One platform for property, site and aftercare

Project Overview

Who is Citynest?

Citynest is a Flemish real estate company that buys, renovates, rents out and sells properties. It handles the whole journey: from the purchase agreement, through the build, to aftercare with the client.

For years, the business ran on Excel, Dropbox and WhatsApp. That worked, until it didn't. A lot of knowledge lived in the heads of a few people, and the Excel planning had hit its limits.

The challenge

"How do we digitize our site follow-up, aftercare and file management without ending up in a long, expensive custom-build project?"

There was explicitly no appetite for endless custom development. The question was: which piece do we fix first, with what software, and what does it cost.

Project Delivery

The approach

We worked in sprints of a few weeks each. Every sprint ended with a review: a demo, a status check on planning, a status check on budget, and setting the next sprint together.

1 · A.I. Opportunity Mapping

We started with an A.I. Opportunity Mapping. Together with the team, we mapped out every process and plotted it on value versus complexity. That made it clear what was a quick win and what was a strategic initiative.

Three processes rose to the top: following up on the purchase agreement, site follow-up, and after-sales service.

2 · Business Value workshop

In a full-day workshop on-site, we laid the groundwork. The team first formulated the goal themselves:

"A smart, intuitive platform that supports the full lifecycle of Citynest's real estate projects, from planning through site follow-up to aftercare, with maximum automation and minimal manual work."

We then mapped out the three processes step by step and translated the team's wishes into user stories with an estimate for each piece.

The most important outcome was the architecture choice. We laid three scenarios side by side: keep going with separate tools, move to a full enterprise suite, or take a structured middle path. The enterprise option fell away — too much functionality, too complex for the current setup, and an implementation cost of 60,000 to 100,000 euros.

The advice was a combination: PlanRadar for fieldwork on-site, and Microsoft Power Platform with M365 for intake, business logic, integrations and reporting. The two complement each other, without duplicate work or data silos.

The workshop also produced a five-step roadmap, with a timeline and a budget per step. So Citynest knew, before a single line of code was written, what was coming, in what order, and what it would cost.

3 · Nestera, the platform

Nestera is Citynest's platform. It runs on Microsoft Dataverse and brings property, project, site and complaint files together in one place.

• A digital filing cabinet. Create a property in Nestera, and the right SharePoint folder is created and linked automatically. From the file, you immediately see every document that belongs with it. A migration tool moves the existing Dropbox content over with the right access rights.
• Connection to PlanRadar. Site managers work in PlanRadar with photos, checklists and status updates. Through the API, that flows straight into the central file, without retyping anything.
• Connection to Outlook. Emails about a property attach to the right file instead of sitting in one big inbox.
• Automation with Power Automate. The engine under the hood: creating folders, API calls, processing forms and migrating data.
• Copilot on top of the data. Because everything is structured in one place, you can just ask: "Give me the EPC certificate for the property at Stationsstraat 12."
• Reporting through Power BI and mini dashboards inside the platform itself.

Under the hood, we set up a solid technical foundation: separate environments for development, testing and production, version control in Azure DevOps, role-based access through Entra, and daily backups.

Results

Citynest started out with Excel, Dropbox and WhatsApp, and a lot of knowledge that lived in people's heads. Today, property, project, site and complaint files sit together in Nestera, with the documents in the right SharePoint folder, the site work from PlanRadar in the same file, and the emails attached instead of sitting in one big inbox.

Just as important is what didn't happen. The enterprise suite with its 60,000 to 100,000 euro implementation cost fell away during the Business Value workshop, not halfway through a build. What did come next was laid out on a five-step roadmap with a budget per step, set before a single line of code was written.

Want to bring your real estate operations together without ending up in an endless custom-build project? Get in touch with Flowkify.