Improved Communication with Community Portal
The Situation
Responsible for projects including Yas Island, Al Gurm Resort and the Abu Dhabi Central Market (Souq), Aldar Properties is a major real estate development, management and investment company headquartered in the UAE. As Aldar prepared to launch five large master plan projects to the Abu Dhabi freehold market in 2011, they needed a solution able to manage the soon-to-be-introduced property laws. Aldar was also looking to re-design their web presence and provide customers with access to a world-class portal.
The Challenge
Aldar’s finance and property management teams were using Oracle to manage the invoicing of service charges and the financial reporting for each real estate project. However, as Oracle is not a property-specific accounting solution, it lacked some of the functionality required to effectively manage day-to-day operations. The system was also difficult and costly to customize – creating additional manual work and overhead costs.
Aldar required a solution that automated the tasks associated with running a large real estate portfolio. They were also looking for a system that delivered a “self-service” portal so that owners and residents could pay their bills, raise service requests with the customer support team and become more engaged with their community. Additionally, Aldar wanted to build a unified web presence for their numerous real estate projects on one simple platform, replacing multiple inconsistent websites.
The Solution
Aldar engaged Urbanise to migrate five large master planprojects and 5,000 units onto the Urbanise Strata Accounting Solution. They also entrusted Urbanise with developing a master umbrella website where their customers, prospective tenants and buyers could navigate through each project website. Following successful delivery of the initial project, Aldar is now using Urbanise technology to manage a further ten projects and more than 15,000 residential, retail and commercial units.
The Project Scope
• Migrate data for five existing projects from Oracle Financials to Urbanise Strata Management
• Integrate the strata management system to Aldar’s Oracle CRM system allowing owner and tenant records to be synced
(included the development of an approval process before updates are made)
• Develop a “master” umbrella site for the Estates team at www.aldar.com/connect
• Develop customised websites for all five projects – e.g. www.my community.com/albandar
• Re-brand the MyCommunity portal system to “Aldar Connect”
• Activate the MyCommunity credit card gateway to facilitate online payment of service charges
• Train up to 60 staff
• System configuration
• Ongoing support for all users