At a glance: the five workflows
- The inbox sorts itself by building and urgency
- A damage report becomes a finished contractor job
- The owners' meeting prepares itself
- Minutes and the register of resolutions leave no follow-up work
- The building file sits in one place instead of four programs
The sorting costs more time than the managing
A practice with a mixed portfolio gets an inbox every morning that is, at first, nothing at all: tenant enquiries, damage reports, questions about resolutions, contractor replies, changes of ownership, official post. All in one basket, none of it assigned to a building. Before the first decision of substance is made, someone has spent an hour sorting.
This is not a question of organisation. It is a question of channels. The same practice is reached by email, through a portal, by phone and on paper, and nobody can tell tenants and owners which route to take. Bringing it together stays manual work, and it repeats every day.
The damage happens behind it. A damage report sitting in the pile for half a day is half a day in which the tenant hears nothing and the contractor does not drive out. A resolution to be implemented that lives on a sticky note is a risk until the next meeting. Neither has anything to do with a lack of care. Both come from the preparatory work starting over every morning.
“The question is not whether your people sort well. The question is why they still do it at all.
What changes, and how
How it runs today
- Sixty unread emails that have to be sorted before anyone can work.
- Every report passes through four pairs of hands before the contractor gets the job.
- Three evenings of pulling documents out of four different filing places.
- The implementation points live on a sticky note next to the screen.
- One question back means searching in four programs.
How it runs afterwards
- Four lists by building and urgency instead of one inbox.
- The finished job sits ready for approval, and the reporter has been told.
- Invitation, agenda and attachments are ready for review.
- Every resolution is recorded, every task has a date and a name.
- A question back is answered in seconds, with the document to show for it.
1. The inbox sorts itself
Every incoming message is read, assigned to the building and the unit, and placed in a category: damage, enquiry, resolution, contractor, change of ownership. Anything urgent moves to the top, the rest goes into the matching list. One inbox becomes four work queues, and each of them is already ordered by building.
What matters is what does not happen: nothing is answered and nothing is decided. The assignment is preparation, not handling. Whoever opens their computer in the morning sees the same messages as before, only pre-sorted and with the building beside them.
2. A damage report becomes a job
The report becomes a case with building, unit, description and photos. A suitable contractor is proposed, the job text is drafted, and the reporter immediately receives an acknowledgement with a case number. You check it, correct it and approve it.
Approval is where it stops
No job goes to a contractor without your consent. The system puts the finished case in front of you, and that is all. For anything that costs money or creates a legal obligation, this is not a setting. It is how the thing is built.
3. The owners' meeting prepares itself
Deadlines tracked, invitation generated, agenda assembled from the open points of the year, documents gathered, dispatch prepared. The evening someone spends searching four filing places is gone. What remains is the review: you read, add, cut and approve.
This workflow rewards the effort because it repeats every year and because its parts are already in the building. Nothing has to be invented, it only has to be brought together.
4. Minutes and resolutions without follow-up work
The minutes produce the entries for the register of resolutions, cleanly worded and assigned to the building. The implementation points land in the system as tasks with a deadline and a name against them. The sticky note becomes unnecessary, and next year the agenda does not start from a blank page.
5. The building file in one place
Management software, inbox, filing and contractor correspondence do not talk to each other today. We build the connection between them, so that everything about a building sits together: the correspondence, the invoices, the resolutions, the open points. A question on the phone is then answered in seconds, with the document to show for it.
No change of system
Your management software stays where it is. So does your accounting, and so does your filing. Where the programs offer an interface, we use it. Where they do not, we take the route a member of staff would take. Replacing the core application is not necessary for any of the five workflows, and it is not what saves the time either.
Where the automation stops
As a managing agent you handle other people's money. That is why no automation touches payment processes without two-person approval. Jobs, messages to owners and payments only go out once a person has released them, and every step is documented and traceable: who, what, when, and on what basis.
Building data, owner lists and the register of resolutions stay in your systems. If you prefer, the whole setup runs on a machine in your own office, without a single record leaving the building.
Where to start
Not with all five workflows, but with one. Which one depends on how often it occurs in your practice and how much of it runs the same way every time. In most practices that is the damage report, because it comes in often, always has the same shape, and always ends up with the same set of contractors.
A single, clearly bounded workflow is running within a few weeks, not months. And it can be measured: afterwards you know how many minutes it used to cost and how many it costs now. Whether the next one follows is your decision, once you have seen that.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do we have to change our management software?
No. We replace nothing. Your management software, your accounting and your filing stay where they are. We build the connection between them.
We have nobody for IT. Does it still work?
Yes. We set it up and look after it. On your side it is operated by someone who previously operated Excel.
What happens if the automation fails?
Then the workflow carries on as before, only by hand. We do not build anything whose failure brings your practice to a halt.
Do our building and owner records go into a cloud?
Only if you want them to. Otherwise everything runs on a machine in your office or on your own server.
Does the system decide on jobs or payments?
No. It prepares and puts the finished case in front of you. Jobs, messages to owners and payments only go out after your approval, and payments only under two-person approval.
How long does the first workflow take?
A single, clearly bounded workflow is running within a few weeks. What comes after that is your decision, once you have seen that it works.