Mothers Little Mortgage Helper

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

It's almost as if GDPR never happened. Do you seem to see the level of marketing spam I seem to see these days?

Most of it is not even good marketing spam either. Often it’s the usual ‘buy a marketing list’ and just email everyone to death. Maybe one day someone will cave in to ‘stop you and buy one’, but its hardly likely.

The most stupid of all are companies selling something you might one day buy in business or personal contexts, but because they have hacked you off by contacting you too often, while not being signed up to, may never have the chance. With me they wont have the chance as apart from ignored requests to ‘unsubscribe’ to a purchased list I am on that me or my company never authorised this type of marketing, a special email rule kills the emails stone dead.

‘Journeys of distinction’ AKA ‘Travelling with Luxury’ are my favourite muppets. Using a letter prefix to try to evade junk rules running against emails, these are a tad more challenging to bat off, but quite easy really for domains they keep buying for more spam: www.JourneyOdNews.co.uk as well as www.travellingwith luxury.co.uk and www.travellersTrust.co.uk
 

Create an email rule to bat off their usual rubbish (such as 'Swinging into Christmas... aboard the Royal Yacht Britannia' etc) and also block the domain as junk.

 
The laughable thing about these guys is that maybe 20% of their offers, may even float my boat. Unfortunately they will never get the chance to take any of my money. A rule bats them into spam as their unsubscribe me link is just for decoration. They refuse to 'forget' me or my work domain.

Reporting these folk to the ICO is less than useless, just don’t bother. Apart from milking you for your annual registration fee charge, they are just a business cost and irritation. About as much use as a chocolate teapot or a transaction with the Student Finance England folk in Darlington

Next up are my ‘Mortgage Helper’ friends.
 
Well, more accurately invites as LinkedIn connection, friends. 

Perhaps you must encounter these too. Would you be likely to trust the largest purchase you will probably make in your life, to a total stranger most likely driven by sales commission? I wouldn’t. Would you not think by my age, I will have had a few mortgages, maybe paid a few off and already know my way around the (property) block? I do property management ICT for a living dont you know, if anyone, human or bot actually checked my LinkedIn profle.

All of these get an ‘Ignore’ from me, followed up with a ‘I don’t know Darlene’.

Are these even real people? Most don’t even have a face that can be found in Google reverse Image Search

Top tip – I do prefer to work and buy stuff from ‘real people’. If you are not real, probably don’t even bother targeting me.

If we at Acutance Consulting can help your organisation with data issues, 

please just get in touch, for a friendly chat over some Mrs Crimbles & a brew ☕😋.

       Related Post: Now PPI is over, guess what the ambulance chasers are concentrating on? 

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

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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.

Rolling Stones – Mothers Little Helper.
(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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Don’t Leave Me This Way

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



Wow, last week I realised so many people had my email and would be missing me in a such a Puffy Daddy way, it was pretty emotional TBH. GDPR day had kicked in and the world and his wife contacted me last week, as I am sure they also did you.

It was like a flashback to re-ordering that toilet seat in Wigan or that cycle gear cassette in Basingstoke. Wow, I never knew I was so popular. “Don’t leave me Tony”, they said. I don’t actually remember any lover or partner saying that to me, maybe one day, I live in hope.

Over the week, they have got more insistent. From ‘Urgent – Action needed’, to ‘This might be the end’. Something you might see from a very needy ex. In some cases, a deeply logical chap like me, has been conflicted.

My attachment to East Midlands Trains, the O2 Apollo in Manchester and Pizza Express (of course, what numpty has not had 25% off there), is clearly legendary. Daily updates on retail rubbish I can actually do without, as can you too dear reader. They are like my loved ones, or are they? No, clearly they are organisations I have had a transactions with. They are not my mates. What I share with my partner or mates is not a retail transaction.

Let’s be clear, it’s a retail transaction, not an experience.

I would actually keep in touch with someone who provided me with an entertaining tantric sex course in the India back in 1990, but not an outfit in Maidstone who supplied me with some excellent cycling shorts. There’s no comparison is there?

This is the time I guess for a clean break. Not with the people I love you understand, but those who for me have only been a transaction. True loves, you know you are I guess x

Related Post: If you are a supplier, do your USP's fit on a page or less? Should they? 

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

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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.

The Communards - Don't Leave Me This Way.
(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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Something Better Change

If you do the Twitter thing, follow me at @hotpixUK
or LinkedIn here uk.linkedin.com/pub/tony-smith-bsc-hons-acih/a/979/351/

What on earth is Marissa Mayer of Google, er no sorry Yahoo thinking about?
First she directed a makeover of photographers social media website Flickr to be more like Facebook, losing most of the sensible features that photographers enjoyed, back in May 2013. See old Wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Marissa_Mayer&oldid=556752091 , the current one has been edited by a loyal Yahoo employee to erase that.

The official Flickr help thread of more than 298 pages and 29,000+ of complaints was ignored at http://www.flickr.com/help/forum/en-us/72157633547442506/ The ever helpful Thea Lamkin closed the monster thread because of the amount of disk space being chewed up

In October, a few weeks ago Yahoo Mail was Google-ised. Now Marissa was Google employee 20 and still maybe has those letters running through her like a stick of rock. Unfortunately now she has brought all the stuff that people hate about Google mail to Yahoo Mail. Without fixing some of the faults in the last incarnation.

So, neat tabs that allowed you to work with 5 or 6 emails or a search site by side were gone. A bit like the old MS-DOS you close what you are doing and have to open your new thing. That annoying but not readable history view is displayed, a-la Gmail.

