The latest computer software designed to make life easier for the property professional goes on display in London this week. William Ellison previews the Property Computer Show.
The Property Computer Show is coming to London this week and will be held at the New Connaught Rooms, Great Queen Street, WC2. The show is open Tuesday and Wednesday, October 21 and 22.
Organised by VCM Communications, this display of the weird and wonderful from the headily confusing world of software packages will include 80 exhibitors with 150 products, of which some 14% will be new to the show.
The show is intended to provide all property professionals, be they commercial or residential, with the ideal opportunity to become up to date with a wide range of property-related software. It will feature leading packages for the management of property, together with contact information, business communications, on-line market information databases, and marketing and presentation applications.
Industry association
For the first time, the show will be joined by the Residential Estate Agency Training & Education Association (REATEA), the government-recognised industry training organisation dealing with the setting of standards of competence in the residential property sector.
REATEA is supporting this year’s show in a bid to foster a greater understanding and adoption of IT within estate agencies, as well as demonstrating its own computer-based training course, Due Diligence, based on the Property Misdescriptions Act 1991.
Stephen Hayter, technological consultant at REATEA, says: “The application of new technology is of vital importance to future prosperity in the industry. After six lean years, the business is now enjoying sufficient success to enable it once again to think more strategically. As it does so, it has the option of embracing technology far more so than it does currently.
“Elsewhere in other businesses, the use of technology has been led by either the customer or regulation – for example, telephone banking and insurance, self-scanning at supermarkets, holidays by teletext, sport by satellite TV and so on.”
This is a view echoed by people who will be attending. Nigel Andrew, director of IT at DTZ Debenham Thorpe, says: “The property industry is lagging behind general commercial business. Property companies are only just starting to use Windows, for example.
“The property industry has got to make a quantum leap to catch up. The financial institutions, consultancy firms and lawyers went through the pressures the property market is now going through five, 10, 15 years ago. The building societies, for example, listened to their customers and gave them the services they wanted. So the banks were forced to respond to stop themselves from losing business.
He adds: “Accountancy and law firms are now in a position to offer the kind of services previously available only from surveyors. Clients, meanwhile, are looking to companies that provide the widest selection of services most suited to their needs.
“As a consequence, we are now going to have to make more creative use of technology to allow the property world to do a more comprehensive job. We are looking for the tools that will let property companies compete better in the 1990s.”
Gillian Westall, information manager at Jones Lang Wootton, is hoping to see more integration of products. “We want to see the integration of databases and Internet products, and a wider knowledge of news services rather than just property-specific uses,” she says. “It would be good to see the FT Profile and Reuters news service available to surveyors, as it would give them a wider choice of information. And it would be useful to see an introduction to IT-related services.”
Paula Rudkin, head of Knight Frank’s information services department, says: “It will be interesting to see how many of the new products that were first shown last year have made it through the first year, especially with residential and commercial programmes. Lots of the big boys are buying out the small ones, and that leads to the amalgamation of some programmes. It is a case of keeping up to date with the development of what programmes are out there, like EGi and FOCUS.”
Agreeing with Andrew and Westall, she believes that there is a need for the property profession to be supplied with more diverse software.
Rudkin adds: “I would like to see hardcore business utilisation rather than just pure property management applications – software that has direct business application, that shows us new ideas and makes us challenge ourselves.”
New systems being demonstrated this year include Impact Design’s Propertymaster, a fully integrated system containing a range of features designed to reduce business overheads and improve productivity and management techniques. Using Windows 95 and Office 97 technology, it can deal with, and customise, comprehensive client statements, multiple bank accounts, full maintenance handling and tax and overseas accounting, as well as automated agreement creation via the Agreement Wizard system. The package is designed for the management of property portfolios of every size and will soon include a sales module.
Edinburgh-based software firm DeCAL has moved to a larger stand this year where it will be demonstrating its DeCAL Badger property management system. It concentrates on graphics integration for clients who need a management system with access to graphical data, such as maps, plans and photographs.
Public sector authorities and facility managers will be interested in Tech Computer Office’s OfficeBase CMS, a software package for when client or agent-client functions are carried out and there is a clear requirement for managing budgets for both revenue and capital spending on property-related work.
Systems for this type of work are not new, but the OfficeBase CMS adds a flexible nominal ledger structure that holds unlimited variations of budgets and hierarchies, enabling the facility manager to report budgets, commitments, and actual-against-complex multi-funded budgets.
