For The Want Of A Nail

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



Predictive analytics look to me to becoming Social Housing's next 'Self-serve' or 'staff mobile working'. The latter pretty much now being rolled out by pretty much all forward thinking landlords. I have recently written a whitepaper on predictive analytics for arrears case management. Definitely one area which I would take a proven solution off the shelf.

But how should you go about building a model yourself, for other purposes? What might be the gotcha's that are worth thinking about?

Well the first one for me would be focus carefully on your end-game. As I have heard it described quite well, by one data scientist friend, don't build yourself a rather elaborate hammer, then go looking for your nail. Predictive Analytics is a current buzzword, much like 'Digital Strategy' was until recently. At least most organisations understand what the latter practically means now. Before setting out, know what most of your outcomes are going to be.

Next, when you have some outcomes in mind, check your available data supports it. Easier when you start with a well integrated set of systems. Do get in touch with me directly if you still haven't cracked that one. Never try to structure a project around data you just don't have. Ask that crucial question before you start. Where specific data is missing, there may be the opportunity to generate it or collect it specially. You might want to target a particular sub-set of residents/customers, to have reliable data to utilise.

Data quality is the next gotcha. Assume a good deal of your data will be of poor quality. That need not hold you back. Many projects have been delayed until data is thought to be 100% correct. Believe me, you won't have 3 years or more to get to that point. I would urge you to cautiously work with what you have and enforce a data culture to constantly improve it, in parallel to any predictive analytics project.

Assume too, that you will find even more poor data, as you build models & work with it. I have lost count of the number of tenancies & works order requests, with end dates before start dates etc. If your data cannot be corrected, filter it right out, lest it skew models.

One example I heard about, management were too bullish about the apparent good quality of data. After being advised that data cleansing was required in the project, this was dismissed to shorted timescales, against the advice of consultants. Later when poor data quality was revealed, and more time needed to be added to extend the project, to achieve outcomes, it became a credibility issue for the director involved. Don't be caught out by too much good news, hiding the bad.

Finally, when your lovely shiny predictive analytics model is built, ensure you have planned a proper deployment phase. It is not enough that you have 'built it and so they will come'. Work out how you are going to tell the wider organisation what your model can do and seed their imagination as to how they can apply it to their own department issues and decision making. Find out what their particular nail will be, to which they can apply your new shiny hammer.

I promise, soon I will post on what typical calculations for SocialHousing, might work for us, and how this might affect process.

Related Post: Sick of your housing management system? Why not write your own?  

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.

Todd Rundgren – For The Want Of A Nail.
(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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Learn To Fly

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 didn't have a runway, but the Belfry hotel just outside Oxford, was the ideal place to learn to fly. If you are involved with social housing that is. I was pleased to get down to the fifth Housing Technology Conference last week, put together by George Grant and the Intelligent Business Company. As usual, the venue was a great choice (if a little of a labyrinth). Even my housing friends and customers from the south east found getting there an easier job than getting into central London. Maybe the NHF should (at last) take note and consider locating out of the capital and Olympia, for coming November IT Manager events. All credit to George, keep up the good work! He even fed the suppliers, something that does not always happen for autumn in West London.

Many thanks too, everyone who stopped me for a chat, great to hear how projects are going and some of the frustrations out there. Integration (or lack of it), inflexibility of applications or suppliers, limitations of project teams/staff, procurement hassles and some shrinking IT budgets, were all the same current issues that housing ICT people chatted with me about.  As usual, feel free to contact me to bounce any details off me.

It was good to see such a variety of presentations, although welfare reform was a recurrent theme. Essential and at times very thought provoking. George Clarke, C4's 'Desperation' man was an inspired choice for opener. We certainly need more positive and refreshing voices like his. It also brought back some of my caravan nightmares from my youth. I still have not been back to Lowestoft to this day (honest!). So much to mention, I will try to focus on what I found interesting and innovative.

Richard Scholes of Hyde had some interesting points to make. One about the outcome of his competitive (comm's project) dialogue, struck a chord with me. Just getting down to a single supplier can have its benefits. Hyde managed to shave nearly a 1/3 from its previous costs. Maybe time spent on CD can always deliver some kind of payback. His internal staff assessment using a panel, was also a clear and fair way of improving the quality of his ICT team. I was nodding and smiling too with his approach of embedding his ICT staff with users and business teams. The perfect way for everyone to interact and understand everyone's pressures. 

Jonathan Creaser of RHP gave a great overview with Tracey Elliott of their progress in supporting multi-channel nudging. Everywhere I go to do consultancy these days, want to channel shift well. RHP seem to really be on top of the game here, even being brave enough to persuade the 'silver surfers' to get online. Full marks to Tracey for answering my questions regarding that truthfully. Not something to be glossed over, digital exclusion. Moreover, an area we need to help and nudge our communities.

One of the most interesting sessions came from Accent Group and The Housing Contact Company. How & why is customer satisfaction important in 2014. In this presentation John Doyle of Housing Contact drew on his experience of gathering customer feedback across a number of industries to question the relevance of speaking to your customers in 2014. Through his unlikely comparison of social housing and the UK automotive retail market he made the point that measuring customer satisfaction whatever your sector, has probably never been as important as a process for organisational improvement.

He noted that although most organisations understand how they go about measuring satisfaction, very few of them really understand why they do it. It had echoes of John Seddon and his Vanguard method. Understand how to measure the outcome, dont just blindly play to the KPIs in use.
John's whole philosophy is to try and speak to everyone to whom you have delivered a service as soon as possible after the event and then to use your dissatisfied customers to tell you what is wrong with your operation. This fairly radical approach was given weight by the testimonial provided by Andrew Kidds of the Accent Group, who has used the service for over 2 years and seen real satisfaction levels improve – ie based on around 33% customer responses taken on the same day or day after as opposed to less than 10% response rates taken weeks later.

At the same time the level of complaints have dropped significantly and last year alone Accent were able to identify and resolve dissatisfaction issues with over 1500 of their tenants. This all ploughs back into an improved customer journey and overall lower numbers of waste and avoidable calls, greater efficiencies.

The examples I have selected from just a few of the presentations, show the quality of what we had here. Take some of these lessons and stories, learn to make your organisation fly. Less suppliers banging on about how brilliant their solutions are and more practical experiences from RSLs. Let's have more of these George, keep them coming!

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: Autumn, the conference season. Great time to see what's out there and working.

Foo Fighters - Learn To Fly .


(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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