Background
Capital Living, a London-based property management company, sought to disrupt the House of Multiply Occupancy (HMO) sector. The company’s niche business model is based on providing sociable house shares for young professionals looking for a co-living experience, where members are matched to other housemates through a careful selection process.
The problem
The company’s business systems were restricting its profitable growth, due to the necessary complexities involved in the HMO sector, coupled with Capital Living’s unique approach.
This included managing tenant interviews, contracts, onboarding and outboarding, organising maintenance requests and repairs, along with all the financial flows that supported these elements. Reducing business risk by complying with the regulatory requirements within the HMO sector, was another important aspect to address.
“Capital Living has been able to make £3.3m in revenue with only five full-time staff, which is phenomenal when compared to the market average, and a direct result of the impact of the White Cobalt system. We have standardised our processes to produce consistent and effortless results for our customers for years to come. Their integration between Xero and our system has been incredible; ask them about it!”
Adam Goff, CEO and Founder
Our approach
Capital Living’s processes required a comprehensive review to determine inefficiencies in their current systems. After detailed discussions we mapped out the company’s current workflows and combined them in one coherent relationship map.
The workflows included:
- Points where data was created and input
- Inter-related tasks, and where these needed to be approved and safeguarded
- Ownership of facilities management tasks
- Financial and monetary transactions
- Risk and compliance at a commercial and legal level
To streamline and minimise the work required by Capital Living, we introduced intuitive user screens to make it easier for the team to input information, including certifications and documents provided by members and sub-contractors.
With significant monies constantly moving within the business, it was important to create a real-time reporting system to give an accurate account of Capital Living’s current financial status.
We also focused on management controls and defined the best way of viewing information at both a macro and micro level. This was achieved with full automation, real-time dashboards and flexible reports, where we transformed raw data to give a clear and precise view of their business.
The outcome
“We have standardised our processes to produce consistent and effortless results for our customers for years to come”
Adam Goff, CEO and Founder
Capital Living now has a meaningful, accurate and real-time view on all aspects of their business. This insight enables them to manage all costs, assess profitability down to individual rooms and tenants, and predict occupancy levels so that they can increase their property portfolio to meet demand and maximise profit.
The company’s customer service has significantly improved, and they now have a transparent end-to-end process that’s paper-free. And the team benefits from an easy-to-use system that manages complex processes, where risk is reduced, and compliance is built in. Apart from staff overheads being reduced, Capital Living’s revenue currently far exceeds averages for this sector, which are around £100,000 per staff member.
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