Another system designed to lighten the load of the public sector is IRW Associates’ Housing Area Trends System (HATS), which is being used by Glasgow City Housing. HATS came about in a bid to solve a problem common to many housing departments – that of persuading tenants to move into unpopular areas, and of getting them to stay there.
Used on a localised scale, HATS looks at long-term problems and explores the physical and social dimensions not just of decline but also of stability and improvement in local areas, including impact evaluations for improvement projects.
Martin Kemp of Property Market Analysis reports that the PROMIS On-line service provides comprehensive data and analysis on every key office, retail town centre, out-of-town retail and industrial market in Britain. The reports examine their economic and demographic context and explore existing and future supply, market conditions and prospects. This Internet service is joined by PROMIS Update that provides the latest deals and development information in a concise and user-friendly form.
The National Association of Estate Agents (NAEA) will be displaying PropertyLive, an Internet service which, it believes, will revolutionise the way in which people buy their homes. The software has been designed to become a national system, supported by the NAEA and Intergraph – which claims to be the world’s leading supplier of geographically-based computer systems – and, by using satellite communications, will be able to provide high-speed Internet delivery.
CAL Property will be introducing the latest version of its CAL Residential Sales System. A full client server delivery is now available allowing multi-office agents to develop Wide Area Network, linking their offices for the transfer of property and applicants. The system uses simple windows terminals, so removing the complexity of a PC from the negotiator’s desk.
Among firms which have previously appeared at the show is Internet Property Finder, whose clients include Knight Frank, Savills, Strutt & Parker, General Accident and Lane Fox. The system’s latest features include a new rental section which allows residential rents to be listed and searched for by the public, and the first reciprocal data agreements, allowing visitors from other Internet sites access to the IPF database. IPF is also looking at how the property industry can work with the newspaper industry to supply managed, up-to-date property data.
George Baines, managing director at Grosvenor Systems, says: “This year, we will be exhibiting the latest releases of our Windows software, PROPMAN, our property management system and accounting system, and RESEARCH, our residential sales and lettings system.”
Trace Solutions, which is jointly sponsoring the show, will be launching its Windows version of TBS-Tramps. This involved an unprecedented amount of research and client liaison to achieve a perfect match between the system and the customer’s needs. The system features a database containing property and lease details. Based on a general ledger, it performs profit-and-loss and balance-sheet-style accounts, as well as servicing traditional managing agent requirements.
The other show stalwart, FOCUS, will be launching FOCUS2000, an integrated property database that covers London from Chiswick to Docklands with 600,000 pages of information. What makes this system different is its capacity to link existing databases to give a single information point. This capacity is based on new Gazetteer technology that allows subscribers to add to their own in-house information.
Property consultant Grimley will be at the show to exhibit its REAL Maintain property maintenance software package. The company stresses that, while most maintenance systems are designed for plant maintenance, REAL Maintain is designed with all building maintenance, repairs and improvement in mind.
It provides modules for condition surveys, recording customer requests, preparing budgets, managing work and monitoring cashflow. Users can compile specifications of work, issue work orders to contractors and track invoices. It is a multi-user client-server application that can run on a network or stand-alone computer, and it has software that can run on Microsoft Windows.
Designed by ESRI, the Land Asset Management System (LAMS) will also be on display. The company says the system is designed to eradicate errors that can creep in with paper-based documentation of various land assets. Instead, LAMS manages, integrates and analyses information through a geographic framework. Based on a simple end-user system, the package includes a perpetual calendar, map display and report generator.
And, finally, EGi, on the eve of its first birthday, has extended its London Office Database coverage. The service now holds detailed information on all office buildings, regardless of size, in the City and Docklands, Midtown and West End. This includes details on ownership, occupation and tenancies, with lease expiry dates, break clauses and rent review dates.
EGi will also be showcasing its newly launched Property Law Service (http://www. propertylaw.co.uk). More than 350 property law practitioners and chartered surveyors have recently taken part in a trial of the service, which contains detailed legal material dating from 1975. Coupled with next-day reporting from EG’s team of reporters based at the Royal Courts of Justice, this site represents a truely comprehensive legal resource.
Referring to another new service, a nationwide planning database, Stewart Jones, sales director of EGi, comments: “New developments are being added to EGi thick and fast. It is encouraging to see the property community not only keeping up with these developments but embracing them and calling for more!”
KPMG will be on hand again to advise the mystified on what best suits their personal and corporate needs. Doors open at 9.30am and close at 6pm on both days and entry is free.
