There’s a real buzz in the offices of InventoryBase. Every day we experience a win, whether it’s a great new customer, an exciting new feature launch, a completely off-the-wall innovation, or just a day not talking about Brexit.
We started as a team of four people back in 2012, today we’re a team of twenty, and we’ve never slowed down; continuously evolving and developing InventoryBase since the day we launched.
Our original vision was clear – become the market-leading platform for property inventories and inspections. We’ve evolved beyond that, as we cater to some of the largest companies in the world for facility/asset management, global short term rental management, health & safety, councils, universities, retail, leisure, housing, the list goes on.
But we also had a greater interest, something we knew we wanted to be involved with in the longer-term – the gig economy.
The property industry is full of suppliers looking for jobs, growing their own company whilst working for other companies all at the same time.
Inventory reporting, tenant changeovers and even inspections are commonly outsourced.
What if there was a way to streamline your in-house inspections, all the while knowing you have local professionals on-hand, round-the-clock, at the click-of-a-button?
Trawling through directories or recommendations for local suppliers is tedious, and who knows if they’ll do the job in a standardised way?
Enter Workstreams. The latest innovation from InventoryBase.
InventoryBase Workstreams is the ultimate solution for combining the flexibility of in-house inspections or other types of property reports while maintaining access to a network of local suppliers who can bid on your job and act on your behalf.
InventoryBase Workstreams collects payments for services upfront, holding funds in Escrow until the job has been successfully completed, then releases funds directly to the supplier’s bank account once reviewed and approved.
At a recent Agent Rainmaker Live event held for entrepreneurial estate and letting agents, outsourcing was one of the core themes. Simply put; Outsourcing allows you to get on with your highest revenue-generating tasks while maintaining a profit margin on other tasks you don’t have time for.
And Outsourcing, we learned, is not just for the property managers, but a realistic option for agencies and suppliers too. Agencies also have limited resources, and during periods of high-demand, it can be difficult to find and train additional staff who have the right levels of knowledge and experience needed often at short notice.
To bridge the skills gap, InventoryBase Academy was launched, aiming to bring more and more people up to a standardised approach to property inventory reporting, as well as other course content, and InventoryBase Workstreams is the next stage for these inventory clerks and property professionals to find full-time employment, or work independently.
So what a better way to find new staff than through InventoryBase Workstreams, where you know they have been vetted by InventoryBase Academy and who already know how to use your software? We feel this is a game-changer for the inventory supplier industry.
But what is the benefit of InventoryBase Workstreams, when local suppliers can just go out and get clients for themselves?
Enter a new player: The Online Agent.
While there are plenty of work opportunities available within the InventoryBase customer network, Online Agents face a challenge: They are non-geographic, and therefore a national presence requires building relationships with national and local suppliers.
We recently announced an exciting new partnership with Accommodation.co.uk, an innovative online agent specialising in lettings; the partnership between InventoryBase Workstreams and Accommodation.co.uk is the perfect example of how we see the future of renting.
Accommodation.co.uk manage a flow of tasks dealing with landlords and new or existing tenancies, which will require someone local to their customers to visit the property during void periods, conduct an inventory, check-in for new tenancies, carry out check out reports as well as the many other types of inspections and assessments that help keep the landlords assets and tenants safe.
At the click of the button, Accommodation.co.uk can trigger a job alert to all local suppliers signed up to Workstreams, and receive bids for the job, picking the best supplier based on their ratings, sample reports and price offered.
If a Landlord wants to book an inventory clerk themselves, via Accommodation.co.uk, they can do that too and the job will be sent via our API, with Accommodation.co.uk acting as an intermediary to select the best supplier for them.
This is not only going to be a valuable tool for a growing online agent but an exciting opportunity for our customers, many of which are independent inventory clerks relying on the repeat business of a couple of clients.
InventoryBase Workstreams brings national contracts within easy reach of our local independent and professional inventory clerks, many of which provide a far superior service to a national franchise.
We are so excited to have Accommodation.co.uk to be among the first to partner with us, and we are equally thrilled with the level of interest from other like-minded companies and trailblazers including software vendors and service agencies.
Here’s to the beginning of a new future.