Symphony PMS, the new Property Management System from Aligned Assets was officially launched with a glass of champagne in Cardiff on Friday 18th September.
In the waterside setting of County Hall, those involved in the project gathered to celebrate the ending of a nine month development cycle, which has culminated in possibly the most comprehensive property management system available.
After a warming cup of tea, the guests, including representatives from other local authorities, were given a presentation by Phil Hall, Property Information Manager at Cardiff Council and Phil Gee, Commercial Director at Aligned Assets, about the need at Cardiff Council to bring in a new system to replace their outdated Estates Management System.
Being at the forefront of Local Land and Property Gazetteer (LLPG) development, it was explained how it was an essential component to have Symphony PMS linked to the gazetteer. Having worked hard to achieve LLPG integration into back office systems and a wider acceptance of the LLPG as the council’s central address database, Symphony PMS was therefore designed to use addresses data directly from the council’s LLPG.
The importance of this was explained by Phil Gee, “With Cardiff’s LLPG being of such a high standard, it seemed nonsensical to build a property management system in which address data would have to be manually entered, when all that property information already existed.
“By sourcing the addresses directly from the LLPG, Cardiff can now enjoy tremendous gains in efficiency though BS7666 standardisation, the avoidance of double entry and the ability to be 100% certain of the accuracy of the address data used.”
Following on from the reasoning behind Symphony PMS, the guests were treated to a full demonstration of the system’s wide and varying functionality. They were shown how it is capable of the full management of a property portfolio including social housing, schools, commercial assets, investment property, leisure centres, industrial estates and parks – it was even shown to be capable of managing farms.
Complete management of all the sales, acquisitions, maintenance and legalities involved in property and asset management were shown and how all the management features are intuitively accessible using a simple graphical user interface. Feedback indicated that the audience were especially impressed by the way that Symphony PMS can link into any mapping engine making the entire property portfolio visually accessible, utilising either points or polygons.
Phil Gee concluded by saying, “Cardiff Council had huge specifications to go alongside their huge property portfolio, so Symphony PMS is an all encompassing system designed to meet all those requirements. With its official launch, we look forward to rolling it out to the wider market.”
To find out more visit www.aligned-
