Q1- Plentific’s solution aims to make property management an easier process, what led to the development of the solution? Were there any specific gaps you were aiming to tackle?

When I co-founded the company alongside our CTO, Emre Kazan, it was down to our own personal experiences, which recognised that property management could and should be better for everyone. The property business runs in my family, and generations before me have been involved in the industry, so after spending time working in finance at global organisations like HSBC and Nomura, moving into the property industry was a step I had previously envisaged taking and in 2013, we launched Plentific. Plentific is an end-to-end technology solution that seamlessly connects landlords, property managers, service providers, and tenants on a single platform, with a clear goal: to make operations simpler, faster and more efficient.

Q2- Plentific has been at the forefront of change and growth over the last few years, can you tell us a bit more about how the business has evolved over time?

I co-founded the company in 2013 alongside our CTO, Emre Kazan, and since then we have gone from strength to strength. We’ve gone from two people around a kitchen table in South London to more than 300 employees, with four international offices in the UK, Germany, Turkey and the USA (and members of the team across 32 countries).

Our solution has evolved since inception, what started in repairs has now flourished into a complete real-time property operations solution. Clients can manage all areas of operations, including Repairs and Maintainance, Inspections, Compliance, Vendor Management, Data, Analytics and Finance. We also integrate with existing technology to ensure a seamless experience.

We’ve launched several key initiatives in the industry since we began, including The Women’s Trade Network. The network is an initiative we founded in 2021 specifically to provide advice, support, mentorship and access to training and job opportunities for women seeking a career as a tradesperson. Last year we launched the ESG Retrofit Centre of Excellence, bringing together a selection of housing associations, contractors, private landlords, and sector participants to collaboratively design a technology-enabled, end-to-end solution to deliver retrofit at scale.

Q3- In 2022 the business made an impressive 150 new hires, what are the steps you take to ensure you hire the right people? Is there any advice you’d like to give to companies looking to grow their teams?

Despite talent shortages across the UK’s workforce and fierce competition, we have been incredibly fortunate to attract some great talent in the last 12 months. We have prioritised our leadership team welcoming executives who have successfully scaled large well-known technology companies. I think that prospective hires can see that this is a pivotal time for the company, and they really want to be part of our journey and, ultimately, our success.

Q4- What are the most prominent challenges you’re seeing for clients and trends in the market?

Clients that avoided digital transformation are now having to do so quickly and in a big big way. Many clients who have implemented new technologies and systems to their operations over the last 10 years did so in a way that wasn’t such a shock to the system and are really seeing the benefits. Clients can now see that there really is no choice but to digitalise or get left behind. Government, regulators, tenants and boards – everyone expects it. Other challenges include regulatory changes, particularly in social housing. Clients are under a lot of pressure to upgrade their housing stock but also meet tenant requirements and ever-changing safety standards. Although necessary, it is quite a lot to deal with at one time.

Q5- Plentific runs an incubator programme called PropertyLab which aims to tackle the challenges in the property sector by bringing change makers in Property and PropTech to develop solutions.  What lead to the development and introduction of the program?

We launched PropertyLabs to ensure the solutions we were building actually solved client problems and wanted to work in partnership with them. It’s a tried and tested methodology for success. We engage important stakeholders across the industry to ensure a broad perspective is considered, then conduct in-depth research and analysis to uncover all insights on how systems and processes really work at every level of an organisation. We then take this information to inform the development of a solution and finally test the prototype. Every project we take on, we ensure that it is something that will deliver impact across the sector. Our mission is to create a sustainable future in real estate by implementing innovative solutions to tackle climate change so this is the premise of our current PropertyLab.