Background
Bernard Gordon & Company is a London-based commercial property agency founded in 1993, specialising in education, SEN/SEND, religious, and community-use properties. Three decades in the market, a loyal client base, a team of five.
Despite that track record, the business ran almost entirely on manual processes. Contacts lived in Mailchimp. Properties were tracked informally. Marketing, deal flow, follow-up, and compliance checks were all person-dependent and largely invisible to anyone who wasn't doing them.
When Ben Wallis, a Director at BG&Co, came to me, the brief was straightforward: make the business easier to run. The underlying problem was bigger. There was no operational backbone. Everything depended on individuals knowing what they knew.
What I found
The diagnostic phase confirmed seven distinct issues:
- No CRM. Mailchimp was being used as a substitute operating system for 4,000+ contacts, with no deal tracking, no relationship structure, and no workflow logic.
- No end-to-end visibility. The instruction-to-deal workflow (instruction, teaser, enquiry, viewing, offer, completion) was entirely implicit. No single view of where anything stood.
- Weak enquiry handling. No formal record of who received what, who responded, or what follow-up was needed. A likely source of missed opportunities.
- Manual marketing collateral. Teasers and brochures created by hand each time, passed between team members and an external designer. Slow, inconsistent, and unscalable.
- Fragmented contact data. Contacts split across multiple Mailchimp audiences with inconsistent segmentation, making targeted marketing difficult.
- No AML system. Anti-money laundering checks done per instruction with no tracking, no audit trail, and no automated chasing. A compliance risk and a time burden.
- Founder-led execution. Key tasks depended on Ben's personal oversight. No system for anyone else to see what was happening or pick things up.
The build
The engagement ran across two parallel tracks: a custom CRM build, and a broader operational restructuring covering contact data, compliance, and workflow design.
Custom CRM
Off-the-shelf tools were evaluated first. Two options specific to the property sector (Smiths CRM, Kato) were assessed and ruled out. Neither mapped to the education property workflow or how the team actually operated. The decision was to build from scratch.
A React/Supabase web application was designed and built, giving the business a purpose-built operating system for their specific workflow. Core capabilities included:
- Property records with full deal detail, instruction tracking, and pipeline view
- Contact management with sector segmentation
- Instruction-to-deal workflow with stage tracking and deal value visibility
- Enquiry management with follow-up reminders and activity logging
- Requirements database matching buyer and tenant requirements to available properties
- AI-assisted teaser drafting: first drafts of property narratives and key features, which the team reviews, edits, and signs off
- Mailchimp integration: the CRM prepares teaser drafts, Mailchimp controls the send
- Inbound enquiry capture from the BG&Co website, auto-linked to property records
- Daily digest email: the team starts each day with a clear view of upcoming deadlines
AML compliance module
A full compliance module was built into the CRM, replacing a manual spreadsheet and email-chasing process:
- AML cases initiated per property instruction, with applicant records
- Public upload portal: applicants receive a unique link and upload ID directly
- Automated reminder emails if documents are not submitted within set timeframes
- Global AML dashboard showing case status across all active instructions
Operational restructuring
In parallel with the build, several structural issues were addressed directly:
- Ten separate Mailchimp audiences consolidated into one unified list with tag-based segmentation. The full 4,000+ contact base was reviewed, cleaned, and retagged.
- The full instruction-to-deal workflow was mapped and codified into the CRM structure.
- A CSV-based import process migrated clean contact data into the CRM, including subscription status, sector tags, and property interests.
Delivery
The build ran as a series of focused, versioned sprints. Each sprint was scoped, built, reviewed, and deployed in sequence. By handover, 32 sprints had been completed.
Ben and Sophie were involved throughout. Ben, a Director at BG&Co, shaped field structure, workflow logic, and AML business rules in a product review session early in the build. Sophie, the primary day-to-day user at BG&Co, was involved as a key stakeholder rather than treated as someone who would simply receive the finished system. Her ability to use the system confidently was a delivery requirement, not an afterthought.
The system went live incrementally. Each stage was smoke-tested before it was considered complete.
Outcomes
The CRM is live and in active daily use. The team now has:
- A single system covering properties, contacts, deals, enquiries, viewings, AML, and marketing
- Full visibility of the instruction-to-deal workflow for the first time
- An AML compliance process with no spreadsheets and no manual email chasing
- A clean, unified contact database replacing a fragmented multi-audience Mailchimp setup
- AI drafting the first version of teasers, so the team reviews and edits rather than writing from scratch
- Inbound enquiries from the website automatically captured and linked to the right property
- A daily digest so the team starts each day knowing exactly what needs attention
In Ben’s words
"We'd been running the business on spreadsheets and Mailchimp for years. It worked until it didn't. What I needed was someone who'd understand how we actually operate and fix it properly, not just point us at another tool. Alex got under the hood quickly, decided a custom build was the right call, and delivered exactly that. The compliance process used to take hours: chasing documents, tracking who'd submitted what, doing it all manually. Now it's automated. Everything's in one place and the team just gets on with it. I'd recommend him without hesitation."
Ben WallisDirector, Bernard Gordon & Company
Technology stack
The tools used in this build.
| Frontend | React, Tailwind CSS, shadcn/ui |
|---|---|
| Backend / DB | Supabase (Postgres, RLS, Edge Functions, Storage) |
| AI | AI-assisted drafting: property narratives, key features and teaser copy (human review and sign-off) |
| Email (marketing) | Mailchimp: retained as sending layer; CRM prepares drafts only |
| Email (transactional) | Resend: AML requests, reminders, daily digest |
| Automation | Make.com: email forwarding to CRM, WordPress form capture |