Model (DLO) Workers

If you do the Twitter thing, follow me at @hotpixUK
or LinkedIn here http://uk.linkedin.com/in/tonysmiththathousingitguy

 

What a housing world we might have if it were filled with model workers? Perhaps a utopia for managers and residents/customers alike, particularly where repairs are involved.

We have gone through a transition where local authority housing departments have been RSVT’d to Housing Associations and many DLO’s, internal contractors, contract services dealing with housing maintenance have been discarded. Some which have retained their DLO could now be patting themselves on the back, saving 20% in VAT on most repairs. Many that have been through that process (or some that never did), have now got that back on the table for consideration and why not? Maybe even one day networks of peer RSL's could benefit from the VAT benefits, where facilities can be shared.

Technology is now available to come to the aid of the humble internal contractor. This helps to tackle areas that formed the often unfair stereotype of ‘Direct Works’. That image of a van of council workers eating breakfast toast on the corner of the estate, not appearing to be very productive. Many years ago I was on the receiving end of a plumbing foreigner from a ‘DLO’ operative. It took four attempts and given the choice, for many reasons, I would not choose to go down that road again!

IT and system assistance, to help them run on a commercial footing comes in a number of forms. The major ones are:

• Dedicated contractor modules (with varying degrees of integration to any main HMS or asset management system/module)
• Diagnosis and scripting tools (to determine SORs generally)
• Stock links to building supplier / impressed stock support
• Workforce scheduling
• Mobile working and location tracking

Of course, running your own internal contractor involves the management and operational overhead of these system costs. This needs to be carefully factored in to any estimates of costs, when setting up. One other benefit is often involvement of local residents in the enterprise, for example through trade and apprenticeship schemes. Very important in my opinion and something that to me seems to have only recently trickled down from the more savvy national contractors, such as Morrisons and the like. Possibly we are only just starting to hear about it.

There are a number of areas to be aware of when looking at the application of IT to an internal workforce. Suitability of the contractors module is one key area. In my opinion, probably twelve operatives or greater, makes use of a module worth considering. Ensure it is fit for purpose. Particularly look at how it handles multi-day and multi-visit jobs, particularly voids and planned work. Strange as it may seem, some solutions out there appear to struggle with these very common housing requirements.

In addition to servicing your own stock, if you have an efficient workforce, have you ambitions to do work for other RSL’s, homeowners or other organisations (eg NHS trusts) in your locality? If so, ensure your chosen solution can handle flexible costing, billing, reporting etc matching your prospective external customer requirements. To bolt this on later might be costly or impossible later, even in a system that works well just for your own housing stock. The main independent solutions in no particular order are Task Total from Consilium, Servitor from Civica, OpenContractor (ex-IBS) from Capita and Uniclass from ROCC.

Good proven (ask to see it) integration between systems will reduce admin costs and can then be expected to provide a unified view of property condition to asset teams and housing staff on the ground. This can also be used to make some diagnosis software work better too, obviously ask what capabilities are. Do not assume that scripting and diagnosis software can interrogate current repair or asset state of the property, see this in practice to your satisfaction.

The other hot potato these days is ‘Scheduling’. This requires some looking outside the jacket. I have met many DLO managers, mainly large stocky chaps, who generally for me have fallen into two distinct camps; lovers of it and haters of it. The former have used it before and seen or perceived benefits. They are generally evangelists in terms of getting scheduling into the internal workforce, to drive efficiency. Few would dispute that scheduling software can reduce travel time and increase efficiencies.

While it is quite true that most scheduling systems can be easily installed in six to eight weeks, integrating and configuring them properly to your environment takes much, much longer. In some cases I have heard stories of between 18-24 months to tune for best efficiency. When depot managers join an organisation and champion scheduling as a silver bullet, they can have short memories of the final benefits, rather than the long period of growing pains to get scheduling embedded and accepted by the workforce. So it is vital to be realistic, your organisation will not be receiving maximum ROI from a basic shell of a scheduler.

