tonysmiththathousingitguy @HousingITguy

Some thoughts on IT and UK SocialHousing from a unique perspective of over 27+ years working with over 140 RSL's, Councils and social landlord groups in the UK, Ireland & Australia. (c) No reproduction without prior/express permission Available for independent housing RSL implementation, procurement of HMS, Repairs, CRM, EDM, DLO, Financial, Scheduling systems, critical friend etc. In Scotland I work with the folks at Arneil Johnston Check us out on Soundcloud /housingitguy

Wednesday, 27 October 2021

Tinder

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

We are often used in everyday life being sold a dream, or over-sold to. Whether its in a glossy brochure, a fancy webpage, or a slogan on the side of a big red bus, mostly these things come out in the wash. We are familiar with cars offering 68mpg and them delivering 56mpg instead.

Perhaps we make the problem worse when some of us use that 20 year old image as our thumbnail on Linkedin and Twitter, cropped from our wedding images. I was pulled up the other week and reminded that my Twitter image looked different to me in real life. In opening it up and expanding it, I asked what the difference was? They said, “We usually see you wearing glasses”. I get the point, although I only generally only wear them if reading at work or using a screen. (So I thought that a little harsh).

Sometimes in the procurements I get involved in, some sales staff seem to see every name in the CRM system is a potential prospect and every tender must be responded to. This is not good for the organisations selling, nor the contracting bodies looking for the right solutions. The qualification stage is an important one and crucial for saving time for sales and also in the inevitable evaluation, if a full ITT response is returned. Spending too much time on bad prospects means sales losing precious moments for engaging qualified leads instead.

Occasionally, I see ITT responses which occasionally are ‘borderline delusional’.

Weasel words, references to ‘see above’ or other information elsewhere, all ring alarm bells for me. While I often provide my clients, some first time evaluating ITT’s to defined ways we have declared they should be scored, with a custom crib-sheet to help make a fair judgment. Even then, some of the conversations often move when evaluating to “why are they saying subject to requirements” or “needs scoping”, following four weeks of clarification period, provided to allow them to clarify what the scope would be.

The best way I described it recently, is that the contracting body can evaluate the ITT answers submitted as best we can, on face value. This is a bit like reading a biog on Tinder, without being able to swipe left or right on our tenderer. However, the demonstration event is like going on the actual Tinder date. That’s when you find the system (like a date) is 20 years older than it seemed, slow/clunky or its just not living up to its biog!

There are plenty of tips on getting the most from demonstrations on this blog (as regular readers will know). One of the best I find is being able to issue an advance version of the required demo scenario. At least then it’s not a surprise when your ‘Tenderer date’ is asked to back up their many claims and be moderated based on the performance. I am no longer surprised when the odd supplier finishes an hour or more early, as there is a lack of overall finished product to show. A sure sign of something being oversold.

On the odd occasion I have had the surreal experience, of a supplier telling us that they are not going to follow the issued scenario and will be showing us something else. I love the look on their face(s) when they are told we will only be scoring them on what we have asked, as per the tender. As all tenderers then have a level playing field.

At a recent demonstration I attended, the suppliers came with incompatible kit to demo, did not have an up to date version of the remote access software loaded and could not access the open wifi either, starting 25 minutes late. Not my, or my clients problem. During the 4 hour demo they often asked, "Do we want a 15 or 30 minute break?". On the second one, I reminded them that they were burning into their own time. "Are we?" they said. I had to say, "Yes afraid so. If you are not done by 2pm, we are all out of here and you will only be scored on what you managed to show". They wisely opted for a 5 minute comfort break.

Catch the blog monthly archive at
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I would be pleased to connect with you on LinkedIn - http://uk.linkedin.com/in/tonysmiththathousingitguy Message me with any issues or queries, you would like to be explored in this blog. We generally receive a couple of suggestions each month.

Hipsway – Tinder.
(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk 07854-655009

Access a quick list of our Social Housing ICT blog posts here

Could we help you or your organisation? Our contact details are here , get in touch we will be pleased to chat about your problems and help with your organisation issues.

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Thursday, 14 October 2021

Buying Time

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

I work mainly with landlords, councils and charities across the UK, with many pieces of work involving procurement. Spookily enough, this is one area where the EU has had an influence for a couple of decades, one that must surely change in the post-Brexit world. Clearly when I do work (as I occasionally do and immensely enjoy), in Southern Ireland (Deisceart Éireann), OJEU still rules.

If a public body made a purchase, SocialHousing landlords being regarded as ‘Public Bodies’ for this legislation, OJEU (Open Journal of the EU) rules and legislation kicks in.

Putting my cards on the table, the rules are there to help contracting bodies make considered decisions and be fair to tenderers taking part. I believe that level playing fields are important, having been a supplier in the past and maybe feeling at times, I had been led down a garden path on occasion. Days, whole weeks, maybe months of time wasted on occasion, that I will never get back.

So, used correctly, OJEU rules are a safeguard, a fair way to choose appropriate supplier and a useful tool for a social housing landlord or council, if they are spending £1.2m on software or £13m on a planned maintenance programme, with one or more partnering contractors.

