Sanderson Weatherall

Owned and run by a group of commercial property experts, Sanderson Weatherall is a property consultancy service for owners, occupiers, investors, developers and financial advisors of property and associated assets. With a history in property consultancy dating back to 1833, they’ve adapted and evolved to be one of the leading firms in the industry.

Operating from offices in Birmingham, Bristol, Exeter, Leeds, London, Manchester, Newcastle, Teesside and York they combine their knowledge and skills to provide complete property advice; ultimately making you and your business more successful.

Simon Elliot, Head of Public Sector Consultancy, and Ben Costigan, IT Manager, told Mail Manager that Sanderson Weatherall was seeking software that allowed them to properly file important correspondence and information.

One of the main challenges they had was the amount of money being spent on using offsite storage, and some internal resistance to change. Finding and accessing information was another issue generated by keeping paper records. Early attempts to store emails in project folders was problematic as folders contained many emails with the same name which made it hard to track down specific information. The alternative was to create project-specific folders within Outlook.

Simon explained: “I had to create different folders in Outlook and manage everything by myself on different projects and clients. This took a lot of time for me, as well as other employees that had to go through the same process. It also meant that other staff could not access folders on my Outlook and when multiple staff worked on projects, there was no way to see the collaborative effort electronically.”

To resolve these challenges, a former employee decided to adopt Mail Manager and Simon was one of the pioneers in implementing the solution which, for him, was a great addition. He shared: “I didn’t expect that I would be the one conducting training inside the company, but the system was so easy to use and easy to explain that I ended up doing it myself.”

He also said that his department uses Mail Manager and a key improvement since implementation has been how much easier it is to audit everything related to a specific project or client. In addition, day to day admin activities are easier and faster. For that reason, they often recommend the software to clients, especially clients that they know are struggling with email management.

Simon added: “It’s easier to find information when digitalised. Especially when Mail Manager has a much better and easier search function, taking it to another level compared to Outlook search functions. If we didn’t have Mail Manager, we would lose time in administration other than core fee-earning project activities.”

He advised companies to try the software as it changes and improves business processes. From his perspective going digital is an important part of modernising and simplify outdated processes. He summarised: “Mail Manager is a great solution to move to a paperless environment. It’s convenient and easy to use and makes managing emails a lot easier. During the Covid 19 lockdown the ease of access to digital project records has really facilitated home working.”