The final elephant in the room is also culture. How closely tied or insulated the internal contractor team is from the main housing functions and how well developed processes are within it, will often determine if IT improvements will bring maximum benefits. I would suggest that thorough mapping and analysis of current (paper/manual) procedures, precedes IT selection and implementation.

Importantly, these days, it is a buyers market and most suppliers have woken up to that. Ensure you negotiate the best contract with your preferred supplier, keeping re-occurring costs as low as practical, reducing internal contractor overheads, still further.

Read on to banning internal email, less Outlook, more Yammer

http://tonysmiththathousingitguy.blogspot.com/2012/11/yammer-be-there-banning-internal-email.html

Model Workers are not a new thing, one of my favourite bands explored it in early 1980. Why not click here and check it out.


(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk

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Social Media Transmission

Wow it seems the world and his partner are getting on Facebook, Blogger,Twitter, telling us where they are sitting, what they are eating and what they think about it. The interesting, witty, trivial and generally the controversial might well get re-tweeted. No wonder Winston Churchill’s saying, “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on” rings more true than ever today.

So what should RSL’s and housing organisations be doing about SM and what’s the approach to make it work best?

It’s a given that organisations will have a website already with all the usual information presented in a corporate , but accessible fashion for residents and customers. Often these websites have a link to follow on Twitter and a RSS newsfeed. The example housing website I was looking at with Firefox had an error on the latter. I won’t tell you who, unless you contact me, but it illustrates that you need to be sure all this stuff works with the variety of browsers, desktop and mobile out there. (I bet you will be checking yours now wont you?).

It is important to get organised before your residents do. I have experience of one housing association which was upstaged by some resident’s blogs. These were setup for free, by ex-customers who had been through a perfectly completed eviction procedure, but wanted to broadcast their feelings. They quickly clocked up views, followers and prominence on web searches, such that in certain cases the blogs were easier to find than the official site.(Have you Googled your own organisation lately?)

This highlights a very important point. If SM is going to be utilised, a following/community needs to be built. You would be better doing it first, before dissatisfied customers do.

This of course does take resource and for once, it’s not much that’s needed from IT. The bad news though, is that someone will need to be designated to create/record content, such as service updates, bits of local news, events etc. It’s important to listen as well as broadcast too.

Maybe SM needs to show a milder face to the organisation, slightly more cuddly and approachable.  Thinking about what communities you service, maybe a number of geographic or sector channels of SM are needed, to reach everyone.

If criticisms or issues are highlighted, they must be tackled ASAP. Remember, the world is watching (or reading!). Such as in this example below, showing a clear attempt to follow up the issue (Bravo!):

Twitter and Facebook are probably the current two to start with, setting targets for follower numbers, to ensure effectiveness. Much like diversity information it would be tremendously useful to collect what their preferences are and how they change.  Will Google+ become what MySpace was? What kind of discussion do you want to create? About your service, their neighbourhood, social issues? Have a clear aim and try to set yardsticks internally in order to measure it.

Remember to try to focus it to the target community and post on a regular basis. Have something relevant to say at all times and being consistent is essential. It is likely that you will receive positive as well as negative feedback, ensure both are tackled equally and action is seen to be taken. In most cases, the issue or problem will be dealt with, off-line from Social Media. Avoid an on-line catfight at all costs.

Use posting guidelines internally. Decide too if staff are going to blog or tweet in a personal capacity or not, (All opinions are my own etc...). Any indecent, libellous,  or offensive content posted as external comments should of course be removed straight away. Common sense is certainly needed, we all know that the internet can be the wild west at times. 

While numbers of smartphones are increasing out there (some figures suggest more than PCs/Laptops are now being  purchased for browsing the web), are increasing, SM is not the silver bullet that will reach all residents. Use all channels to communicate, sometimes a note in a quarterly newsletter or on a poster, can have a far better effect than a weblink.  I have experienced this personally when setting up SM recently to re-open my local library.  Sharing content across a number of SM platforms can also be of great benefit. Hootsuite (http://hootsuite.com/ ) and other on-line apps are a godsend in this area and well worth looking at.