Since the 1st Jan 2021, the UK and its public bodies, can have more freedom over procurement. One of the ‘sunny uplands’, so to speak. Just to curb the excitement, we do seem to have a current government better doing the spin than the delivery. A bit better at talking about it, rather than getting it working, in the recent Green Paper, the forward proudly declares “The end of the Transition Period provides an historic opportunity to overhaul our outdated public procurement regime”.

I am sure that was in everyone’s minds as all that Covid19 PPE was procured, in contrast I think Housing Associations and Local Authorities will still in the future be strictly held to account. There is plenty of rhetoric on it being more “Innovative, flexible, transparent and green than the current European Union regime”. There is also talk of boiling down many hundred of rules to a simpler framework. While this sounds good, there is scant evidence that industry feedback have actually currently been taken into account as yet. Westminster can currently feel like a black hole for business its fair to say, so this is no surprise.

The Green Paper does make reference to “decisive shift away from awarding contracts based primarily on price”. In my experience of looking for software and applications solutions recently, creating a new foundation for future transformation, its rare that price accounts for more than 30% of scoring. For one client I remember a very heated discussion about, “Well Tony what if it costs us another £100k over 5 years?”. My answer was, “Look outside the office here, four people represent £100k costs in a single year. With 135 staff, saving 4 people or transforming their jobs, makes that saving in year one”. Now forgive me if that sounds brutal, but these are potential savings that good transformations can bring. Obviously good demonstrations flesh out any smoke & mirrors.

Buying software, application and platform solutions, is very different from buying repair services or kitchens in bulk. Currently blanket T’s and C’s on frameworks may work for bulk materials, but even those often work badly for software. Penalty clause caps are a common discussion area for me currently with multiple suppliers for example. Contracts need to fit the product being procured. So I would like to see innovation around areas like that, particularly for software, SaaS and integrated systems. Hopefully, suppliers have fed that back into the process, so far. We should see the outcome from the “Consultation Response”, by the end of December.

Legal folk in the know who I work with closely, seem to be hoping for a “New Competitive Flexible Procedure”, to be in the pipework. This should allow greater engagement with suppliers where appropriate. Less popular with a few contracting bodies I have had informal chats with, is the suggestion that publishing of advance “pipelines of future procurement” has been suggested. In some cases this could work well, in others less so. I still think that PIN’s (Prior Information Notices) and structured pre-market engagement, will be the best link with software suppliers and the whole ‘warm up’ process. I know how this generally works in my projects. Please feel free to get in touch to let me know how its worked for your organisation, or not.

The key to this, is that to be effective, the new rules need to cut red tape, not create more overheads, as other areas of Brexit clearly have. Burden on procurement and legal staff needs to be reduced, not increased.

I am going to look out for the fully formed, hot and steaming final recommendations, hopefully we will see in December 2021. I would recommend that your procurement specialists do too!

Related Post: Pre-Market Engagement, Scope properly before you procure

Catch the blog monthly archive at
https://soundcloud.com/housingitguy/

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Lucky Daye – Buying Time.
(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk 07854-655009

Access a quick list of our Social Housing ICT blog posts here

Tuesday, 5 October 2021

Lets All Tilt

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

Around Housing management Solution providers, no one can deny there has been some serious consolidation over the last decade. NEC bought Northgate, MRI bought a smorgasbord of softwares, Civica have hoovered up Keystone and Abritas. If you are a supplier out there, you better be a good disrupter or prepare to manage half a decade of decline (so my contacts tell me).

While distracted by these consolidations, some including lots of legacy solutions, liberal sprinklings of Silverlight, old skool Client-Server and other non-Cloud first demons, some suppliers are quietly buying in Cloud ready solutions under the radar. Why would you not? Exactly what I would be doing if I had deep pockets available to spend. Why buy legacy solutions that will cost an arm and a leg to move to full Cloud & browser presentation?

EU wide housing software and mobile supplier Aareon, have been really canny recently in buying up FixFlow, Arthur Online and Tilt’s Affinity in Northern Ireland, who have capability to support Differential Rents in southern Ireland. The nice thing here is that these are all written for cloud already, their challenge is only to integrate. So with well targeted resources, we should only wait 9-18 months to see a nice offering here, if done right.

Of course, the danger with buy-ups is always that existing directors can be enabled to ‘cash-in’ and if not well managed, experienced staff run to the hills and take better jobs elsewhere. Lets hope Aareon manage this better than others have historically. Notable is that back in August 2020, Aareal Bank in Mainz (a lovely city in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany), sold 30% stake in IT subsidiary Aareon. This software arm in all the EU and UK sectors it operates, must pay its way.

Aareon have a significant footprint in the UK social housing marketplace with its Client-Server solutions. As we know, markets and organisation needs have changed drastically over the last 18 months of Covid19. Maybe its new acquisitions will keep it desired and relevant. More important, if I were managing Aareon, I would hope that these new acquisitions would be a means of accelerating getting the existing customer base onto a new Cloud and browser journey in a cost effective manner. Potentially there is more modern raw material here than from some other suppliers at the minute.

Lets see what its management makes of it. Potentially some hard leg-work to do here, that might result in good outcomes for better social housing solutions.

Related Post: Go-Live, making it a success (or not)

Catch the blog monthly archive at
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Christine and the Queens – Tilted.
(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk 07854-655009

Access a quick list of our Social Housing ICT blog posts here