AHAM Vastgoed

On the wall behind Tim van Schijndel is a picture of J.H.F. Schopman, the founder of AHAM Vastgoed. “Jo Schopman was a special person”, says Tim. “As a pastry chef at the beginning of the 20th Century, he inherited a few modest properties in Amsterdam. In 1906 he founded our company. He was a man with a generous, social heart. AHAM is still a 100% subsidiary of Sint Antonius Stichting, a foundation he set up to fund charities. Today, all profits go towards development aid. Despite having a balance sheet worth EUR 900 million, you might say we’re the Robin Hood of the real estate world.”

A love of people and buildings

Tim has a strong track record in the world of real estate, too. “I love buildings and people, and feel strongly about giving back to society. In that sense, the company’s philosophy fits me like a glove.” He has a strong affinity with the business side as well: “We don’t need people who see real estate as a purely financial product. Embracing the philosophy is essential. We also strive to remain small, personal and flexible. That’s why we only have 35 people in total. Our aim is to keep the core expertise in-house and procure the rest.”

The challenge

AHAM Vastgoed is growing rapidly and has a portfolio of existing and new properties. Tim explains that the agency had a strong need for a package that would better support its business processes: “We own all sorts of real estate: from retail premises to car parks, homes and offices. We were looking for a package that could support our business processes properly, as our existing one was limited. The data was distributed across various databases (space and finances), which wasn’t what we wanted. We wanted to only have to enter data once in order to prevent errors.

In addition, we were looking for a solution that would enable us to manage asset and property management from a single environment. A system that offers all this in a single package wasn’t available on the market. As a result, we started looking for a party who would be able to create this together with us.”

The solution

Tim explains how he went about his search: “Most medium-sized and large real estate entities are either owners or managers. We are both. With this in mind, we want to be able to use our own data analyses where possible to steer the company. Our aim is to rely on a broad range of cross-sections when it comes to our properties and our activities. This package provides the space to do this more quickly and simply and on a larger scale. Another important box to tick was having the possibility to set up the tax accounts properly.”

Sharpening the focus

“In short, there were virtually no providers who could offer this. The market is very small. We realised the question we asked wasn’t a simple one, and that meant we had to sharpen our focus. With the help of a consultancy firm, we developed customer cases from start to finish, so package suppliers would have a better understanding of what we were aiming for. We also wanted to work with a large, reliable party with proven technology and a solution based on SAP.”

Ctac is head and shoulders above the rest

In the end, three parties were considered as providers. As Tim explains, “Of the three, two were Microsoft partners. Ctac understood our request best. They stood out from the others when it came to developing the customer case.

It wasn’t that the package could do everything at that time – that was not our expectation – but Ctac was very clear from the outset about what the package could and could not do. The good references also helped.”

A mutual investment

“When you develop something together, you also need to invest together”, states Tim. “That can be a tricky proposition. After all, how far do you go as a supplier?” Tim laughs and adds: “We’re pretty headstrong, too, come to think of it. Sometimes you have good discussions with each other and sometimes you have very practical points that need to change, such as whether a contractor should be able to cancel a job themselves or not. What I didn’t want, for example, was to have parts that were exclusively intended for corporations and that we couldn’t do anything with. We didn’t want to be presented with input fields, let alone actually fill them in. Thankfully, it all worked out well.”

The impact

Tim: “I’m extremely pleased with the result. Considering the visuals first, it looks more inviting than all the other packages we saw. There’s less paper, less handling and less invoicing, so everything runs much more smoothly. Our work processes are supported much more effectively on a digital level.”

What do you see when you look back to the beginning?

“The final stage is to look back to our expectations at the beginning. We wanted a better interface, more stability and everything in one database in order to serve our work processes. Our experience with it up to now has only been brief, but I believe it will go above and beyond what we’ve asked for!”

Why would you recommend Ctac Fit4RE to others?

“Because of why we chose it: we wanted a better interface, more stability and everything in one database in order to serve our work processes. And that’s what we got. In addition, new customers will benefit from the improvements that we, as a medium-sized player in the real estate sector with a diverse portfolio, have made to it – not least in a fiscal and financial sense. When I look back to what was available on the market compared to where we are now, it’s clear that the package we ended up with is unique. It’s also very interesting from a price point of view. It may not be the cheapest in implementation, but has the most options and easily manageable licensing costs by far.”