So, make SM your friend. Decide who you are doing it for; residents, staff, communities, spreading best practice and higher level ideas to your peers etc. Let your followers become your friends, get out and build something not out of bricks and mortar for a change!
Decide how you are going to transmit your messages by SM. Let the Playmobil men help you decide.


(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk

File Under: 360,1stTouch,4Js,Aareon,Academy,ActiveH,Alignment,ALMO,Anite,Apex,ArchHouse,Archouse,asbestos,Asprey e-state pro,Asset Management,Aurora,Average IT Costs,BO,BPR,Browser Applications,Business Objects,Business Process Review,Business social networking,Castle,CBL,Cedar Open Accounts,Change,Cheaper Housing IT,Chics,
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Are existing housing system suppliers holding back Systems Thinking?

There’s been lots of discussion and comment on John Seddon and his ‘Systems thinking’ approach to the way public sector service delivery can be improved. I am a big fan of that idea of looking at the whole process as a single ‘system’ and the primary focus on the customer, putting their needs first at all times.

The TPS (Toyota Production System) is a thing of beauty and having travelled extensively in Japan ( こんにちは日本のすべての私の読者に。 歓迎! ), that focus on continual improvement is evident wherever you travel. In fact in the Shinjuku district of Tokyo, the equivalent of Curry’s sell product designs that will not appear in the UK or elsewhere outside Japan, until they have been sufficiently refined and improved.That reminds me, I never did take that rice cooker back!

In the UK and particularly within housing, successive regimes have expanded the range of returns and statistics required of organisations. This has created abstract yardsticks that management and staff are working to, quite remote in some cases to the residents and customers the whole organisation is delivering to.  The amount of inspections, surveys, returns etc, all add waste to the system. IT modules tend to support all these areas and so can perpetuate the regime.

I think John Seddon regards HMS suppliers as helping perpetuate the regime, as they supply to the provided specification. Unfortunately that does include all the bloat, the top down command and control regime expects to be there. I have experience of private sector IT suppliers and our focus is the customer. It can only be like that, as without that concept in the spotlight we would not be in business.  Without the baggage described above, marks would be lost in tender sections and chances of reaching the demo stages are very slim. So I think suppliers are doomed to be branded with the regime at large. In England at least, it does appear that with the demise of the TSA, regulation at least there looks to as if it may be further watered down. Maybe not so for the rest of the UK.

That is not to say that suppliers Housing Management Systems are generally as rigid as the regime. They often wrongfully are. I have worked with at least some of the RSL’s that have taken on the recommendations of Vanguard and John Seddon’s System Thinking for housing repairs and managed it with the existing HMS.

It needs an alternative mindset when thinking about configuring the HMS and may well need some assistance from your IT team or suppliers helpdesk. You may need some small tweaks (one or more requests for change). For example, to the standard repair priorities of emergency, urgent and routine can usually be added a fourth ‘Agreed With Resident’.  This can be used in any trial in order to prove that appreciable improvements are being made. Possibly, too the original ‘prescribed’ priority can be determined, in order to show improvements.

Schedule of rates can also usually be watered down to the scope needed by use of a separate table. Possibly by reducing 2000+ NHF SORs to a few dozen general starting categories, that can then be the basis for empowered tradespersons to carry out the work to the customers satisfaction.

CRM and Workflow are two other areas that can be designed, configured and implemented by rote. As John describes, this can multiply waste, drive up transaction volume, customer frustration and dissatisfaction. CRM and workflow can be generally be configured to focus on outcomes fairly easily, where teams have been formed for the purpose.

I would welcome your comments and experiences on Systems Thinking in your organisation.

Read on to :Microsoft and other licensing, how dependent we are on these costs

Luckily Systems thinking didn't affect us too much in the 1980's.


