Bidwells Commercial Managing Agents Case Study

Starting life as a rural practice in 1839, Bidwells have strong roots in the UK rural community and have grown to be one of the UK’s leading property consultancies. Focussing on commercial, residential and rural, they now manage over £5.2 billion worth of assets nationwide.

With over 175 years’ experience servicing the agricultural sector, their Rural Team of 100 support businesses to achieve their objectives through diversification, planning, building or investment, and manage over 10,000 properties nationwide.

Despite continued growth, their focus has always been on offering a hands’ on and personal service to clients. It’s this attention to service, combined with an innovative approach, which has cemented them as a long-standing part of the rural community.

Challenge

The Rural Team at Bidwells were using multiple systems, but with a growing portfolio and high level of service to maintain, there was a commercial need to switch to one, fully- integrated property management system, which provided them with greater flexibility, control and accounting functionality.

Rob Coote, Accountant Partner at Bidwells, explains more:

“We were previously using an in-house rental system and an unintegrated terrier accounting software, this meant we had big challenges with data input and duplication. We reviewed our business processes and assessed how tasks were allocated between surveyors, accountants and administrators, this led us to define 3 key challenges we needed a new system to overcome.”

Bidwells defined three key needs they wanted a new system to meet:

1. A single integrated property management and accounting system to avoid data duplication

2. Comprehensive accounting functionality to support business growth and replace inconsistent and unreliable routines

3. Extensive and flexible reporting functionality, including the power to report on and monitor various different clients across the system at the same time

Solution

The Rural Team followed in the path of the Bidwells Commercial Team, who selected Propman two years prior, and chose Propman as their preferred system. Rob explains more:

“After an extensive selection process and reviews of various systems, Propman scored best overall on overcoming the key challenges we outlined and provided us with the comprehensive functionality we needed.

As well as having the right functionality, Propman’s flexibility and the tailored approach to training and implementation meant that we were fully supported during the installation process and everything was set up to fit with our unique business processes and requirements.”

The Rural Team have 25 users who use Propman on a daily basis to complete various property management, accounting and reporting processes.

“The main benefit of Propman is the amount of time it’s saved us. It’s intuitive and the multi-client functionality has allowed us to easily complete complex tasks across multiple clients. It’s also provided peace of mind knowing we have the right technology in place to support our business growth and the firm foundations to enhance our level of service to clients.”

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