The Best of Both Worlds (Clearview or Qlikview)?

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

You might well ask, "What's the difference?". Reporting presentation or tracking as well?

I have recently been working with a number of organisations, around the subject of housing KPIs. Readers of this blog will know I am a fan of Qlikview (http://tonysmiththathousingitguy.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/rear-qlikview-mirror.html ) as well as Clearview. If budget allows it would be great to have both. However, budgets may not really run to that.

So what is the difference?

Well Qlikview is a fabulous in memory reporting presentation and drill-down tool, super in its own way. Often sold with five days 'proving' reports, it's an easy sale. Where Clearview cleans up in my opinion is in its KPI tracking capabilities. If you already utilise desktop task-tray workflow, your organisation will, I predict, really take to this tool.

My friends and users in a large repairs team speak in favourable terms of Clearview in its ability to track stats, actions, follow-ups and its transparent views of where the organisation hierarchy is with its improvements. No point having a team labelled 'P&Q', 'Performance and quality', 'Business Improvement' etc, if there's no clear evidence of who or what is being attempted, to be improved.

Even with my simple outlook, it took me about 10 minutes to figure out the Clearview world of monitoring actions, against last month, quarter or years' selected trends. So transparent that your board will take to it like ducks to water.  Attachments, notes and other info can be recorded, so KPI actions are not lost in the ether.

Talking to the chief exec, she liked it too, whether she was looking at Arrears as % of GAD, void days & rent loss, repair no access or percentage of rechargeable repairs completed that could not be recharged. At that organisation, true ODBC is also being started to link KPI dashboards directly with HMS & other system data, enforcing one true version of the truth. Clearview is indeed one application which can provide added control over your stats and unravelled ability to track actions and progress.  

Mark my words, ability to monitor, act on data/information and show what is being initiated to carry out improvements will increasingly be high on the management agenda. Don't get left behind!

Related Post: Whats stopping better voids management?

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You can link with me on LinkedIn here - http://uk.linkedin.com/in/tonysmiththathousingitguy It would be great to connect !

Van Halen - Best Of Both Worlds.
(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, or you could benefit from any of our services please get in touch and let me know!

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Love Travel (on the customer journey)

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/

Repairs, repairs. repairs.. such a lot of repairs action these last few weeks. I don't know if its increased arrears fears with it being the anniversary of the (spare) bedroom (subsidy) tax and fears of more caps to come, that is putting the (white LED) spotlight on repairs. But I do seem to be looking into a lot of repairs for my customers.

A lot of questions you might recognise go into the mix. Better diagnosis or broader originally, performance of internal workforce/contracted major contractor, improved interfaces/bulk invoicing, lastly the most important, when its recognised, improving the 'Customer Journey'.   

Do you recognise the real meaning of 'The Customer Journey'? More pointedly, how often do you have all parts in that long chain, in one room to share experiences, tackle challenges and make improvements quickly? Each Tuesday morning I attend a meeting with one of my larger customers in the West Midlands managing over 18,000 homes. Its only an hour, but because we have a full chain from Customer services, scripting, assets, repairs, dispatcher, an IT chap and trade operative (An excellent 'Plumber' since you ask, don't DM me for foreigners(!). I do my best to not miss any of these. I would even make a special journey to go to it, for the hour, if I was not working for the whole day there.

Most weeks we solve or change something. although everyone has their corner/team to look after, we don't get upset when a mirror is held up to reflect something we can improve. More importantly we dig down to seek the real cause of our issues and usually by the meeting following, someone can report some improvement or a nugget of greater insight.   

The few people at other RSL's I have talked with about this approach have all, surprisingly for me, found this remarkable. Doing it so often, or even achieving it at all. If you are not doing this regularly in your organisation, in my opinion you are missing a trick. Consistently good customer service is the cornerstone of great service delivery and achieving best value for money.

Failures when we log our customer requests and problems on the doorstep can be so useful to us. Bring them on, bring them to us and get the journey members in a room to solve them. Discuss, solve, improve brothers and sisters, you know it makes sense.

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If you are free later this month 30th April 2014 (in London) or 22nd May 2014 (in Manchester) and looking to better tackle your repairs reporting and improve your service, read more here about the one day workshops, with the Rod Laird people http://www.rodlaird.co.uk/default.asp?page=1466
Places are booking up fast. I will be exploring what to measure, how to maintain accuracy, what can go wrong and how your IT systems can help (not hinder) with your task. 

Also, a big shout out to everyone who said hello at the Stoke road-show event this week, great to see some old friends again, hopefully it wont be long until I see you at a free bar or buffet again soon. You know who you are Simon 8 - )


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, cutting your waste:

http://tonysmiththathousingitguy.blogspot.com/2013/02/what-waste.html

Danko Jones - Love Travel.


(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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Rear (Qlik)view mirror

If you do the Twitter thing, follow me at @hotpixUK

In a recent financial system procurement that I was involved with this year, the MI / BI (Management/Business Intelligence tool we eventually went for was Qlikview. It was an application I had not seen close up before, but was aware of it among that other clutch of reporting dashboards generally found in housing.

Most of them sound very much like they were named after probiotic yoghurts and nearly all of the popular ones start with the letter ‘C’. Spooky eh? You know who I mean; Corvu, Cognos, Caci Infoflow, Capita Insight, Clearview, Covalent and Coactiva. The latter comes with three key benefits: antioxidant vitamins A and E, fibre and probiotics for digestive health, and calcium and vitamin D for bone health. Plus, each report is delicious and cream and that makes your taste buds happy too. Or I am sure thats what the nice lady demo-ing it said!