Contacts are a mess too. Due to poor use of the screen estate, the contact page is now longer. Most of the common fields you need are hidden and need revealing before you can fill them. E.G. Address, Website, even ‘Job Title’ to add to the always present ‘Employer’. So, more clicks than ever before. Why not just let customers switch on a view of all, all the time. Was that a problem needing fixing then?

The biggest irritation for me is that when I add a contact and need to select my country. An irritation already my country does not come up defaulted ‘United Kingdom’. No, we get the leader of the free world, ‘United States’ at the top (where else), but a list that cannot be navigated by typing a letter. A ‘V’ for me, used to get me to ‘Vanuatu’ and three arrows up, would find me ‘Blighty’.

I use Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail. Sad to say that Hotmail I now find the most usable and that is rubbish.  I don’t know if any of my readers have been frustrated by the Yahoo mail redesign? Then again we are used to it in housing. Anyone done the migration from Optitime DRS 4 to 5, Windows 7 desktop to 8 or even just Windows 8 to 8.1? While you might have to do the first one, put the last two completely out of your mind, for a few years...

The situation might get worse too as more of our business solutions are hosted and updated for us in the cloud. Something we need to be aware of when procuring these solutions, our freedom to take or delay upgrades that might have a detrimental effect on user productivity, customer satisfaction or other key metrics in our organisations.

We must not let ‘suppliers’ think we don’t have a choice. We can check our contracts, give notice and up sticks. Even ‘free’ software takes a slice of revenue from us, in ad referrals and click through’s. New ideas and companies come along all the time to challenge the status quo, then decline. Just like Ford, Courtaulds, GEC, IBM, DEC, Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook have in the past and A.N.Other will in the future.

Paraphrasing from Darwin “It is not the strongest of the software that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change, in the way their customers find useful”. If Marissa survives another 18 months at Yahoo I will be very surprised

You can link with me on LinkedIn here - uk.linkedin.com/pub/tony-smith-bsc-hons-acih/a/979/351/ It would be great to connect !

Read On, Bigger, faster, better, is there any point upgrading then?

http://tonysmiththathousingitguy.blogspot.com/2012/02/harder-better-faster-stronger.html

 

The Stranglers - Something Better Change .


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

PS As usual, if there are subjects you might like me to tackle on this blog, please get in touch and let me know!

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Yammer Be There - Banning Internal Email

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

I read an interesting article this week about Halton Housing Trust looking to ban email by 2014, that captured my imagination. An estimated forty per cent of staff time was spent ‘dealing with internal email that is of no value for the business’. Read the full article in InsideHousing here http://www.insidehousing.co.uk/regulation/landlord-plans-to-ban-internal-email/6524652.article


The decision to ban email was inspired by a similar move by Atos Consulting, spookily enough located right next to HHT's building in Runcorn, Cheshire.

Maybe some advice was exchanged in the smoking area between both buildings. I certainly think there is some mileage in that one.

One replacement being considered is Yammer, the business social media collaboration platform acquired by Microsoft in Summer 2012 for $1.2 Billion. Presumably HHT will be using many of the premium features. It will be interesting in what direction Microsoft does decide to take it. Some of that uncertainty might put me off personally. I can imagine Yammer fitting right in very quickly with the bright young things of Silicon Valley type companies. To get the most from it within HHT and possibly other housing providers I would guess a lot of training and a genuine change of mindset from all staff expected to use it, might be needed.


Email can be very disruptive and particularly in the same way that staff are provided with Excel and never trained to use it properly, then waste person years going around the houses performing tasks badly. Email can be the same. Outlook or a similar email client is provided and rarely are users coached in how to deal with email coming in, proper use of To: , cc: and bcc: .

How many times have three people been named in a ‘To:’ box and nobody deals with it because they think the other two must be on to it. 

Also how many times have you been emailed by the person sitting next to you, instead of the two of you just discussing and resolving an issue?


Instant messaging can sometimes be even worse, something that can be responded to straight away, like a phone call, not like emails that can be left and dealt with at an appropriate time.


One aspect about emails that is really good however is the trail it provides. A perfect audit sometimes to disprove claims and assertions. This is one area that cannot be lost with a move to Yammer or A.N.Other. One phrase that I should actually have programmed in to a function key for outlook as I type it so much is ‘Confirming our earlier discussion..’ . The perfect way to document what has gone on be all parties.


A number of RSL’s with appropriate housing management systems have moved from internal email to workflow tasking or use of tasking in-trays. This means that any internal activity, that most likely will involve one or more people, can be traced via CRM or other modules of an integrated system. Any decent tasking system allows escalation, referral and closure of tasks, with corresponding activities closed off or set at an appropriate status on completion.


For example, a resident request for repair logged as a CRM call might generate a pre-inspection, a repair job, that job may be passed to the internal workforce. Several internal tasks (which could before have been emails) might be raised based on job issues. When these tasks are resolved, the job is closed and CRM call completed. Obviously, this flow can be embedded in workflow and tasking, something that would not be practical when using just email.


Now if Microsoft integrated Yammer more fully into Dynamics CRM, took advantage of standard workflow and Sharepoint for presentation, I think that would give existing options a great run for their money. Good luck to HHT, as one of my local RSL’s I would be pleased to see how this project unfolds.

Read on, more social media in housing:

http://tonysmiththathousingitguy.blogspot.com/2013/09/three-little-birds.html

James Ingram and Michael Mcdonald say "Yah Mo B There".


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

PS I have noticed I have been getting a lot of traffic from the Housing Southern IT Forum recently http://sit-forum.co.uk/. Thanks everyone, if there are subjects you might like me to tackle, please get in touch and let me know!

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