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

Showing posts with label MoreIQ. Show all posts

Saturday, 21 May 2022

Love You More

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

You may have caught my blogpost, touching on the expansion of choice for scheduling Social Housing repairs and other areas, a couple of months ago. Since then I have been doing a bit of a deep-dive into the most exciting full Cloud innovation available for scheduling, from More IQ

For me, that ‘Full Cloud’ and designed from the ground up for Cloud, is these days the most crucial attribute.

Since just before our two years of painful pandemic lockdowns, already I was aware of ‘an about turn’, to the Cloud and browser delivered apps, especially from local councils during procurement. “If its not Cloud Tony, we don’t want to procure it!”. Very wise too!

Clearly, this seismic shift has understandably wrong-footed many suppliers with older, more traditional Client-Server solutions. Redeveloping/retrofitting those can be extremely expensive and also suffer from not being able to absolutely start again, from the philosophical “blank sheet of paper”. If exploited thoroughly, a well designed Cloud architecture can provide infinite extendibility and expansion. On scheduling solutions, I have seen many projects, as a critical friend where scaling up from a fairly nippy fifty operative diaries to 500, has quickly meant a second or third physical server with 65%+ CPU utilisation, or over a minutes wait, to offer a customer some slot options. Conventional client-server based solutions, do too suffer from many of those 'all weekend' upgrades too!

Out of the box, back office agent view of
MOREIQ, showing estimated cost/journey time

Out of the box, scheduler MoreIQ web user view

The key architects of More IQ, Nick Shipton, Gael Sainson and Katie Evans, who I am sure will be known to many particularly from the Xmbrace days, appear to have cracked this issue using key Cloud infrastructure features. I have seen the More IQ scheduler effortlessly handle 3,000 filled diaries, deftly with performance to spare. On that last point, one of the main asks of any scheduler, on the performance front is being ‘Dynamic’. I surround the word in brackets, as its much maligned and mis-used. What do we mean by it?

Graphical features of MoreIQ

A dynamic scheduler in my book, brings decent automation & potentially allows many more diaries to be managed with a leaner manager/scheduler role headcount. So often I have seen legacy scheduling solutions purchased on a business case of reducing staff and the headcount grows instead. Has that ever happened to you in an organisation you have worked in?

In contrast to quite a few other schedulers out there, MoreIQ ticks a lot of my boxes here. Three operatives phoning in sick at 08:06 is not a drama, just handled automation within a minute. A HR link has been thought through too, so only one system need be updated, not three or more. Metrics available for efficient automation are forward thinking too, covering strategies to favour reduction of CO2, bonus/penalties, mobile journey AI learning, all supported.

As we know in SocialHousing, scheduling a responsive repairs team is different to managing voids, planned works or coordinated actions, such as an eviction or combined gas/arrears visit. MoreIQ deals with these situations by design, using a concept of ‘parcels’ to better manage our sequenced tasks.

Parcels of dependent work in MoreIQ – Eventually in 2022, smarter Voids

Parcels of dependent work – Eventually in 2022, smarter Voids 😉

With scheduling solutions, like any other, integration can be the Achilles Heel. Traditional solutions built integration links, as they went along. MoreIQ sensibly brings them all with decent documentation, right out of the box. Web & text based integrations are available and being used by a number of early partner adopters such as Propeller Powered, and being considered as an option for the D365 community.

Propeller and More IQ have a first customer live which was completed within a few weeks with no additional hefty ‘implementation days’. The MoreIQ costing model is pretty much a reasonable ‘all in per seat/diary’, so much more attractive to your finance director. No need to recontract and buy it all again after 5 years, which I have seen to be a recent emerging theme.

Quickly customise the supplied MoreIQ working templates<br> with the same team ICT skills being deployed in D365

Quickly customise the supplied MoreIQ working templates with the same team ICT skills being deployed in D365

There are opportunities with MoreIQ in a number of relevant current situations. Firstly, if your organisation is considering or already on a journey with Microsoft Dynamics 365. Secondly, if back-office solutions are under review (quite common in my recent assignment), to squeeze the very most from integration. Lastly, where it might be felt your current suppliers are not thinking out of the box with alternative scheduling solutions. There’s no excuse for mediocre field service efficiency.

This is the real deal as regards industrial strength truly reactive scheduling, and an enabler of potential outstanding field service efficiency. Check MoreIQ out. It does come with its full browser GUI, which is easily customised in a way most others out there struggle to achieve, as well as having the ability for your existing partners to fully white label it

Grab some additional info at More-IQ.com - via the white paper at https://more-iq.com/#whitepaper

They are on my doorstep, at CIH Housing 2022 Manchester 28-30th June (Stand TE22), arrange in advance to have a look yourself.

If we at Acutance Consulting can help your organisation with any aspect of scheduling, transformation issues/procurement, please just get in touch, for a chat over a brew.

I will bring the chocolate digestives 😉

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.

Buzzcocks - Love you More.
(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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Monday, 28 March 2022

Schedules

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

How times have changed in the world of scheduling diaries in Social Housing, for trade repairs and other resident visits.