(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk

File Under: 360,1stTouch,4Js,Aareon,Academy,ActiveH,Alignment,ALMO,Anite,Apex,ArchHouse,Archouse,asbestos,Asprey e-state pro,Asset Management,Aurora,Average IT Costs,BO,BPR,Browser Applications,Business Objects,Business Process Review,Business social networking,Castle,CBL,Cedar Open Accounts,Change,Cheaper Housing IT,Chics,
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Paper

You have to be pretty old to remember the first touting of ‘The Paperless Office’.

It has been found though that people were actually more attached to paper than any computer scientists ever thought. The way we have an habit of printing emails, printing and filing letters, orders etc that have already been archived and backed up by Skylabs and across the company archiving servers Garibaldi and Ginger_Nut.

It’s not just an old age thing either.

Many means can be found these days of reducing paper, there is of course a price for such things, including direct use of web access (eg to log an ASB incident or a request for repair), interconnection of systems (eg interfacing your main supplier systems into your purchase ledger) or increased use of direct entry of information into the main systems. Although, even after these measures have been taken, your organisation will still be generating and dealing with vast quantities of paper. A lot of that could be classified as ‘waste work’, although let’s put that matter to one side for the moment.

Electronic Document Management (or EDM) has been around a long time. It’s probably fair to say that most early incarnations suffered from some of the following shortfalls:

• Systems could be oversold. Character recognition and other snazzy features rarely lived up to expectations in a practical environment.
• EDM applications could be very complicated, too so for the end users expected to work efficiently with them.
• Stories of poor implementation abound, many never really got further than the starting blocks or beyond a single area or department.
• Interfacing with peripheral systems was not often considered at the time the EDM system was selected, consequently more work is created in batching, scanning and re-entering data.
• Often existing documents had not been completely back scanned, so users were often having to look in at least two places for a good number of documents. When available, specialist equipment was needed to view.

Well, fast forward about twenty years and our offices are increasingly bulging with paper. The average housing tenancy file has over 85 items in it. Is it worth looking at EDM in the light of the costs of maintaining, moving this paper around and finding it when it goes missing? Considering that EDM systems have improved, are more economical to procure and there are some models of good practice out there to learn from, it might just be worth it.

According to the Gartner Group, the costs of processing a housing purchase invoice is around £4. This increases if it has to be passed through a few hands, as is often the case for it to authorised, then passed to be added to the purchase ledger payment pre-list. Just the time taken to file documents all adds up. If that were five minutes just four times a day, which equates over a month to around seven hours. Staggering!

Since only one person at a time can work with a document, they resort to photocopying it and printing it (45% and 35% of usage). We all have some idea of our pence per copy of our photocopiers, add on that the time spent standing over these devices, collecting even more paper? Once you lose an important document, it can cost from £50 to over £200 to find or obtain a duplicate of it. It is not that tricky to quantify all this and develop an outline business case for looking at an EDM application.

Some of the points to be aware of are:

• Consider that you have a choice of suppliers, it need not be your main housing management system supplier, although possibly options they provide might include superior interfacing features.
• Decide if your organisation would prefer to host the solution and its document data or are you comfortable for your supplier too (possibly in the ‘cloud’). Personally I prefer the former, so my data protection boxes are ticked. A good deal of EDM suppliers prefer the latter, it promotes longer lock in. Ensure you can witness the mode you chose working successfully at a similar site to your own.
• Look into the EDM interfacing features carefully and of course see them demonstrated, working with your target system(s). Many suppliers have told me ‘Its SQL Server, no problem to interface’ and I generally tell them to pop back when they can show me, would two weeks be enough?
• Through edicts much of the local authority services have now got EDM and many EDM suppliers are turning to housing as the next market sector. Ensure that each of your shortlisted EDM suppliers have a proven track record in housing. Ask them to share their full customer list with you, then choose some to contact similar to your organisation.
• Think how you will organise the back scanning. Will your chosen supplier take it on? How long will that process take? Can any space freed up after the original documents have been destroyed be put to better use? I know of one site in Scotland where they created a gym for staff, from the extra space created.
• When you contact reference sites, ask how the project actually progressed. Was it on time and to budget? Did they have everything delivered that was originally promised? Also find some sites that are currently in an implementation. These will be the best indication of how well your project might go.

