Now Storage runs 19 sites across southeast England, the West Midlands, and Wales with nearly 4,000 customers and over 80% occupancy. They switched to Stora to connect HubSpot, access control, and payments in one system, eliminating duplicate data entry and manual spreadsheet revenue management. The API-first approach and responsive support from Brian and Steve made the difference.
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So tell us about Knight Storage.
Yeah, so we are a multi-site operation. We run 19 sites across the southeast of England, West Midlands, and Wales with a mixture of containers and indoor sites. We have got just under 4,000 customers, about 380,000 square foot, with our current occupancy sitting just over 80%. So we first engaged with Stora before it existed. We met Gavin Shields, who came and saw us 6 years ago. And yeah, it's taken us a while to sort of get over the line, but you know, here we are. I'm really pleased to be.
So when did you first speak to Stora?
Yeah, well, I spoke to you, Gavin Shields, in, as you reminded me earlier, 6 years ago. You did a really interesting post on LinkedIn about payments and about technology and about some of those sort of challenges you'd faced in setting up a storage business. And it, you know, it got us really interested in I think we arranged for you to come over to our head office in Ross-on-Wye, and we had a great chat. And then very soon after that, you launched Stora off the back of all your endeavors. So yeah, that was 6 years ago.
Before Stora even existed.
Before Stora even existed, yeah.
So, as the business has grown and scaled over the past, especially over the past 4 or 5 years, you're obviously looking at software. What was it you were looking for when you took a look around?
I think from right at the beginning of starting the business, we wanted to have a very lean operational business, and as time's gone on, we've wanted just to engage with things in our tech stack that are going to help us to scale. And then probably our frustrations would, would have been about getting things to link and, and talking to each other. And so that's what led us to Stora, really. We felt it was a great fit within with all of the other technology that we were using for CRM and access control and payments. And yeah, I think ultimately that's our main decision for engaging and going with Stora as a product.
So connecting in with third-party tools that are already kind of core part of your business.
Yeah.
Because you already have a really tight sales process in place here.
Yeah.
With a third part, with a CRM tool.
Yeah.
So the API, I think, was a key part of— you're one of the first ones probably to be using the API in sort of in-depth to connect up a CRM system.
I think, yeah, we see the real value in having, you know, a sales-led business is embracing that principle of remote management, that having a centralized sales team is really important. So they're working out of HubSpot, and what we needed was an API-ready product that could link into that seamlessly. Yeah. So that we, you know, we're making real efficiencies on staff training and actually customers just— sorry, staff members just looking in one place for information. Yeah. And, you know, you get sometimes you get very used to sort of the sort of sticky plaster nature of the way that you operate and think, well, it sort of does work, but we wanted just to always, you know, go for the best-in-class system. Yeah. You know, which is you know, I think what we've achieved.
So we're like, we're still, we're in the onboarding phase at the moment on the Stora. What are some of the things that you're looking forward to changing once that's finished?
Yeah, well, I think we, as I mentioned, we, you sort of get used to the way you operate, and we've definitely made some compromises in the past. So things that we're really looking forward to engaging with would be your customer portal, online booking system to get our website working for us 24 hours a day. And we see that as a real trend going forward, that's how customers are going to want to engage with us.
So whenever we've been chatting over the past year or so, the API has come up a lot. What was it about the API that has sort of unlocked the kind of the move to Stora?
Yeah, the API is crucial for linking everything within our ecosystem. And stopping that duplication of effort and making sure that all the data is correct. And it's, I think it's that manual element of uploading things. So previously that we had, we were duplicating our effort and, you know, that leads to errors and ultimately if you can sort of just, you know, limit that human element of data inputting then, you know, it's going to work a lot better for us. So, yeah, save staff time to work on what's important, and, you know, ultimately that's having the time to talk, to engage with our customers, and not tapping away at a keyboard constantly. So, yeah, yeah, I think we, we, we did a really in-depth process of comparing sort of all of our options of, of a PMS system, even looking at things that weren't even self-storage products, but ultimately, you know, I think the moment came where we realised that this pretty much ticked every box that we wanted and we'd be silly not to go with Stora.
So my name's Holly, I've worked with Now Storage for coming up 3 years now. I work within the head office as business support coordinator, so I'm leading this project into Stora Our main pain points over the years have been duplicate entry, which does cause errors when having to cross-reference two systems. We've been battling with weekly and monthly audits to make sure that all of our data is accurate, so we needed something that could really manage that for us.
Okay, okay, so you wanted something to help you with managing data? Yes, so a system that would could work inside the process you have in the business.
Yeah.
And kind of do it efficiently. Would that be right?
Yeah. So the API is going to be a great thing for us because it does unlock us being able to integrate all of our systems into one. So we don't have to worry about data being inaccurate. We won't have to carry out the weekly and monthly audits and save ourselves plenty of time to be able to focus on the customer journey. So I'm really looking forward to using the revenue management feature. It's been a part of my role, particularly with price increases. We've spoken about this before as well, having to use a spreadsheet manually, send all of the emails, being able to do that at the click of a button. The customer gets an email automatically, the price increases applied automatically. I'm really, really excited about that feature in particular.
And we're sort of in the middle of onboarding, and a lot of operators are rightly worried about onboarding and scared of the, I suppose, the challenges that often come up. You know, people have changed software in the past and often had a bad experience, and we do a lot of work and try and make this as smooth a process as possible. How have you found How has the onboarding so far?
So the onboarding process has been really smooth so far. We have not encountered any issues. Brian and Steve were always there to answer any questions for us as part of the onboarding team. We're very confident in using Stora on an ongoing basis because I feel a big part of switching systems is the team behind everything as well. Especially with Stora being built from an operator's point of view, it gives us confidence that it is going to be a reliable and scalable system.
So what made Stora stand out?
I think, you know, people ultimately buy from people, and all of our interactions with everyone at Stora has been fantastic, and we want to build a relationship with someone going forward, and we've got great vibes from you guys.
