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I got down to ‘The Smoke’, this last Monday to present at the DIN (Disruptive Innovators Network), invited by Ian Wright. I recall him some years ago lamenting the lack of any significant new Housing System Platforms, being created since way back in the 2010’s.
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| Paul Hackett CBE,CEO Southern Housing |
He had a point as any charity, HA, RSL or council in the UK & British Isles of any real size, has a pretty shrunken choice of solution(s) that offer modern ‘Responsive Browser’ presentation, SAAS and full Cloud. Most COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf Solutions) come from barely a handful of reliable suppliers, since the buy-out consolidations of the last decade.
I thought very carefully how to encapsulate the archaeological dig needed to explain how exactly we got here, of course being gentle to our hosts at Two Kingdom Street, Paddington (Natch). The latter of course has resellers with various degrees of productised config and ability to sell you some bespoke-ing if required, in order to ensure you need plenty of staff to manage that uniqueness way into the future. Other CRM/ERM platforms are available and it would be amiss for me to not name Salesforce too, as the extra economical option with very reasonable licensing for SocialHousing, that those 1980s DJ jocks ‘Smashy & Nicey’, could only describe as ‘C-H-A-R-I-T-Y---M-A-T-E’.
At the end of the presentation, I talked about ‘The Young Pretenders’.
Yes, guess what? There are two new solutions out there, created within the last 5 & 3 years, that meet those basic modern standards, also combining housing/finance.
The first was Homemaster from Designer Software, the ex-Kypera Castleton PLC lads. One solution that has been particularly successful in Scotland, converting ex-Kypera, Aareon, SDM and other supplier legacy solution sites. It’s a good COTS solution designed for the under 6k home providers, with self-service portal provided by acquired just last year, ‘Housing Online’. A quick solution to implement, just carefully check your contract conditions.
Secondly, maybe something for the bigger provider, we have Rubixx, maybe the dinosaur supplier slayer solution, attracting larger and larger customers month on month. True multi-tenant Cloud solution that utilises all those technologies that your geekiest developers, would love to be developing in. Modern free open API’s and out of the box integrations with modern Cloud partners, such as MoreIQ, Propeller, HousingInsight, CxFeedback etc. Finance is claimed to exceed the functionality of OpenAccounts, so maybe an alternative consideration to OneAdvanced Cloud Financials.
Rubixx have already converted legacy Capita, Kypera, Aareon, MIS-AMS and MRI sites over to the modern world, at a fixed price per rentable property.
I have worked with clients who have chosen these new solutions and appeared to have had some good experiences.
Well, they do say ‘A week is a long time in politics’, well a week in Social Housing IT seems to be even longer. Its barely Thursday and a big sell out has already occurred. After failing over 4 years to write a new Cloud solution, one of the Jurastic Park big beasts have splashed out on Homemaster. How they beat Plentific to that, I don’t know. That’s who I had on my Bingo-Masters Break-Out card.
No doubt a plan is already in the works to show the new prize to existing QLX & QLF customers later this year, and promise a more elaborately engineered version, on the roadmap, capable of handling bigger stock portfolios. Maybe let someone else be the first bigger pioneers on that one. It would be interesting to see what’s produced, in a 4 way penalty shootout with the bigger modern beasts out there. Hopefully this will not go off-radar like Yuneo, the "QL NG". Its worth rebranding as 'Homeo' I think (Aareon are welcome to that advice for free!).
Having taken quite a few QLX sites over the last five years, I am unsure if those Homemaster customers will be over the moon returning to Aareon’s sales ledger. Also, inevitably a merged helpdesk is sure to result, as all mergers tend to do. How will that continue existing strong relationships and stem ‘brain drain’ of experienced staff? Looking on the brightside, Aareon can at least celebrate their first win of the year at Waverley Housing, once that one is quietly waved through.
I am sure many organisations (and suppliers of course) will mull this over, across the weekend and let it all sink in. Are the dinosaurs waking up to the asteroid, or just hunkering down with new primates, carnivores, herbivores and vegetarians, then hoping for the best?
02/04/2025 Update (a whole week later) - Aareon finally officially announce the acquisition - maybe they were avoiding the MMC, after MRI & Capita challenge ? Do you think choice in the market is being reduced or enhanced? Do let us know.
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_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ *** Join the discussion with Claire & Aiden *** _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ |
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Related Post: What questions should be asked at big HMS procurements ?
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.
Levellers – Sell Out.
(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk 07854-655009
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