Newton’s Property Management and CPL Client Story

What does chalk and cheese have to do with Pizza on a Friday? And how can a property factoring business possibly contribute to positively affecting climate change?

The beginining

Newton’s Property Management started in 2001. “My dad owned O’Neill’s letting business and he noticed that the industry lacked service in factoring”.

“Dad set up the business from the dining room in our home. He was introduced to his business partner, Derek through a friend. Derek had a factoring background and is technical so they both brought different skills to the table. They have very different personalities too – some would say they are like chalk and cheese!”

Kirsten’s forte

Kirsten joined in 2014. Her background was Retail Operations and HR. She did want to work for the business, but she needed a genuine requirement. Her dad wanted to tighten up processes and procedures. Admitting she is OCD about that kind of thing – Kirsten knew this would be her forte – she couldn’t say no.

Newton wanted to focus on service, staff enjoyment and staff fulfilment. Kirsten wanted to make sure this stayed in the business. “We wanted to keep my dad’s personality, morals and ethics (he is semi-retired now). It’s one of the reasons we have Pizza Fridays!”

Like something from the 70’s!

The business used to run Mosaic – another property factoring software package. Kirsten believes it was a natural progression for the business to move to CPL. Mosaic was like something from the 70’s!

There was nothing else that was geared specifically towards factoring, with the exception of bespoke options which are massively expensive and don’t come with the support or infrastructure. “The CPL support team are fantastic. We email any problems which raises a ticket and it is resolved as quickly as possible.”

60% switch to paperless billing

By keeping everything centralised, Newton have found they are a lot more efficient. If a member of their team goes on holiday their information is available at the click of a button. “From our customer’s point of view output has a progressed format – invoices for example, are easily understood. The invoices have a template layout – everything has to align, visually.” At first there were a few glitches for but he CPL team are quick to react and everything is fixed and it works.” CPL are also open to bespoke changes if we need or want them. Around 60% of Newton’s clients have switched to email billing as part of their 2020 Green Vision programme. This move has saved their staff time and saves paper and postage costs.

Proposed works and estimates can be quite a lengthy process. With CPL, Newton’s customers use the Client Portal to vote and clients pay into the portal before work is instructed. “Adding new build developments is also great now. The support team listened to our suggestion that we needed to be able to set up new developments before they were complete without being charged. There’s now a ‘Set to live’ button that we switch on as soon as we begin managing a development. This simple button makes it much easier for us to manage new builds as we’re able to be proactive and can plan ahead and be prepared.”

“It’s brilliant that CPL takes on board comments and suggestions and implements.”

“The guys in support and development – especially Will and Arran are fantastic, their manners, they are approachable and so polite. Everyone is really helpful which makes a difference – nothing’s too big or too small.”

A bit like Newton’s pizza’s on a Friday – not too big or too small. Just right.

Visit Newton’s

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