When Code Meets Counsel

How ACIT and Anthony Harper created a unique software for New Zealand’s unique retirement village laws.

The legal landscape governing New Zealand’s booming retirement village sector is notoriously intricate. When it comes to buying and selling, things are different to the standard processes you might associate with property conveyancing. Settlements revolve not around property titles, but the Occupation Right Agreement (ORA), a unique legal instrument governed by the rigorous compliance requirements of the Retirement Villages Act 2003.

It’s an area requiring specialist knowledge and attention to detail, and given the complexities, it’s an area where the right tools can improve accuracy and add efficiency to make the process smoother for everyone involved.

Thanks to some visionary thinking from Anthony Harper, and technical mastery by ACIT’s software solutions team, that process is considerably easier through the creation of Villageinfonet (VIN), a specialised platform for the entire journey. 

Turning sector knowledge into practical solutions

Anthony Harper is recognised for its specialist retirement village law practice in New Zealand. With a history in the field spanning over three decades, the firm provides expert counsel to more than half of New Zealand’s retirement villages and associated aged care facilities. This depth of expertise provides the firm with an unrivalled understanding of the specific challenges in conveyancing and regulatory risk, and the practical challenges of day-to-day operations for the retirement sector.

It was that experience and understanding that drove them to create a software solution to support the ORA settlements process.

When they couldn’t find a solution, they set out to make one, which is where ACIT helped by providing the essential technical scaffolding. With experience in developing software for logistics and the healthcare sectors amongst others, ACIT understood how to design robust, scalable, and user-friendly systems.

What that solution has become is now the benchmark tool for managing the ORA process, with a suite of complementary functions to help in every step of the process. VIN is now a market leader, allowing people to simultaneously have essential data on hand, and access to the team of legal experts at Anthony Harper where needed.

From Microsoft Access to enterprise-grade SQL

VIN was first launched over 20 years ago as a single Microsoft Access database. As demand grew, so did the number of add-ons and associated complexity.  ACIT’s team have evolved with the shifts in programming standards, and the current VIN platform features some best-in-class examples of what can be achieved.

Anneliese Allen of ACIT remembers some of the challenges in the process, and the evolutions of VIN. Initially, Microsoft Access was best suited to the project and over time, multiple databases were developed. Eventually the scale of these dictated a need to shift to something centralised so that these siloed databases could be collated and combined onto one enterprise level data storage platform, which is where the move to Microsoft SQL happened.

The shift to Microsoft SQL unified the existing VIN backend, with scope for future scaling, while also delivering the security expected with such privileged data. Merging databases has a degree of complication, and thorough, careful work in the move was an essential part of the process for the ACIT team.

The move to SQL also created the opportunity to incorporate new functionality, enabling the VIN platform to deliver even more for the end user, be that SSRS reporting to allow paginated exports or, as user trends changed, a front end for web-based access achievable through Bootstrap. Web-based solutions open up more flexibility for client access, while extra care is given to security and protecting the backend data from intrusion. Introducing 2FA authentication with the transition helped keep everything safe at an organisational level.

Onshore hosting here in NZ adds another layer of security and resilience to ensure uptime and speeds for user access are optimal.

Designed around users and real-world workflows

The relationship and involvement from Anthony Harper on the design and UX ensured the look and feel works for their brand, and delivers a seamlessly integrated customer experience. Developing bespoke software is a collaborative journey, understanding industry demands and then reconciling that with what is technically possible.

Today, logging into VIN gives you access to real-time settlement details with comprehensive resident records that are searchable and secure. To help with stakeholder management it also allows for automated email notifications for key process milestones, and flexible reporting that can be customised to suit different client needs and internal processes.

Users find it intuitive and easy to follow, which is a fair measure of success given that the well-designed UX sits over the complexities of both the law and the coding.

A long-term technology partnership with ACIT

Building a system that works the way the industry works has been a collaborative process, and the relationship between the people at both ACIT and Anthony Harper are a testament to that. The long-standing relationship has seen the teams on both sides develop an understanding of the demands of each other’s industries, and finding a common language that draws on both cases and code.

Jenny Baldwin, Partner at Anthony Harper, highlights the firm’s longstanding relationship with ACIT: “Our relationship with ACIT stretches back many years and is testament to the high-quality services and support they provide. We particularly appreciate the fact that ACIT understand in-depth our business and the important considerations for the transactions we process through VIN. The support we receive in adapting to new technologies and developing our product into a saleable SaaS product has been second to none.”

Looking ahead, both Anthony Harper and ACIT are working towards integrations with other third-party systems, adding more value to the user through CRM and day to day village management software, while highly aware of the implications around security and data protection – it’s an aspect where the benefits must be carefully evaluated against the risks. And you can be assured any new features will be as smooth and secure.