“I save over a third of my time using Kato Pro”

West End Leasing Experts 

BDG Sparkes Porter is a Central London office leasing agency founded in 1994. For almost 30 years the partnership has been providing advice across the London market and are recognised as one of the go to Mayfair office experts. About 60% of their work consists of  disposal instructions on behalf of landlords, ranging from high net worth individuals to London estates.

With six fee earners, a consultant, a graduate and a business development manager they are a well established and very active firm in the London market. Last year one of their highlighted transactions was a 6,600 sq ft acquisition at One Kingsway on behalf of Hamlins, a London based law firm and another was the purchase of Whitfield Studios from Aviva, a 20,000 sq ft HQ office building on behalf of Virgin. 

‍

The Old Workflow & Embracing Modern Technology

BDG had never invested in technology systems; they typically used Word, Excel and Powerpoint for day-to-day agency tasks. Excel for their interest schedules, Word to draft particulars and powerpoint for competition schedules. 

These tasks started having an impact on efficiency. Will Ewing, an Associate Partner, says “it was these small tasks that started taking up huge amounts of our time. Drafting marketing details was tedious and time consuming. One of the biggest headaches for us was updating our website - we were carving out an afternoon a week to keep on top of it. We also occasionally outsourced reports to be professionally formatted - this cost up to £800 a time!”

Having trialled other various technology platforms in the past, BDG had heard about Kato Pro from some friendly competitors and were keen to see if we could provide solutions to some of these challenges. Just four weeks post signing the contract, they were up and running with no disruption to the existing business. Will says  “Even the older generation of agents in our office got to grips with it quickly.”

This dispelled any prior concerns that it would become another underused software system with an onerous and complicated onboarding process. The reality was just 2 hours of training and approval of their design outputs with a helpful, responsive customer team.

One Source of Truth & Impact Activity 

“Kato Pro is open on my computer all day”

Right from the outset, Kato Pro began to save the team time. The partners are hands-on with the platform using it to gain live updates on business activity. Will says: “We use it for everything. It’s always there. Marketing details, interest schedules, making reports quickly - it sits at the centre of a lot of our leasing activity.” Will goes on to explain that he spends his new found time focusing on impactful activity - such as pitching for new business.

One of the team’s favourite features is the ability to search the Agent Society marketplace quickly and send out an availability report to prospective occupiers - “our graduate actually won a 3,000 sq ft acquisition simply due to the speed we turned around a report using Kato Pro.” - It is giving them a clear advantage in the market, as well as saving valuable time.

James Harrison, Partner at BDG, says “as a smaller agency firm, the internal management of client data is a critical source of repeat work. The Transaction Portal provides a highly beneficial tracker for our client's lease events allowing us to better manage our clients data, develop relationships and win repeat business”

“If your agency is doing more than 10 deals a year, you need Kato Pro”

BDG Sparkes Porter save up to 13 hours per week; time they use to win more business. Click here to find out more about Kato Pro and see how much time your agency could be saving...