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, 29 April 2026

Barfly

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

There is something properly refreshing about seeing a software company do something a bit different and actually mean it.

Far too much of the social housing (or maybe ‘Real Estate’ 🤔) systems world still feels like it is run from the same old script. Same polite corporate waffle. Same safe office parks. Same legacy thinking with a bit of new AI branding chucked on top and called transformation. So when the Rubixx folks, a UK software house decides that the right next step is not some identikit glass box, but an ex-country club in Staffordshire, and the FT writes about it that gets my attention straight away.

And honestly, good on them.

There is a confidence in that sort of move. It says we are not trying to cosplay Silicon Valley from a business park off M6 junction 15. Doing our own thing, in our own way, on our own patch. In proper potbank oatcake land too, which only adds to the charm. Stoke-on-Trent City Council apparently seem to like the mood music as well, and fair enough. If you are trying to bring jobs, energy, innovation and a bit of life into an area, you could do a lot worse than backing a growing UK software business that is clearly not short of ambition and attitude.

What I particularly like is that this is not style over substance. It would be easy enough for some firms to get attention with a quirky office and then have nothing behind the curtain except a beanbag, company strapline on the backwall, a neon sign and a waterfall product roadmap held together with hope. But that is not the story here. In about three and a half years they have produced three genuinely modern SaaS browser-based products across Housing, Finance and Support Planning. Full cloud. Proper Responsive Browser. Modern delivery. Over 30 live customers. And, from what I keep seeing & hearing, a very decent number of them are not just live, but actually happy. In housing software, that is not a small thing. That is the bit worth pausing on.

Because as we know, anybody can sell the dream in a demo. Plenty do. The trick is in migration, delivery, cutover, support, stabilisation and whether the customer still sounds cheerful once the consultants have gone home and the final invoices have landed. That is where things get real.

Over Easter I was involved in helping a good-sized and complex provider in Scotland get live with Rubixx housing and finance. That sort of go-live does not happen by accident. It takes nerve, hard graft, responsiveness, teamwork, supplier effort, customer effort, and a willingness to deal with the awkward realities rather than just admire the PowerPoint. So when I see a supplier building momentum and getting complex organisations live successfully, I take that seriously. It matters more than polished sales patter ever will.

And perhaps that is the bigger point. The housing sector does not need more fake modernity. It does not need another tired old platform with a thin browser wrapper and a fresh logo pretending to be born in the cloud. It needs suppliers who can think differently, build properly, implement competently and support customers like they matter. It needs suppliers that feel like they are moving forwards, not just charging annual maintenance on yesterday’s architecture while telling everyone “to be patient”.

So yes, the country club thing made me smile.

In truth it gave me a slight flashback to the 1980s, when work culture in some places still involved the odd liquid lunch and a level of informality that would send today’s HR departments into cardiac arrest. I am not necessarily recommending a full return to three pints and a prawn cocktail before a finance workshop, but there is something appealing about a software business whose workplace has a bar on site. It beats the usual modern corporate bribe of a sad fruit bowl, a branded hoodie and the once-a-month Friday pizza session that everyone is expected to be wildly grateful for. If they are really serious, they will make sure the bar includes some proper real ale and not just the usual fashionable fizzy nonsense. As a CAMRA member, I feel duty bound to mention that. Of course if getting Cask Marque certified might be one step beyond, maybe just some interesting bottles & cans might suffice. As Frank Cartwright told Brian Potter in Phoenix Nights, “they are the future” !

But beyond the humour, there is a serious point here too. Culture matters. Environment matters, standing by your promises matters. The physical place a company chooses says something about how it sees itself. A former country club is not just a gimmick if it helps attract staff, gives customers a memorable experience, creates a bit of buzz and reflects a business that is prepared to be bold. In a sector where too many suppliers still feel like they were assembled by committee, a bit of personality goes a long way.

And I suspect customers notice that difference.

Housing providers have spent years being told to make do with legacy platforms, sluggish development, shrinking dev teams, expensive change requests still on hold and the general sense that they should be grateful for whatever turns up in the next release cycle. So when they encounter a supplier that feels more modern, more human and more switched on, it stands out. When they then go live and start seeing benefits, the contrast with older, almost Mesozoic Era supplier experiences becomes even sharper.

That is why this matters beyond one interesting office move. It is a sign, perhaps, that some parts of the housing software market are growing up a bit. Becoming bolder. More confident. More willing to challenge the old order. Not by shouting loudly, but by building, delivering and steadily winning contracts and trust.

There is room for that in this sector. More than room, actually. There is a need for it.

