Chesterton International manages commercial real estate with Adept software

Andrew Hunter is the Managing Director of Chesterton International, an Australian company dealing in commercial, industrial and retail property agency and consultancy with offices in New South Sales and Queensland. All Chesterton offices are heavy users of the Adept property management software and Adept sales and leasing software – in fact, they have used the property management software for over a decade, Hunter says.

“We were one of the first users of their property management program and also took on the Adept Sales and Leasing software when it was first released.”

From the beginning, Hunter says, the program has been built around the processes central to property management across the full gamut of commercial real-estate ownership. “We manage thousands of properties. We have managed properties for major institutions, we've managed them for syndicates and we’ve managed for small property funds. We manage privates and we manage for government.”

In most cases, it’s all done through the Adept software, he says. “Adept has been really robust and very satisfactory for us and for our clients.” Hunter adds that the software has kept up with advances in the technology world while retaining its reliability and usability. He’s never had problems exchanging data between Adept and the software used by Government and other commercial bodies, for example.

Part of Chesterton International’s portfolio includes the management of over a thousand commercial properties for RailCorp. “I think it’s a sensible trend for government to outsource these operations to be run commercially, there are greater efficiencies in the outsourcing,” Hunter says.Consistent and well-audited management processes are key to attracting government contracts, he says.

“We run pretty much every transaction through Adept and because it’s a comprehensive system, we can get whatever information we need out of it as well as having it automatically run core processes for our clients. A lot of our owners are very process-driven, so this is ideal.” Automated process management saves a lot of time and errors, Hunter says. “Once you’ve set up your data accurately, lease re-negotiations, rent reviews and pretty much all stages of the process are run through the system automatically.”

The future is looking bright for Chesterton, and Hunter says that one of the biggest challenges is keeping pace with fast-moving technology.