Innovate
Continuum digital operations platform for property management
8 core
applications that automate
Free up time
for other activities - analysis and value creation
Agile
create applications and continue to iterate
Intro
Continuum Property manages commercial properties in the greater Lysaker Area on the border of Oslo, Norway. Even with a growing property portfolio, Continuum Property has managed to keep its organization focused on operational matters and state-of-the-art solutions.
Operational management of a growing property management company poses numerous challenges. Repetitive tasks must be managed alongside emergent maintenance work, contract management, tenant relationship management, and property refurbishment. To control the increasing operational complexity, Continuum Property required a complete solution for structuring and managing all operational, financial, and commercial activities, mitigating the risk of neglected activities and missed opportunities.
Using the Genus platform, Continuum Property has developed a property management solution customized to their specific needs. Further, with a platform that continuously evolves with technological advances, Continuum Property can take a proactive approach to new development.
“With Genus we gained the flexibility we needed to develop a property management system that matches our preferred way of working. The platform meets the high standards we have for modern and future-proof solutions.”
-Marius Bergheim, Operations and Maintenance Manager, Continuum Property
Challenge
Scaling with operational control
In a vibrant commercial real estate market, Continuum Property has thrived on its ability to maintain operational control and efficiency. Even with a geographically concentrated property portfolio, continuous growth made it increasingly harder to stay hands-on and proactively maintain their reputation for attention to detail and high-quality solutions.
For Continuum Property, the key to operational excellence has been their business philosophy of keeping their administrative organization to a minimum while structuring and automating as much of their operations as possible. To enable such an organization, Continuum Property depends on an efficient and flexible digital operations platform that can handle all aspects of its operation. Further, the software functionality must evolve with ever-changing business requirements and an expanding property portfolio.
A no-code pioneer
Continuum Property is an early adopter of no-code and has pioneered several new features and releases of the Genus platform.
“Genus releases new features at a rate that exceeds the latest development in the property industry. This enables us to keep testing the latest technology and find out what works for us. For us digitalization is key,” says Marius Bergheim.
Differentiating yourself through operational excellence often means that off-the-shelf solutions are not viable, as was also the case for Continuum Property. In an organization where financial success is closely intertwined with optimized business processes, implementing siloed business applications with rigid pre-defined process support is not an option.
With the Genus no-code application development platform, Continuum Property can focus on how to structure, implement and optimize their business processes through a digital platform. Further, the platform easily integrates with both internal and external business applications – making it easy to optimize processes that span across traditional application borders. Taken together, Genus enables Continuum Property to streamline and evolve its business operations the way they want.
The Property Management solution
Continuum Property has continuously developed and improved its Property Management solution alongside its evolving business. The highly optimized solution is tailored to serve tenants, suppliers, and back-office personnel in a dynamic real estate environment.
Back-office functionality
The back-office application is structured to minimize overhead, remove dependencies on specific personnel and make sure that all operational tasks are tracked and followed up. Further, the solution ensures full compliance to all relevant standards and provides full insight and transparency for HSE and financial auditing.
“By structuring all work in our Property Management solution, the operation is more efficient and activities more transparent and available. This reduces the risk of neglected or undocumented tasks,” says Bergheim.
The back-office application consists of four key areas, all integrated into one single application model:
— Task management,
— Property and component registry,
— Human Resources, and
— Sales and Finance
Task management
Task management is the core operational engine of the Property Management solution and a key enabler of their optimized business processes. All activities performed in the company, across business processes, are structured into the task management solution. Tasks can occur either as planned activities (e.g. part of maintenance routines or regular inspections), triggered activities created as reactions on events (e.g. reactive maintenance), or as an integrated part of a larger project (e.g. the refurbishing of a property).
Property and component registry
Most tasks are performed in the context of a particular physical property, or even a specific component situated in this property. The property management solution contains a registry of all properties owned by Continuum, as well as a calculation tool for the area leased by each tenant. Further, all major components within these properties are registered and structured in the system with links to regulatory tables of building elements. The level of control provided in the solution is tailored to fit their daily business operations and enables easier planning and better traceability of the tasks performed.
Human Resources
The solution provides support for all human resources employed or hired by Continuum Property. This includes work contracts, time reporting, vacation planning and more. Time reporting is directly linked to the task management module, closing the loop between tasks performed, resources used, and time spent.
Sales and Finance
The Property Management solution also serves as the Tenant Relationship Management solution for Continuum Property, supporting their sales process and lease management. In addition, it supports key financial operations, such as generating invoices to tenants, purchase orders to vendors, and payroll calculations for employees – all based on information held within the solution.
Supplier portal
For their most integrated suppliers, Continuum Property provides a web application for mobile and tablet that serves as the suppliers’ daily activity list.
The activities are distributed to the relevant suppliers based on tasks in the back-office solution. The suppliers also report the time spent on tasks directly into the solution. This enables transparency and closer collaboration between Continuum Property and its suppliers, as well as real-time updates on the costs of activities.
Tenant portal
In addition to providing digital support to all back-office employees and field personnel, Continuum Property has developed a web-based self-service portal to interact with their tenants. The portal enables tenants to submit issues and concerns, and to track the progress of all submitted cases.
For Continuum Property, this means that all requests from tenants are received in a structured way. Further, it enables automation in assigning the personnel responsible for the task in question. Finally, it makes it easier to communicate to the status of issues to tenants, effectively increasing tenant satisfaction.
Sustainable development
For Continuum Property, using Genus as a digital operations platform for their business processes has ensured that they can maintain a small workforce with a complete overview of their assets. The solution allows them to stay ahead with the required and desired upgrades to their properties while ensuring that core business processes are properly managed.
By continuously evolving its digital operations platform built with Genus, Continuum Property can continue to grow and develop its property management operations in the spirit of its business philosophy.
About
Continuum Property is a Norwegian real estate company focused on community development, local synergies, and complete tenant solutions. The company is situated at Lysaker on the border of Oslo (Norway), and all its properties are located in the greater Lysaker area. Premium quality, continuous upgrades, and operational management that stays close to the customers are all considered core values for Continuum Property.