So yes, fair play. A growing UK software house, no offshoring, modern cloud products, strong customer momentum, and an HQ that sounds more like somewhere you might actually want to visit than a beige office cube with bad coffee and worse acoustics. That is different thinking. And in a housing systems world that can still be painfully conservative, different thinking done well is something to celebrate.

Now then, if the next customer briefing starts with a decent pint of real ale in the clubhouse bar, or a bottled Impy Stout rather than a curled-up sandwich and a stale biscuit, I may start insisting all software procurement's are run that way. Some old traditions are worth keeping.

Are you lumbered with legacy solutions & unsure whats out there ?

Give me a call, I will drop in for a brew & bring the Tunnocks Teacakes ☕

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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.

Ray LaMontagne - Barfly

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

Access a quick list of our Social Housing ICT blog posts here , what projects do we get involved in? Access them 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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Friday, 3 April 2026

Sorted

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

There is a special kind of optimism found only in software supplier helpdesks. Not that anyone often has a good word for internal or external ones these days. It is the optimism that says a problem affecting real users, doing real jobs, on a wet Tuesday afternoon, can be marked as “resolved” because a future software release might, possibly, allegedly, include something that sounds a bit like a fix. Not fixed now, OBVs. Not fixed in the version the customer is actually using. Not fixed in any way that stops Doris in rents, Ahmed in repairs, or Lisa in the contact centre from having to invent a daily workaround involving three browser tabs, a spreadsheet, and a quiet swear. But fixed in spirit. Fixed on the roadmap. Fixed in that wonderful fantasy kingdom where version 12.4.7 is coming soon, all known issues have vanished, and everyone lives happily ever after in a clean release note.

I do have some sympathy, because many years ago when on the supplier darkside I did a week each month on a software helpdesk myself, so I know the pressure to keep queues moving, manage expectations, stop calls festering, and keep the statistics looking vaguely respectable. But there is a world of difference between managing a ticket properly and making it disappear because the words “future release” have appeared in the supplier crystal ball. The customer logs a fault. The supplier investigates. Someone says, “Yes, that is a known issue.” Then, as if by magic, the ticket is closed because “this is addressed in a future roadmap release.” Lovely. Except the user is not living in a future release. They are living in today’s release, with today’s broken process, today’s complaint from a tenant, today’s arrears letter that did not generate properly, today’s repair order that won’t behave, or today’s report that produces the sort of numbers usually seen on a fruit machine.

Closing a ticket because a fix is promised later is a bit like a garage handing your car back with the brakes still dodgy and saying, “Don’t worry, the next model has improved braking.” That may be technically interesting, but it is not terribly helpful when you are already halfway down the hill. The future fix might arrive in three months. Or six. Or it might slip into the next release, miss ‘the sprint’ altogether. Or it might fix the problem for one customer configuration but not another. Or it might fix the obvious symptom while leaving the underlying daftness ( & data wibble ) untouched, like painting over damp/mould and calling it a housing regeneration strategy. And, of course, once the ticket is closed, the supplier’s statistics look better. Fewer open issues. Better resolution times. Tidier dashboard. A warm little glow in the service review pack. Meanwhile, back in the actual organisation, the workaround is still alive and well, staff are still wasting time, managers are still chasing, confidence in the system and supplier is still being slowly sanded down, and the customer has not received anything like a fix. They have received a promissory note with a version number on it.

There is a simple principle here. If the customer still experiences the problem, the issue is not closed. It may be linked to a future release. It may be awaiting development. It may have a target fix version. It may even have a workaround. But it is not resolved. Maybe suppliers need more honest ticket statuses, such as “awaiting customer confirmation of resolution” and “awaiting upgrade/bugfix application & customer confirmation of resolution”, so everyone can see the truth of where things actually stand. That would protect suppliers from endless duplicate tickets, but also protect customers from the nonsense of problems being quietly buried before anyone on the customer side has confirmed they have gone away.

A future release is not a fix. It is, at best, a hopeful promise. And as anyone who has worked in software for more than ten minutes knows, promises in release notes are sometimes like supplier demo dashboards: very shiny, very confident, and occasionally from the same broad family as fiction.

Suffering a legacy supplier and a less than optimal helpdesk?

Give me a call, I will drop in with the Hobnobs and we can share some war stories ☕

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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.

Pulp – Sorted for E’s and Whiz

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

Access a quick list of our Social Housing ICT blog posts here , what projects do we get involved in? Access them here

. . . . . . . . . . . . ES | FR | DE | IT | UK