evolve
Ailo
17 July 2026
Jessica Calvert, Property Management Operations Manager, Harcourts Solutions. Brisbane. 3,500 properties
When Harcourts Solutions weighed up moving to Ailo, nothing was broken. That was the difficult part. "We actually had a really great business," Jessica Calvert told the room at the Ailo After Hours panel in Fortitude Valley.
“"When we were thinking about moving, we decided, do we really want to shake the tree, because everything's actually going pretty smoothly."”
— Jessica Calvert, Property Management Operations, Harcourts Solutions
Jessica runs property management operations for the Brisbane agency, a portfolio of around 3,500 properties. What was running smoothly, on closer inspection, was a team holding twelve separate pieces of technology together by hand. "None of which spoke together," she said. "It wasn't a great ecosystem." A new starter was handed a 700-page manual the team called the Bible, a document of screenshots explaining which task lived in which system, and where the same information had to be entered for the fourth time. What Calvert wanted was one platform, and a single standard way of working that lived inside the tool rather than in a binder.
“Everything on Ailo works around Projects. A project where we can actually put how you do the things, the language that you use, the scripts and dialogues, all in one place. Its how we set the standards, its how we maintain the service level - its how we run the business. ”
— Jessica Calvert, Property Management Operations, Harcourts Solutions
The change showed up first in small operational moments. Her leasing team used to cancel open homes halfway through the day because nobody had seen that a lease had been signed or a receipt paid overnight.
“Now we start our day every day in Ailo. We check who's paid, who's signed overnight, take the properties offline, and cancel the inspections before eight o'clock in the morning." The seconds add up. "A lot of ten seconds that we save actually amounts to quite a lot," she said, and the compounding effect is a business that runs with fewer upset renters and fewer deflated consultants.”
— Jessica Calvert, Property Managements Operations, Harcouts Solutions.
The larger return has been retention, of business and of people. Because the work is consolidated, the team no longer wakes in the middle of the night remembering a task they missed, and they can take leave knowing exactly where every property stands. Calvert does not treat this as a soft benefit.
“We know every time we lose a property manager that makes twenty per cent of that portfolio really vulnerable." A calmer team is a commercial position as much as it is a cultural one”
— Jessica Calvert, Property Management Operations, Harcourt Solutions
The part that surprised her most was the response from investors and renters. When Harcourts folded in a rent roll it had acquired, moving roughly a thousand more properties across, the new owners rated the experience ten out of ten within the first fortnight.
A single newsletter noting that one payment change could save landlords thousands on their mortgage prompted about five hundred of them to switch to daily disbursements within half an hour.
"That's us putting money back in the pocket of our investors immediately."
At their first end of financial year on the platform, Calvert counted around two owner queries across the entire 3,500-property business.
Compliance was the one decision her whole team agreed on. Facing the risk that sits on the licensee, Calvert put the question to the room.
“The only unanimous decisions I ever had from my team was about changing to DC Smoke Alarms. Every single one of those thirty-seven hands went up. When our team found our that Ailo and DC was fully embedded, it made the change even easier”
— Jessica Calvert, Property Management Operations Harcourt Solutions
The certificates now sync into the platform, the dates stay current, and an exception report shows anyone not connected. "That's Jodie's licence on the line," she said, and for the first time it is a part of the business she does not have to think about.
None of this required a business that was failing. It required a business willing to change while it was ahead.