Leeton Real Estate on Console Cloud: case study

Leeton Real Estate case study: How Console Cloud connects, with Jessica Zandona
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The breaking down of geographical boundaries is one of the most empowering capabilities of cloud computing. No longer tied to desks, specific devices, or even offices, businesses are now free to work in new and flexible ways.

For Jessica Zandona, a property manager with Leeton Real Estate in NSW, this flexibility proved to be the key decider in her agency’s migration to Console Cloud.
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The case for Console Cloud
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Leeton Real Estate is located a 40-minute drive from Griffith Real Estate. The two offices share personnel, including a full-time property manager and, until recently, both had their portfolios stored on Console Gateway at the Griffith office. This meant that staff had to be physically present in the Griffith office, even if they were managing Leeton properties.

"Trying to access our server remotely or having our staff commute to our main office was not an effective use of time. So we really needed to move to cloud-based software.”

With two offices and only one team, Jessica and her colleagues realised that the ability to manage both portfolios from not just one—but any—location would be a huge time and money-saver.

Managing the migration
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To achieve this, the agency opted to migrate Leeton’s properties to Console Cloud. As Console Gateway customers for more than 10 years, it was an easy to decision to make. Especially when the team discovered that Console Cloud could meet all their needs—old and new—through just one platform.

Unlike in conventional migrations where as much data as possible is transferred from one software database to another, only the Leeton office’s properties needed to be moved. This might have been a challenge for some providers. In fact, Jessica thought she might need to manually add the 100-odd properties to Console Cloud herself. Instead, our in-house migration specialists managed to split the database between offices, so Jessica only had to add in two properties, which took mere minutes.

"The migration was a relatively smooth process. With our situation, we needed to move a portion of our portfolio to Console Cloud. This created a small hiccup, but Console was able to resolve the issue and we migrated the properties over within a day."

But we didn’t do it alone. Jessica and her colleagues followed the right advice and took the time to clean their data first. This crucial step is essential for any successful migration. When you eliminate as much duplicate, erroneous and redundant data as possible, it makes for a cleaner migration and a fresher start on the new platform.

"Our biggest piece of advice to an agency migrating to Console Cloud is to ensure your data is clean. Ensure your team takes the time to make sure the data is spot on and exclude any inactive accounts or data that is no longer relevant."

Implementation and training
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Post-migration, Jessica and her team threw themselves into Console Cloud training, ably assisted by our Customer Success and Service teams. That included a guided run-through of end of month, an introduction to the various workflows, and multiple check-ins to see how things were going.

"We felt very supported in our migration experience. Michelle from the Customer Success team helped us through the implementation and set us up with all the training we needed."

Online exercises also played an important role, with Jessica signing her team up for a training webinar, and engaging with Console Cloud’s wealth of help articles. This self-directed learning proved invaluable when it came time for Jessica to run a sales disbursement. Although it had been covered in her training, being able to take a quick refresher in Console’s Help section gave Jessica complete confidence from the get-go.

The results
‍Not only has the move to Console Cloud solved Jessica’s two-office problem, it has also unlocked a host of unexpected benefits. These include immediate oversight of where her agency is at, both in terms of finances and processes, and increased productivity through time-saving workflows.

"I love the dashboard. You can see, at a glance, where arrears are or when inspections are due…You can see exactly what work you need to do that day, right from the first screen. It makes work easy, and makes you more efficient."

Even better, enhanced productivity has empowered Jessica to spend more time talking to her owners and increase the value her agency offers.

"With newfound efficiencies, I have more time to speak to our owners about improving their investments. This gives me the chance to help them identify ways they can make more money, without them feeling lime they have to do all the running around."

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