Well Qlikview does not begin with a ‘C’, offer any health benefits and breaks the rule of my old English teacher, Mrs Holtam (quite a fox in her day I am sure), that ‘Q’ generally needs to be followed by a ‘U’. That aside it’s an impressive application. Manipulating all its data in memory and supporting the usual mass of data sources you can mix and match, it’s quite a hidden gem. A free download can be obtained from http://www.qlikview.com/uk/explore/experience/free-download?ga-link=hero

It’s easy to setup and (for once) just as the salesman said “I was up and running in minutes”.  With Qlikview it is easy to highlight issues and strange data, in its familiar default green, gray and black interface. I have also pointed it retail data that I was doing a project with. That was 800mb+ of detail on ladies underwear (don’t ask, it was a project for larger size retailer JD Williams) and it breezed through it, even on a rather aging Acer laptop, with only a 2 x 1.2Ghz processor. ‘On the fly’ drilldown was just that. Fast and easy.

Qlikview can cache your data too if required, so can operate independent of the source if the database is off-line or otherwise unavailable. Many other solutions would fail or fall over in that situation. Initial costs are very reasonable too. £11K might well be sufficient for a medium sized housing organisation. At a recent conference at London Olympia (NHF-national Housing Federation Housing IT Managers) I was chatting with an old friend from Worthing Homes, Stephen Wallace, over a pint of course in The Albion on Hammersmith Road. He mentioned he too had selected Qlikview for his housing data and had more or less got started with it straight away. The ease of identifying poor or strange data is a real bonus. This can be spotted visually and passed straight away to the team responsible for fixing it.

This is what Gartner had to say about Qlikview: http://www.qlikview.com/us/explore/resources/analyst-reports/gartner-report-magic-quadrant The report placed it with the leaders and visionaries.

During my recent finance project a third party was utilised to initially pull together a very complex data structure. Impressively the company Differentia (http://www.diffrentia.co ), specialist Qlikview integrators came back after 5 free days of consultancy and blew me and the project team away with what had been achieved. It’s great for once to see delivered exactly what was sold.

I am convinced that more and more organisations in the housing sector will probably be looking at Qlikview for MI / BI in the near future. I will be keeping in touch with Stephen to see how Worthing Homes get on with it. Probably over a few Ram and Specials, if planned properly.

It cannot have escaped your attention that the December festival of retailing is upon us. I would like to wish all my readers a happy Christmas and thoughts of a less stormy and prosperous 2013 for you and your loved ones. Peace on earth perhaps a tough call, but let’s love each other more. If we all do a bit, maybe it will catch on across the world.
Here’s my Christmas card to you - http://www.jibjab.com/view/Wkru4u5ORCOTyZdGW-Khog

Read on to, Twitter Social Fools:

http://tonysmiththathousingitguy.blogspot.com/2013/02/social-fools-if-you-do-twitter-thing.html

Pearl Jam always checked their Qlikview Mirror".
(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk


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CHR,Citrix,Civica,Clearview,CMS Template,COA,Coactiva,Codeman,Comino,Competitive Dialogue process,complex IT procurements,Component Accounting,Consilium,Consolidation,Consultancy,Consultant,Contact Manager,Context, MD , Director , Housing software, UK, United Kingdom,Contractor Systems,CORE,CorVu,Cost Reductions,Covalent,CRM,Crystal Reports,CTI,CTX,Customer Relationship Management,Deeplake,Development Systems,Document Management,Documotive,ECMK,EDRMS,England, English,EnterpriseBI,ERP Systems,Finance,Financial Systems,Getting best from,Grasp,Grip,hardware,HG,Housemark survey,Housing Blueprint,Housing Group,Impact Response,implementations,In House,In4,Infoflow,Information Technology,Informix,inHouse,in-house workforce, HousingIT, Miracle Software HouSys, Innovation,Inside Housing,Internet Portal,Invu,Ireland,Irish,IT Budget,IT Training,iWorld,Keylogic,Keystone,Kirona,Kypera,management reporting,Measuring Change,Mebus,Miracle,MISCS, mobile functionality,Monopoly board images and pictures, Montal,MS Dynamics,MS Dynamics CRM2011,Neighbourhoods and Communities,Northgate,Notice,NROSH,OA,OGC Buying Solutions,Ohms,OJEU Limits,OmFax,Omniledger,Open source software,open tender,OpenHousing,Opti-Time,Oracle,Orchard,Outsource and outsourcing,Paloma,performance management systems,PfH,Pick,PIMMS,pimms4communities,Planned maintenance,Plus,PM,Progress,Promaster,Proval,Pyramid, QL,QLX,Registered Providers,Registered Social Landlord,Rent Increase Freezes,Repairfinder,Reporting,Reports,ROCC, NINTEX , NINTEX workflow , Rocket,RPs,RSL,Saffron,SAP,Scots, Scottish,Scotland,SDM,sector,Server Virtualisation,servicing, Universalcredit, universal credit, universal credits, Servitor,Servitor,Sharepoint,Simdel,Simdell,Slash and Burn,Social Media,Software,SQL Open Housing,SQL Reporting Services,SQL reporting services,SQL Server,Star rating,Stores and Stock,Strategic Asset Management,Sunguard ,Surveys,Sx3,System alignment, Systemwise, Factorwise, Blockwise, Block wise, Task,Terminal Services,Three Star,Today,Total repairs,Tribal,Twitter,U2, 07854-655009 , 07854655009 , 07854 655009 , "07854 655009" , tonysmith , tonysmiththat , thathousing , thathousingIT , thathousingITguy ,UniClass Enterprise,Unidata,Universal Housing,Universe,Unrest,Van Stock,Voice and data,Wales,Welsh,Windows Server,Workflow and tasking,Xmbrace,XML