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An interesting news item caught my eye this week in the socialhousing software world, for the under 6,000 units HMS world in the UK.
Namely the announcement that “Housing Online and Designer Software announce a new strategic alliance”. For others out there asking “who”, these are recent emerging disrupters having a lot of success in this part of the sector and particularly with independent non-council, charity or LSVT providers in Scotland many of who fit in this amount of properties managed. Read the full corporate statement here on the HomeMaster site Great for Phil Sorrell & Ian Thompson.
As readers of this blog will know and my wider contacts, I work a lot in Scotland and love the place for so many reasons, but certainly through the good folks at Arneil Johnston, where we have worked together for nearly ten years now. (Lovely to work with you Donna, a younger, cooler, wiser younger sister I never had).
So, a quick primer (as those Yanks may say).
Homemaster from Designer Software are perhaps the fastest growing Cloud/browser first HMS supplier you have never heard of. The folks behind it if we had one of those Pete Frame rock family trees, you might remember Ian & Craig from Kypera, then Castleton, MRI etc. Having lots of experience of takeover, compromise and other clandestine employment agreements, its franticly baffling to me that when Castleton bought Kypera, there was no restriction for 99 years of the original founders, to create any new housing & finance system.
These guys have indeed found and exploited a window of opportunity, (which looks to still be open particularly in Scotland), to take a number of old Kypera/Castleton sites, smaller older legacy Aareon, Capita, MIS ActiveH sites and others with minimal effort. If they start to expand into the 5-15k zone, more providers should be concerned. Law of the jungle, laggards are eaten.
So, who are Housing Online ?
Well, without coming out of the closet as a fan, I have to say I love what these guys did for ELHA This is one of the most fabulous self-service portals in the British Isles (yes Southern Ireland and all my friends and contacts there, I include you too). Cartoony without being condescending and spookily successful in resident take-up.
So the craic is that Housing Online add that polish to self-service portals, that mere HMS providers cannot. Now this for me has been evident for over a couple of decades since being on the (supplier) dark side. Self-service created by computer geeks and nerds, look just like that. Often they look like the tool they were designed within. A good example is portals developed for D365 CRM, if you are not careful you offer something close to what your service centre sees (with the same 10pt Verdana font too!).
Lets face it, many portals (resident/contractor/finance) need some serious polish. Its not quite like buying something on Amazon in 90secs now is it?
Bigger questions though, is this the start of Designer Software buying up other useful solutions and creating new alliances? Could they in 3 years become the new Aareon UK, or put in a bid for someone else’s housing solution? Who knows, we are in interesting times social housing systems folk.
While this is an interesting story, I should as some point pull out some other disrupter's for attention, maybe I will do that later this year... always remember, if you think you are innovating, feel free to give me a shout.
Related Post: After Covid, are we embracing the New Normal ?
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.
Culture Shock - All Together.
(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk 07854-655009
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