Swell Maps

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

I  don’t know if you have noticed this last six months, the shear volume of software solution buy up and acquisition activity in the public and socialhousing sector? Its reducing actual choice and I have heard it said it actually stifles innovation. 

Its sure as hell easier for some outfits to buy up solutions, also bagging customers needing yet more numbers in their sales ledgers, than getting out being hungry and winning new business. What with MRI concluding its purchase of Capita’s public sector offerings after challenge, Aareon doing it with Designer Software’s Homemaster and MIS-AMS ActiveH, its as one colleague confided to me, “well its just down to a few players now for modern procurement”.

The trouble of course with buying up just anything, is suppliers can end up like having an overfilled golf bag. When that difficult opportunity comes it, its 3 times as hard to work out what club would be best to hit that ball with. In the last few months I have heard multiple pitches telling different stories about the same products in the inventory, with often the sales team confused. We are in a sector where good staff are leaving because they are approaching retirement, family life is changing for them, or just don’t want to be TUPE’d over (again) to a corporate monolith. A good merger also is a time to cut down that dead wood that you haven’t tackled in many years and fortunately your new owners will do the unpleasant pruning.

Unfortunately if acquisitions are not done well and managed well, your product offering becomes more like a soup, a thick and not too present one too. No wonder some of the new kids on the block are doing so well, such as the dinosaur slayer (you know who I mean), who is proud to just sell 3 things really well and tell you what the cost per property is. Simples !

Also, for balance, other alternatives on CRM based solutions are available with D365 & Salesforce. Other dinosaur slayers of a kind !

So, to be blogging about yet another acquisition, is unfortunate, although to be honest, a little less so.

This month another of those big public sector software suppliers picked up a GIS solution. NEC (nee NPS Northgate Public Services) ‘strategically’ acquired CadCorp. Full chapter and verse can be read here. 

I am familiar with Cadcorp, as back in 2011 at my old shop (MIS-AMS) we were resellers of its UK based product and even back then it had clever and flexible integrations and rich features. It’s a good product and I still hear good things about it. 

In contrast to a few others this feels less like a desperate hoovering up of solutions and more like adding an essential part of a jigsaw into their offerings around Blue Light, safety, energy, infrastructure and others in addition to social housing, via API’s.

It would be hoped that the comments on the marriage ring true and this brings something bigger than the sum of its two parts, rather than what is often experienced elsewhere, merged help-desks and a tin-ear in reference to general customer service. 

Aside from taking over Anite OHMS back in Nov 2008 (after the OFT decided not to refer it to the Competition Commission), NEC now have pretty much one of everything to pitch. Less of the multiples,  “which contractor, which mobile, or which housing solution this time”, type nonsense.

Paradoxically, having more traditional product to choose from with the same logo on the front, can often cause more problems than it solves. If mixing products, always check if they have been integrated in that manner before, successfully tried or not. I hear far too many occurrences of this, with often bigger landlords often being caught out worse. I am sure some contacts of mine may be reading this and thinking “yes”, its easier to be caught out than you think! So, readers, let the buyer beware. 

Two many products? - how to scope your options ?

Get in touch , I will drop in for a brew & bring the Stem Ginger Cookies ☕

       Related Post: Software contracts - such a minefield. What to be aware of and what to try to avoid..

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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.

Swell Maps – Read About Seymour

(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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Beat Dis

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/

  

It's not often the social housing world beats the Barclay's etc. of the business world, the Scottish FA and Cancer Research in IT innovation. Sure we figure annually  in the lists of 100 best places to work. So we should, most of us are a fluffy, caring lot. 

But IT innovation? Did you think you mis-read that one?

Our IT budgets are not the biggest out there, frequently we have to do more with less in a constantly changing regulatory  environment. Frequently IT people come into the sector and criticise the system and applications that we have at our disposal to work with. Often I spend time trying to fit projects to shrinking budgets and am used to meeting some pretty innovative folk.

One of my favourites I have worked the last year with is Yarlington, based down in Yeovil, South Somerset. Granted, a county many may think of as quite sleepy (if people can actually place it on a map at all, that is). We probably race through it to get to Devon or Cornwall now and again, but leave the inhabitants to have a quiet life, make excellent craft cider and those flying machine things at Westland & BAE.

Well, a quiet revolution has been going on down there. In contrast to many with GIS, they have worked with local authority, ESRI, and their stakeholders, to provide a global view of geography, people, YHG customers, crime, listed buildings, social factors etc. Yarlington then found a cost effective method of deploying that to everyone in the organisation, using tools from the great Mapchannels resource, who might be able to make use of it. All existing internal data sources are available too, providing over a hundred different layer combinations. This helps Yarlington put customers and residents further at the heart of what they do.

New sign-ups can view their new neighbourhood in terms of proximity to nearest Post Office, surgery or recreation facilities or parks. Also crime hotspots, local transport provision etc. the repair team can be more efficient as they know where listed properties, trees and features are present, saving time, effort and reducing (paid for) local authority searches. New developments can be targeted to new areas of need, many in successful new developments further afield than the traditional heartland of South Somerset. In these austere times, Yarlington is doing all they can to be in their customers corner. This is a tool that makes that a reality, day in day out.

I saw the presentation and video Karen Dumper and Chris Reed put together for the initial sessions for the UK IT Industry Awards. It was inspirational and showed the outcomes not the under the bonnet techie aspect of the solution. Emphasis was on how they had satisfied their customers, a theme and a message I make myself blue in the face trying to do, with many housing organisations. It's about them (the customers or customer users) not us stupid!

Last week I was knocked out to hear that they had beaten the competition hands down. A humble housing 'David' taking on 'Goliath's. Read more about it here http://www.yhg.co.uk/news/13-11-14/Yarlington_wins_top_award_for_I_T_project.aspx 

In my book we need more of this. IT working properly for the users & residents, people being freed up to innovate and think out of the box.

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 to The End of those dial-up days:

http://tonysmiththathousingitguy.blogspot.com/2013/09/end-of-my-high-wire-days.html

Bomb The Bass - Beat Dis .


(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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