At the beginning of the year, as part of our Changemakers feature, BayBuzz interviewed Tom Wallace, founder and chief executive of Re-leased, a global property management software company he founded in 2012.
The firm provides an integrated software package, cloud-based, highly-automated that helps those managing commercial and residential properties with all aspects of their business – from scheduling maintenance to collecting rents.
Based in Ahuriri, Re-Leased employs about 30 in HB (was aiming toward 50 by year’s end) out of a worldwide team of 95, with offices in London, New York, Melbourne and Auckland servicing 1000+ customers worldwide, generating nearly 80% of its revenue overseas. Tom said at the time, Hawke’s Bay will always be “our long-term technical centre to support our growth”.
BayBuzz’s Sarah Thornton caught up with Tom, to see how business is faring amidst the Covid crisis.
BB: Business was flying high and fast for you pre-Covid – has that changed?
TW: No that has not changed. We have to be conservative with our strategy given the economic uncertainty that Covid has created, but we have continued to grow quickly as Covid has further accelerated the shift towards cloud software.
BB: How has Covid impacted your business?
TW: We initially reduced our expenses and stopped hiring for new roles for a period. While new sales slowed for the first two months of Covid due to the economic uncertainty, but we have seen them pick back up strongly as companies realise they need to be on modern, cloud-based technology so they can securely run their businesses in this new world.
BB: What is the short- to medium-term future looking like for you?
COVID has significantly accelerated existing global trends. For us, that means the commercial property industry is looking to invest in modern technology such as Re-Leased.
We are also seeing an increase in demand for data as the industry looks to understand how their business is performing against their peers in this rapidly changing environment. We have recently launched a new property intelligence product called CREDIA which makes this possible for customers.
We expect to continue to grow quickly as we accelerate out of the COVID disruption.