Letters Sent

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

A truism about ICT systems is that we should try to configure them to do as much of the logical and mundane tasks, that they are really good at. Often that can involve (properly) configured workflow.

For example, checking nine or ten things every interaction we have with customers, so we serve them appropriately and tailor service best we can. One warning message can dissect the fact we need to know our customer is ‘hard of hearing and also generally visited in twos’.

Hopefully staff are generally better at the human empathy skills (we would hope) and would be better at spotting a stressed or ill customer and have skills ICT would not have to help them with those challenges.

Clever and well thought through automation is useful and valuable. However, its easily disrupted or knocked out of kilter.

New system or solution implemented with insufficient or limited testing?

Perhaps upgrades are applied to software and not coherently tested?

Possibly staff change and insufficient training is provided to enable new intakes to operate the system as needed to drive automation?

Maybe we don’t report and manage volumes, so its challenging to notice if we have a problem at all?

In other cases, managers assume ‘automation must be happening’ and either does not realise they are still responsible for managing the service and how it works, or monitoring it. Over the last ten years I have seen more and more confusion about who is managing what. Ownership is a lost art I guess. Grenfell was the ultimate recent example of how checks and balances never took place, management & oversight was absent and Seventy Two innocent residents paid with their lives.

While ICT automation in Social Housing is unlikely to cause serious fatalities, however in medicine for patients awaiting cancer or other serious diagnosis, absence of communications can be very serious. You may have heard last week that Nottingham University Hospitals Trust failed to send 400,000 letters. Read more here - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-66950204

Apparently, it started in 2008 and reasons cited spookily were ‘Lack of responsibility’.

While this is terrible, there are valuable lessons to learn from.
•    Test all aspects of new systems and never accept anything at face value. That’s your responsibility, not your suppliers
•    Monitor performance
•    Spot-check outputs on a regular basis, to confirm automation works as designed
•    Use incoming complaints as your service feedback loop. If we think 100% of communications are being automatically issued and complaints have increased by 325%, analyse where the original system failure is occurring

In this post I have concentrated on automation that has gone wrong. However, with the many systems I encounter and regularly work with, often the problem is that available system automation is not in use. Some of this can be easily worked out, others may need a help desk call. With some suppliers it might (feel to always) be £10k of implementation consultancy, whatever you are asking!

While expense might be involved, never lose sight of ROI. Maybe a £10k investment can be recouped in x months through staff savings. Or better still we don’t save staff at all, we just retrain them to add more value and have more fulfilling roles.

Don’t forget if you are struggling with automation, just get in touch and ask!

Subscribe to our blog here on this link, to always catch the latest news on whats happening in the sector.

Acutance Consulting would be happy to help you review your automation, 

please just get in touch, for a chat over Hobnobs & a brew ☕😋

       Related Post: Are you getting the best from workflow?

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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.

Half Man Half Biscuit – Letters Sent.
(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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