Rockdell Property Management

Rockdell Property Management is a London based firm which has been established for over five years. It was set up by Mr Hussein Soufraki, a self-made property tycoon who continues to head the business along with his two sons, who work as directors. The organisation is funded by the owners and has no borrowings. They employ 25 staff at their head office in Farringdon Road.

Rockdell trade as a group and provide property management services and capital investment to their building and maintenance arm, Dari Construction. <br>
Today, the group has a turnover in excess of £12 million and recently completed a £15 million five-star residential development, comprising luxury apartments and penthouse suites at Herbal Hill Gardens, Islington.

As well as their UK interests, Rockdell have companies in hotel, leisure and property development in Europe, Canada and the USA.

Rockdell Property Management are currently completing, via Dari Construction, a major transformation from an ex-BT commercial building into an enormous luxurious residential development. Jubilee Heights, at Shoot Up Hill on Kilburn High Road, London comprises 107 flats, leisure complex, indoor children’s playground and a 155-space underground car park. They manage similar residential sites in Maida Vale and at three further locations around London.

The initial implementation program in September 1993 took no more than seven days. The resulting conclusions were critically reviewed and evaluated jointly by Tingoo Pattni and Diane Battrawden - an experienced software trainer. Furthermore within these seven days, a full training programme of two and a half days was given by Tingoo and Diane to four accounts clerks. This one-to-one training enabled Rockdell to actively switch on-line with their new system. This means that a full understanding of the requirements and expectations of the system was quickly accomplished, saving overall implementation time. Tingoo was able to gain an in depth appreciation of the software first hand which meant that he was able to devise a Nominal Account Coding and analysis structure that best suited his current and future needs.

New features, such as document scanning, being added recently to the other shortlisted package means that Tingoo has thought of re-assessing his system. However, as one of the early users of the software, Pattni claims true belief in the product and the company who supplied him. Through the close relationship generated with his chosen dealership he feels that this combination provides the potential foundations to the software brand becoming market leaders. <br>
Speaking as a business consultant, Tingoo feels that Access Accounting software offers a substantial opportunity for growing businesses in the long term because it is user friendly, functional, practical and able to cope with large volumes of business transactions.

IT Strategy

When the company was first founded in 1993, all accounts and financial records were kept on a manual basis, as the directors had not yet decided upon a computerised system.

Tingoo Pattni, Finance Manager, took on the task of sourcing a system. They required prime accounts records to be linked to executive reports. Stiff criteria were set by Mr Soufraki, the Chairman of Rockdell and Dari, which meant that, from a financial management point of view, the system had to offer powerful and flexible reporting. As a client Mr Soufraki required a user friendly system, which a non-financial manager could comprehend and use. The business operations needed to track projects, so easy integration to a job costing system was essential. And the whole system had to remain user friendly which really meant avoiding the character display based systems available from large, well known suppliers.

One other challenge was available budget. Project budgets allowed for an investment of no more than £5,000. Overspending meant that other core growth areas would not yield handsome profits.

These decision factors added up to Tingoo Pattni calling on his experience as a qualified business auditor and consultant. He finally settled on a package which would run effectively on the Macintosh platform as well as on Windows, that could output data straight to Microsoft Excel for creating reports for use at both management and director level. There were three software packages which could provide this dual-platform ability.

Tingoo Pattni said: “The systems implementation program had to be practical, relevant and usable in its full capacity in the shortest possible time-span. He said that : “I liked the Access Accounts system because of the calibre of people involved working jointly with me.”

Rockdell and Dari initially used PowerMacs as their hardware. In January 1995 they transferred onto Windows 95, Dell hardware and a Windows NT network.

Long term projects are easily tracked by exporting job costing data to spreadsheet, where an Excel macro, written by Tingoo Pattni, presents cumulative actual costs against budgeted costs and creates an estimate by job for costs of completion.

Decision making and problem solving are aided by on-line reports in the system. Personal involvement in system set up means Tingoo Pattni can pull off a profit & loss report, sorted and subtotalled by numerous criteria exactly how it needs to be seen.

Telephone software support is particularly commended by Tingoo Pattni, for its efficiency and friendly approach. He said: “whenever I get stuck, I make a quick call. I get through straight away and I’m on first name terms with someone who solves my problem. It really is as easy as that.”

Tingoo Pattni said: “although I could have bought a different product, this one is so user friendly. I get regular upgrades, which keep me up to date.”

The costs of purchasing the software system fitted within the budget. Installation and training was carried out on time, also within the budget.