There was a time when scheduling was the proverbial Marmite, with most housing professionals I worked with, either with the binary choice of ICT/application scheduling as ‘essential’ or ‘not essential as good staff are the key’. In the former case the options were pretty much ‘Optitime’ or nothing really, to automate and aid the efficient scheduling of work to be issued.

Funnily enough, I find you can pretty much ‘carbon date’ repairs people talking about scheduling in the Socialhousing sector, by if they call that product Xmbrace, Optitime, DRS (Dynamic Resource Scheduling), Kirona or OneAdvanced. Also, those guys memories, war stories and battle scars of a migration from version 4 to version 5 of that on-premise delivered product.

However, getting on to nearly two decades of diary scheduling in housing, we are in a very different landscape, one being more dominated by Cloud computing, higher expectations of APIs/integration and native browser delivered solutions as default.

We now have a wide variety and in some ways bewildering array of options open to us, particularly if we are interested in scheduling multiple teams, not just contractor repairs, maybe compliance, arrears and asset management & surveys.

If course a lot of software providers had a go at writing a scheduler (why how hard can it be?), crashing and burning or only having a single user etc. ProScheduler or was it PromasterScheduler is one that springs to mind, that I came across. I think I was always being told that someone new was always ready to sign up to it. Something that does not make sense in practice and clearly would have brought with it risks of little new investment or ideas going into it.

In the move (or rush for some software suppliers) to redevelop/modernise the integrated HMS for the Cloud, many are adding their own integral ‘scheduler’. These can have varying degrees of being ‘dynamic’, at times a difficult noun to define. At the bare minimum these can be ‘drag & drop’ diaries that feed mobile appointments, right up to some aspect of being able to reshuffle tasks (jobs, visits etc if you like). Many contractor solutions these days include their own scheduler option, sometimes after many years of integrating to the old DRS default. Examples include Totalmobile TM with their Optimise option. I think it would be prudent for suppliers to consider retaining the opportunity for clients, to go for the in-house as well as any preferred available external option.

In some recent procurements, I have worked with clients already with seats on schedulers, such as DRS and preferring to move to a new solution taking those forward. After all, they were currently just paying annual maintenance for those diary seats and this can be more economic/convenient than swapping out.

Contractor solutions used primarily outside housing, also often come with their own scheduling facilities. One example is BigChange, that provides bulk-scheduling options as well as the expected mobile integrations.

‘Plug-In’ scheduler options have been available for some time, such as Click (now part of Salesforce Field Service) and the new written for Cloud ‘More IQ’ solution. The latter is backed and designed by a number of original DRS development staff, including Gael Sianson a chap very recognisable from Optitime events. I remember an interesting evening exploring a hotel Calvados menu with him and his colleagues, many years back before the full move to Kirona.

I notice too that FLS (Fast Lean Smart) appears to be gaining some traction in Social Housing recently too. Good modern API’s are essential for these standalone options, particularly where an integration into Cloud/Browser applications or D365 (Microsoft Dynamics 365) are being considered.

The list above is not intended to be absolutely comprehensive, so apologies if I have inadvertently missed any products.

So, what should be considered when looking at the available options?

Carefully consider (3 or 5 year) cost of ownership , including integrations, per seat and annual maintenance pricing. What are the costs of adding additional diary seats. Are these cheaper, the more you add?
If an existing solution is already in use, is it economic to swap out? How well does that existing solution function, supporting the Customer Journey?
Speed – For your mix of diaries (repairs, arrears, estate management etc), how fast can appointments be assigned? Will customer service agents have a resident on waiting for 3 seconds or 30? Is it this fast with ten diaries when demonstrated, or the 350 diaries in your actual real world staff team?
Will your scheduler work with self-service quickly and and any repairs diagnostic tool in place?
How many matching metrics are needed? Areas, towns, locations, sub-locations, trade primary/secondary skills, ability/experience, multi-trade, paired visits etc?
Are you looking for an on-premise or more future-proof native in the Cloud solution?
Is there a preference to reduce software suppliers to a consolidated (trusted) solution or a mix of best of breed, with multiple suppliers and application sources/technologies?
Is your scheduler choice already integrated (& proven) to your application software, or is a new interface needed? A rich set of available and well documented APIs can speed up the latter.
Technology - If the scheduler is cloud based, can it support 1,000 diaries as easily as a 100 and scale up/down quickly if required?
How much dynamic scheduling is really needed?
How well would aspects such as road conditions and other minute by minute optimisations be taken into account?
How easy should bulk automatic moving of diary appointments be possible. E.G. from three staff members that have just phoned in sick, having gone down with the Covid19 ?
Also, will features such as 'doorstep' follow-on/up appointments be capable by trade operatives/other staff? IE staff on the scheme as well as office based agents can also flexibly re-appoint. Cloud based scheduling might be a certain advantage there.

At some point it would be interesting to put a blogpost together on some real-world scheduler experiences, or in fact examine one of the newer offerings in more detail if that were practical. Stay tuned if we can do that a bit later in the year.

If we can help your organisation with repair, DLO, contractor, scheduling, mobile or self-service application and transformation issues/procurement, please just get in touch, for a chat over a brew 😉

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

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David Cutter Music – Schedules.
(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk 07854-655009

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