Estate Office Case Study

Estate Office (http://www.estate-office.com) is a property business specialising in the investment and development market for residential and commercial property. Founded by Nicholas Cowell and Adrian Levy in 1985, it provides private and institutional clients with a comprehensive range of services including acquisitions, sales, valuations, investments and developments.

Estate Office are much more than just estate agents as they deal in high end investment and property development from their Maida Vale office. Dealing with astute commercial City investors, amongst their impressive client portfolio, it is crucial that they are portrayed at all times as a highly skilled and professional organisation. The Internet Group has helped them maintain this reputation.

Embracing technology

As Cowell explains, they first met up with The Internet Group in 2005. Having moved from much smaller offices in St. Johns Wood, they had only three PCs, all with individual dial-up access. They still used Hotmail for their emails, relied on Sage for their accounts package, and their secretary really used her PC as a "typewriter". In Cowell's own words they "had not embraced any technology".

It was at this juncture that Cowell and Levy decided to "dive in at the deep end" and network the offices. But, like many SMEs before them, they didn't know where to start and faced the daunting task of interviewing IT support companies across the capital. It seems that The Internet Group stood apart from the rest. As Cowell says regarding Mitchell Feldman, MD of the organisation: "I felt very comfortable with him and his message". And it was partly for this reason that he decided to allow The Internet Group to advise them on how to set up their brand new IT systems from scratch.

This was a huge step for Estate Office and they appreciated the "simplicity" with which it was handled by Mitchell Feldman and his team. They set up 12 computers, all linked, and trained the staff on the Microsoft Office packages that were introduced subsequently. Within a very short space of time, Estate Office went from a company that rarely used email and relied totally on their fax machine to one that now checks the fax machine but once a week, "and only out of curiosity!"

Technology to support the business

"It has completely and utterly changed the way we work" says Nicholas Cowell. Only two years ago his day consisted of dealing with the post initially, recording correspondence on his dictaphone and signing letters at the end of the day, leaving only a small gap in the middle of the day to make telephone calls and meet with clients. But now the day is spread out more evenly and this, despite the fact that he handles most of his own correspondence via email now.

But at the end of the day, technology is there to support Nicholas Cowell's business, not run it. And he recognises that "you mustn't let them (PCs) get the better of you". Today, The Internet Group continues to run all the IT architecture of Estate Office successfully. "They are our one stop shop. They look after our network and when anything goes wrong, which isn't very often, they put it right". Allowing Cowell and his staff to concentrate on what they know best: the property investment business.