Stratford Ellis

Independent advice first. Then we build what we recommend.

Stratford Ellis advises property businesses. Developers, asset and property managers, contractors, anywhere in the world. We start with an honest assessment and a plan you own. We build afterwards to prove the advice was right, not to sell it.

Book an advisory callHow our advisory works
The problem

Most businesses do not need more software. They need a decision.

It looks the same whether you develop, own, manage or maintain the buildings, or turn up to fix them. The portfolio grows, the team grows, and the systems behind them stop coping. Jobs, leases, tenants, assets, parts and costs sit in five places and none of them agree. People on site still finish the day on paper. Invoices go out late. Compliance evidence gets pulled together the week of the audit. And every vendor you talk to already has the answer, which is their product. What you actually need is someone with nothing to sell looking at the whole thing and telling you what is true.

That is the part we do first. Building comes after.

How we work

Advise. Plan. Then deliver.

Every engagement starts with advice. You can stop there with a plan you can take anywhere, or keep us on to deliver it.

01

Advise

We look at how the business actually runs: jobs, data, systems, people. Then we tell you straight what it is costing you and what to fix first.

02

Plan

You get a costed, ordered plan you could hand to anyone. The decisions, the trade-offs, the platform choices, and the sequence.

03

Deliver

If you want us to, we do the work: migration, implementation, integration and software, built by the people who wrote the plan.

Why Stratford Ellis

Independent advice from people who can build it themselves.

  • We are vendor neutral. No reseller margins, no referral fees, no product of our own to protect.
  • Because we may have to deliver what we recommend, we never propose a plan we could not build.
  • You own the plan. Take it to your own team or another firm and it still works.
  • We judge the work by what happens on Monday morning.
  • We talk like operators, because that is what we are.
Advisory: where we start

Get the thinking right before anyone touches a system.

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Data strategy & governance

What your data should look like, and who owns it.

Business strategy & planning

Where to spend, and what to leave alone.

Process optimisation

Quote to invoice, mapped and made faster.

Compliance & governance

Records you can produce on demand.

Change management

Adoption in the field, not just go-live.

Implementation: how we prove it

When you want the plan built, we build it ourselves.

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Data

One version of the numbers, owned by you.

Data migration

Off legacy, onto something solid.

Systems implementation

Chosen, configured, actually used.

Integration

Information that moves on its own.

Software development

Built for how you really work.

Case studies

What this work is worth.

Three engagements across property, development and estate operations. We withhold client names, and the figures are indicative of what this work tends to be worth.

Talk through your own numbers

Managing agent · 6,400 units

Service charge and arrears reporting cut from days to minutes

The problem. Service charge budgets, arrears and works orders sat in three systems and a stack of spreadsheets. Every client report was rebuilt by hand, and the numbers rarely matched between finance and property teams.

The decision. After the assessment the call was to fix the lease and unit record first and leave the finance system alone. Replacing it would have cost six figures and solved none of the reporting problem.

What we did. We mapped the property, lease and unit records into one structured model, moved reporting onto live data from the finance and property systems, and set up automated client packs by building and schedule.

The outcome

4 days → 20 mins
Time to produce a client reporting pack
-31%
Arrears older than 90 days
100%
Units reconciled against the lease record

Residential developer · 900 plots a year

One picture of cost, sales and programme per scheme

The problem. Land, build cost, sales and handover data lived with different teams. Board reporting was assembled monthly in a spreadsheet, so problems on a scheme surfaced weeks after they started.

The decision. The board wanted a new development management platform. We advised against it: the systems were adequate, the scheme and plot references were not. Reporting layer first, platform decision deferred by a year.

What we did. We joined the appraisal, cost, sales and programme systems into one reporting layer, agreed a single scheme and plot reference across them, and built live dashboards for scheme, region and board level.

The outcome

Monthly → daily
Frequency of scheme performance reporting
11 days
Cut from the month-end reporting cycle
+4.1 pts
Forecast accuracy on build cost to complete

Estate and facilities operator · 320 sites

Compliance evidence off email and out of drives

The problem. Certificates, inspections and remedial records were scattered across contractor emails, shared drives and paper files. Missed statutory checks only came to light during an audit.

The decision. Rather than roll out a new CAFM across 320 sites, we recommended migrating and cleaning the compliance history into the existing platform and tightening the scheduling around it.

What we did. We migrated 15 years of asset and compliance history into one searchable record, tied every certificate to a site and asset, and automated planned inspection scheduling with escalation on anything overdue.

The outcome

99.2%
Statutory inspections completed on schedule
5 days → 2 hrs
Time to assemble an audit pack
-46%
Reactive works caused by missed maintenance
Platforms we work with

We know the property, operations and finance stacks you already run on.

Vendor neutral by design. We help you choose the right platform, or get more out of the one you already have.

YardiMRIHorizonQubePlanonConcept EvolutionMaximoSAPOracleDynamics 365NetSuiteSnowflakePower BISalesforceServiceNowEsri / ArcGIS

Start with advice, not a sales pitch.

Book a call and we will give you an independent read on your data, systems and operations. Where the money is leaking, what to fix first, what it should cost. You leave with a plan you own, whether or not we build it.

Book an advisory call