Last week we sponsored an award at the Property Week Property Awards.  The Professional Agency of the Year award and congratulations to the winners GVA.  The Awards are one of the biggest events in the UK property calendar and certainly the biggest awards ceremony.

Good exposure yes – but like some of the exhibitions we attend it is sometimes hard to calculate if we get a great return on these events.   However, there are a couple of really positive things to come out of these events that we can see immediately.  Firstly, we get to bring along some clients (plus meet lots of others) so a great networking opportunity and always good fun – especially when you have a good compere like Jonathan Ross or Michael McIntyre.  I am personally sorry I missed this year’s event as I have been told there was a great atmosphere.

We have been doing quite a few of these types of events over the last couple of years, including the News on the Block Property Management Awards and the upcoming RESI Awards (a spin off of the hugely successful specialist residential event that takes place in Autumn every year).  One more hidden value we get is that we see that our customers are also having success with many of them either winning or nominated in all categories (Investors, Agents and Occupiers).  So while not tangible benefit it builds on our is confidence that we are aligned with successful organisations and we believe in some way we are contributing to their good results through the software they use.   So as we look forward to the next awards ceremony – the aforementioned RESI awards on the 15th May – Good luck to our customers!

James Lavery

Head of Marketing

Last year I was looking at our customer base and the great names we have in the list.  Around the same time I was constantly being bombarded from the account management team with all the good news stories from around the customer base and also seeing the amount of new customers coming to us on recommendation.  So we have been working hard to document some of these stories by completing case studies on our Qube Customers, how they have been using the software effectively and the derived benefits.  There are a few links below to download the latest stories.  Our customers can also use these to show tenants, stakeholders and internal customers how they are using the latest technology and software effectively.

Alliance Managing Agents

Gateway Property Management

KTS Estate Management

We hope you find these real life examples of our software in use informative and let us know if you want any more information on our solutions.

James Lavery

Head of Marketing

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.