As well as the normal challenges business life throws at us, this year a number of our staff will be undertaking a few personal challenges of their own and for the sake of their chosen charities.

Claire Hodgson, our Horizon Marketing Manager is travelling to China to trek the Great Wall of China in September to raise money for Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust http://www.jostrust.org.uk/

Barry Mair from our Qube Professional Services team is going to complete the International Canoe Race from Devizes in Wiltshire to Westminster Bridge in London. A total of 125 miles.  Barry is paddling with a partner in the 4-day endeavour race taking part in the open boat, veteran mixed category and is doing this both from the perspective of a personal challenge and also to help raise money for the Help for Heroes charity. http://www.helpforheroes.org.uk/

We have staff running in the London Marathon and we might also hear soon if our team will again attempt the Vertical Rush race again this year. Please see the news story from last year. http://www.qubeglobal.com/news/nid-00160/qube-global-team-completes-race-in-a-rush/

This is just a good luck message and to say that these people are inspirational.  So look out for more news of these challenges on our news channel and on this blog.

James Lavery

Head of Marketing

We have recently seen some great posts on LinkedIn. In response to people asking for recommendations on suppliers of Property Management Software our customers have repeatedly been mentioning us and in very positive terms. Please see this example from the Institute of Residential Property Managers LinkedIn Group

Now this does make us feel very special – and the threads have been passed around the company. ‘Inspirational’ is how one employee put it.

These are things we often forget – most of our new business comes on recommendation, we constantly receive really high scores in customer feedback and we have a bank of customer case studies. So as we don’t often get a chance to thank customers publically for this support here is a big thank you for these recommendations and comments.

James Lavery
Head of Marketing

Last year we were involved as sponsors of the Professional Conferences series of events. The events provide Chartered Surveyors a route to gaining more knowledge on the industry and catching up with the latest trends in the market. All of this contributing to Continuing Professional Development (CPD) hours.

We felt that as we have such strong links with the profession through Surveyors using our software solutions we should be involved as sponsors. We are delighted to be involved this year again, with the new series starting in Manchester next week and this year we are delivering some different content in our sponsors address.

John Cuppello our CEO will be tackling the subject of obvious problems in businesses, and how we all seem to avoid these and work around them. John will highlight that our solutions are here to help tackle these directly. For those that have seen John’s presentation visit this link to see the video referred to.
http://www.youtube.com/user/qubeglobalsoftware#p/a/f/0/vJG698U2Mvo

James Lavery

Many in the industry will have seen the RICS White Papers on Property in the Economy published over the last two years. http://www.rics.org/propertyintheeconomy

These are great set of resources for experienced professionals or those starting out and wanting to find out more about key issues in the Property Industry.

I have included a link to one of the most recent papers below on Cloud Computing that has some input from our CEO John Cuppello.  Obviously this is core to our solutions and we feel we have a great story to tell here – with our development teams having worked hard delivering Cloud based solutions over the last couple of years. These Cloud based solutions are proving popular with the Customer base.  In fact we really feel that we have strong product offerings across all of our delivery methods. Neil Harrison’s post from 1 February 2011 talks more about ‘The Cloud’ and is great food for thought.

James Lavery

The Role of Cloud Computing in Commercial Property
February 2011 – What is cloud computing and why is it relevant to real estate?.  This paper will examine these questions and will consider how it may affect the amount of space a company uses, the provision of data centres and an increase in more flexible and efficient working practices.

Qube Global Software helps Agents and Investors win more business – Tenant Self Service and Payment Portal

For the last two years the Qube Property Management Solution has been offering Agents and Investors the ability to allow tenants or lessees to view rent and service charge information online and pay for the outstanding amounts. The module has proved incredibly successful with a significant number of customers ordering the portal over the last two months.  The functionality has also been very popular with new customers coming on-board with most new customers from organisations in these sectors taking it as part of their implementation.

Amongst other features the Tenant Portal allows for maintenance requests and other pertinent property information to be viewed by the tenant/lessee. The solution enables linkages to Sage Pay and seamless real time updates to and from the Qube Property Management and Accounting solution. The portal can also be branded or embedded to suit existing customer web sites.

All these tools are allowing Qube customers to increase their levels of service and in turn win and retain more business.

The latest version of the portal released in the Version 10 release of Qube has enhanced tools that can bring customer service in property to the next level and this is contributing to this success of the product.  We are really excited about this development and the power it is delivering to our customers.

James Lavery

Head of Marketing

It is standard practice that at the start of a New Year people consider the future and make judgement calls on factors that may or may not be significant in the coming year.  It is a good thing that we do so, it is always beneficial to reflect on the past and extrapolate into the future.  In practice events flow rather than occur in chunks, so breaking technology and business practices into annual time slices never quite works.    In other words, predictions made in 2010 may still be relevant this year and the next.

Take ‘The Cloud’.  From all the press articles, it is this year’s next big thing, but it was, for many, also last year’s big thing.  Certainly it is taking off, certainly it is a very popular delivery model and certainly, if as a software solution provider, you do not offer a cloud solution then you are lagging behind your competitors.  But it is not a purchase model for every customer and won’t be for some time to come.

‘The Cloud’ is just one example of something that is big at the moment, so are tablet PC’s such as the iPad,  so are Smartphones, and so is Social Networking.  Looking at our business, we have our networking systems that never existed until recently, we have our LinkedIn account, Twitter account and our YouTube account etc.   You probably have them as well.  But the significant factor about these communication networks, is not that they are in ‘The Cloud’, but they were originally driven by the individual social networking experience.  In other words, individuals within the business have driven our corporate IT communication methods and not the other way round.

Significant?  Yes in many many ways.  It means that the individual’s expectations of what a company provides for them and how it is provided are driving what companies need to deliver.  Individuals are having great experiences with technology outside of the office, they equally expect it inside the office.  If your company does not deliver this to them, then talented people may leave or never join to start with (how technology aware are today’s graduates?)   If talent deserts you then so does your imagination, innovation and ultimately your competitive advantage. 

The rise in this power of the individual will put pressure on IT departments to replace systems that are adequate in terms of business processing but inadequate in terms of end user experience.  There is a bottom up demand for change, a demand that I have directly experienced from within our customers and one that greatly influences our product strategy.  So when asked for a 2011 prediction I will not select a technology or a business practice but instead the demand by the individual to have  better experiences from the systems provided to them.

Neil Harrison

Product Director