Blog / Winning Business
Staying at the forefront of digital change
With Alister Maple-Brown - CEO Rockend
Australia has a proud history of innovation and development. An Australian created the iconic Hills Hoist, Australian scientists working at the CSIRO created WiFi and another group of Aussies created Kernel, the widely used anti-hacking software. Following in the footsteps of those fine innovators, Rockend has led the charge for change and has been providing transformative digital solutions for the Australian real estate industry for over 35 years.
Rockend works in the same space as the global technology players Google and Microsoft and employs 150 of some of the most outstanding software developers in Australia and New Zealand. The company is renowned for its innovative, reliable and easy to use property management, strata management, document management and real estate trust accounting software solutions. In 2012, Rockend launched Australia's first true cloud based, ground breaking property management solution, PropertyTree.
In a world being turned upside down with digital disruption, Rockend is determined to continue to bring the best of global digital change to the real estate industry in Australia. The company is very conscious of how imperative it is for them to stay ahead of the pack so they can share it with the rest of Australia. With that in mind, the company recently moved to a purpose built facility in Sydney.
The dynamic CEO of Rockend, Alister Maple-Brown explains, “We're a business that works with people in the property industry and technology, so we're a mixture of both those two slants. Certainly, in the technology scope, we're competing for resources to help us build our product. The same companies that we compete with are the Googles and Microsofts of the world. We know that they have amazing facilities that are open, fresh, fun. For us to be able to attract the talent we need, both today and in the future, we've got to compete with those bigger businesses.
One of those ways is to create an environment that is as similar as we can get to those larger corporations.”
The company therefore recently made a significant investment in creating what Alister characterises as a ‘bright, open, fresh environment’. It’s an extraordinary, inspiring, light filled creative space that encourages the team to innovate and collaborate. Alister explains, “We wanted that for our team, but also for our customers coming to visit us. One of the things that we've done is we've got a large, open space which is an eating area or a lounge area and a kitchen area. We've made that open to anyone that visits our business, whether they're customers, families or friends. We wanted to make it very open. We also put a lot of glass around so that people can look through and see that we actually are real people doing real work, and seeing what's going on as opposed to behind closed doors. We wanted to create transparency.”
Like many progressive leaders, Alister is also a firm believer in being agile. He says, “I'm a firm believer as humans we're not designed to be sitting down. More than a third of our desks are sit-standers across the company, and that allows people to stand and work or sit and work or talk to someone as if they're standing at a desk. The notion of agile has grown up and become popular in the software development space. It means, ‘Let's stand up, let's talk about what we did yesterday, what we're doing today, what's blocking us from achieving our goal right here, right now, and sharing information in a really quick way’. It applies to any part of the business. If you're standing up, I think everyone knows that you're not going to be there for long, and that's part of the process. It can really apply to all parts of the business and I see that here at Rockend more and more. In different areas of the business and different groups, they're using that concept more and more.”
Alister believes that physical environment impacts the quality and output of the working environment as well. He says, “I think when you put a lot of small things together in a physical space, it adds up and it makes for an environment that's collaborative and the people fundamentally want to come through because we also do a lot of private work. If you know you're going somewhere that's a fun place and an open place and a transparent place to be working, it is then probably a little bit easier to go to. That was some of the thinking behind what we've created and I think we can always tweak it and improve it and we will be doing that in an ongoing way.”
In terms of the future, Alister is excited about how Rockend will help take our industry and the property industry to a new way of operating. He wants Rockend to utilise technology and communication tools to allow the entities involved in the property market - the principals, property managers, bookkeepers, sales people, and all of their clients - to engage effectively. Alister asks, “How do you get them to communicate more effectively and more efficiently? I think that's where we're going with our next generation of tools. Where that will take the industry is very exciting and the efficiency and the benefits I believe across all entities will be really quite tangible. These are some of the things that excite me and keep me up at night, wanting to get on with it and get busy.”
It’s a big, scary world at the moment. A recent report from PWC claimed that digital is disrupting everything and it is perhaps the most significant mega trend in the twenty first century. In this new world, Rockend is an innovative force, helping the industry to survive and benefit from the wave of digital disruption.
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