Trust Inventory was established in 2013 by Cornelia Tiplea, previously the managing director of a successful estate agency. The team initially served letting agents and landlords throughout Somerset, before expanding their services to London and South West England when Sebastian Tiplea joined as Operations Director in 2015.
With decades of combined experience in the property industry, the leadership at Trust Inventory placed a real emphasis on providing efficient and personal inventory services as they understood exactly what their clients needed. In addition to this, they had built a strong reputation for on-the-spot report completion and 3-hour turnaround times.
This helped them avoid any potential errors associated with completing their reports away from the property, ensuring delivery was prompt and accurate. However, to enable them to scale while continuing to provide high standards in the face of an ever-increasing client list, Trust Inventory made the smart decision to seek faster and more efficient ways of carrying out their work.
The Challenge
In 2023, one case in particular presented the Trust Inventory team with a seemingly impossible challenge. The project was to create a comprehensive record of condition and equipment for a hotel encompassing 275 rooms, along with other spaces such as a restaurant, bar, breakfast area, and several conference rooms. Trust Inventory’s client also required a video inspection for each and every room and space throughout the site.
Their objective was to compile this extensive report, documenting every room and space in precise detail, making it accessible to a range of stakeholders, before delivering it efficiently and speedily to their client in a digital format so they could access it anywhere, at any time.
However, with the inherent limitations posed by property visits on this scale, and due to the demand for meticulous attention to detail, each inspection was understandably time-sensitive. With a limited window in which to complete the project, efficient use of features was crucial as they had just a matter of days to turn it around.
Under normal circumstances, a task of this magnitude is both labour-intensive and time-consuming. Trust Inventory recognised that if they were to future-proof their business and deliver for their client, they needed to bring technology into their workflow.
“In our field time is of the essence. Since you can only visit so many properties in a day it’s critical to use technology to your advantage,” said Sebastian Tiplea, Operations Director.
This need to document hundreds of spaces within a few days added to the complexity, as it required precise scheduling of tasks and rapid, accurate report generation. The process of manually creating, editing, and delivering reports for each property, including mixed media like photos and videos, is not only time-consuming but can also be prone to errors and delays.
The Solution
Trust Inventory chose Inventory Base’s industry-leading inspections and property inventory software to streamline their operational processes, enhance reporting accuracy, and optimise the time needed to document every room and space. A huge task in itself, but coupled with maximising the team’s daily productivity and overall operational efficiency, it became a job that required focus and flexibility.
Sebastian Tiplea said: “The Inventory Base system gave our team access to pre-built templates with descriptions already filled in. They were easily customisable and helped us capture the current condition of the property faster than we could without the app. Using Inventory Base’s built-in templates for our reporting needs is what ultimately gave us the edge.”
Inventory Base also enabled the team to seamlessly integrate date/time and referenced images and videos into their reports, which were easily amendable and instantly shared with all stakeholders. Trust Inventory says that this feature was the difference maker, streamlining client communication and leading to an overall reduction in the administrative burden on-site and back in the office.
“Facing such a monumental task was a challenge, but the solution was simple with Inventory Base. After adopting the software, all we needed to do was to create a report in the app, which we could easily duplicate for each of the 275 rooms.”
Trust Inventory effectively utilised the Inventory Base app’s video capture feature to record a short video tour of each room, integrating these alongside descriptions and photos within the relevant room sections.
This approach resulted in comprehensive and well-organised reports, where each room’s details, including photos and video tours, were neatly compiled into a cohesive, cloud-based document that could be sent to any stakeholder, at any time.
The Outcome
Leveraging the Inventory Base software resulted in significant time and labour savings for Trust Inventory. The system’s flexibility allowed for the fast documentation of different types of rooms and spaces, giving them the tools they needed to get the project completed accurately and efficiently.
“Without Inventory Base it could’ve taken a couple of weeks, and it also would have been very difficult to keep evidence of rooms completed and those that still need to be inspected,” Sebastian explained. “Using Inventory Base saved us at least 60 hours per week, cutting manual administration by 80%. The project was completed by a single inventory clerk in just a few days!”
Sebastian continued: “From the very beginning of our journey in our industry, Inventory Base stood out with its clear and simple presentation, and flexibility to create, change, copy, rename, and reuse items in the report. The mobile app is very intuitive and easy to use whilst visually clean and efficient.”
The importance of customer support and reliability
With a project successfully delivered – and one of their most profitable to date – Trust Inventory praised Inventory Base’s customer support, highlighting their prompt and solution-oriented approach to the challenges they faced.
The reliability and knowledge of the Inventory Base team, coupled with the powerful software, were key factors in building a successful partnership which continues to this day.
“In any partnership, customer support is vital,” said Sebastian. “In this respect, the Inventory Base team is always prompt and forthcoming in finding solutions for any issue. Their technical team is very knowledgeable and always willing to listen. Inventory Base is a partner you can rely on.”
The adoption of Inventory Base software by Trust Inventory vividly illustrates the impact and transformative power of technology in streamlining inventory management and property reporting. The software’s flexibility, user-friendly interface and comprehensive features collectively simplify reporting challenges, making the entire process faster, easier and more intelligent. This synergy between Trust Inventory and Inventory Base highlights a practical and effective solution for modern reporting needs.