Read on to: Are we really so Agile, can we be more so?

Talking Heads had this to say on the subject.



(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk

File Under: 360,1stTouch,4Js,Aareon,Academy,ActiveH,Alignment,ALMO,Anite,Apex,ArchHouse,Archouse,asbestos,Asprey e-state pro,Asset Management,Aurora,Average IT Costs,BO,BPR,Browser Applications,Business Objects,Business Process Review,Business social networking,Castle,CBL,Cedar Open Accounts,Change,Cheaper Housing IT,Chics,
CHR,Citrix,Civica,Clearview,CMS Template,COA,Coactiva,Codeman,Comino,Competitive Dialogue process,complex IT procurements,Component Accounting,Consilium,Consolidation,Consultancy,Consultant,Contact Manager,Context,
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A Criminal Loss

Over the festive period I was enjoying a few pints of season ales (you know the stuff, Rosey Nosey, Figgy Pudding and the Durham Wenceslas bitter) with a consultant friend, who was lamenting the loss of Steve Jobs, back in October last year. We both agreed that every empire has its day, although Apple’s new dominance of the ‘innovation’ value end of the smartphone, tablet and desktop market looks pretty good for a good few years yet.

I remember my early years in computing, when IBM or ‘big blue’ as they were seemed unassailable. The joys of submitting jobs via a HASP RJE workstation down a dedicated data line to Stafford, with some 80 character parameters. If you were lucky, a few hours (or days later) some spooler jobs might be waiting to be ‘released’ onto a heavy duty printer, which sounded like a Gatling gun in operation. For stock control, payroll and invoicing etc, it was the only game in town, until along came the mini-computer and the PC.

A foot put wrong by IBM when the model 5150 (or ‘Project Chess’ the personal computer) was created, meant that for the most part a big opportunity was lost. That’s not to say that IBM are not one of the most profitable companies on the planet, they certainly are. But could have been much larger.

Step forward Microsoft, traditionally specialists in software, applications and operating systems. Also Apple, who a bit like ying to Microsoft’s yang, specialised in hardware design primarily and in a lot of cases ‘gave’ software away. The latter model has certainly done Apple and for the most part its creative leader Steve Jobs proud. Domination of the music player marketplace, MP3 & movie downloads and now iPad and iPhone’s, all shift hardware at premium prices.

IPhones are undoubtedly expensive to manufacture (possibly $180 or more), although it could be guessed that kickback fees from mobile networks will also soften the blow. Still, for the consumer, and I had to make the choice myself only recently, after you weigh up the added value, most will pay more for the iphone.  When your text messages turn blue, you know you are iMessaging with another member of the club.

I never quite got that feeling when using an XDA on Windows mobile. It will be interesting  to see how the tie up with Nokia goes. Possibly a last call if Lumia doesn’t pull off significant market share and soon.  Samsung meanwhile have a different problem. All those years manufacturing chips & components for Apple seem to have made a few of its products a bit ‘Apple shaped’. If the court case results in Samsung paying a royalty to Apple for that, it’s more cash for Apple. Its unlikely that Apple will let that happen again with the next set of designs in the pipeline.

From all accounts, SJ already had directed his team at Cupertino what Apple products will be developed for the next 3-5 years. The iCloud, Siri, Pixar technology developments. But what then? Will a new challenger for Apple’s crown emerge, will Tim Cook manage not to put a foot wrong while wearing his masters shoes?

Ironically if Steve Jobs had avoided his alternative medicine diet early in his cancer and kept his business head on, he may be still here today. A criminal loss at just 56.   

(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk

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