Shopping

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

After Solvares buys More-IQ, then merges with Totalmobile. UK housing DLO & contractor repair systems just got a lot more interesting. Two announcements in four days and neither is small.

Following on from consolidating FLS (Fast Lean Smart) recently, Solvares Group has acquired UK-based More-IQ, a true Cloud dynamic scheduling specialist that has been aiming straight at social housing landlords. Good on Nick, Katie and Gael on that one. 😉

Then Solvares and Totalmobile announced yet another merger, creating a combined group of 800+ people supporting 4,000+ customers, with housing explicitly called out as a key sector. This matters because scheduling these days is not a nice-to-have. In housing repairs, it is the control room. If the scheduler is average, everything downstream looks average too: customer comms, compliance visits, voids sequencing, multi-trade, right-first-time, and the “why did nobody turn up?” calls.

What does this mean in simple terms, a view from a seasoned sector Critical Friend ?

Solvares is stitching together optimisation and scheduling brains with a mainstream field service execution platform. More-IQ strengthens the cloud-native scheduling side, and Solvares explicitly positions it in their comms as boosting its offering for the housing sector and accelerating cloud-native innovation.

The Totalmobile merger statement is basically “planning through to execution”, at scale, with no immediate change promised to existing customers. Well, they all say that don’t they?

These platforms are winning some significant housing deals and often banging on about those wins. How some of those pan out to satisfactory go-lives might be somewhat shankier. I mean I see some of these in my projects.

Community Housing recently has selected Totalmobile’s platform to support repairs for 6,000+ homes, with 70 operatives, aiming for March 2026 go-live and projecting £750k+ net savings over five years. Hyde Housing has a published repairs contract with Totalmobile extending field-service and scheduling capability across wider operations. Wandle Housing Association awarded Totalmobile Connect, Mobilise and Analytics via G-Cloud. Raven Housing Trust and Vivid Homes are great More-IQ examples.

So what should DLO repairs managers and housing organisations do next? Maybe don’t panic. But also not sleepwalk into a new foreign-owned group making quiet changes while you are busy fighting damp, mould and backlog. After all, there are some great alternative indie choices out there too, such as ROCC who quietly seem to be just getting on with doing a good job with everything ‘in the SAAS box’. 

Here is what I would get nailed down now, in writing, (with dates OBVs) :

Roadmap certainty: what gets invested in, what gets merged, and what gets nudged toward end-of-life over the next 24 months. The press line is “no immediate changes”, but “immediate” is doing a lot of heavy lifting  there (like every merger or acquisition).

Commercial protection: what happens to pricing at renewal when products get “simplified” into bundles, or the additional contract clauses bubble up.

UK housing priority: ask how UK housing feature needs, support coverage, and escalation routes are protected when priorities get set outside the UK. Lets hope all decisions need not go via Heikendorf, DE in the future, that would not be clever for customers across the British Isles, RP's & AHB's.

Integration commitments: if your HMS, CRM, comms, compliance, BI Reporting, or contractor ecosystem hangs off scheduling, insist on a clear integration support plan. In a merger, interfaces are where surprises breed, particularly if some products could be depreciated, or swapped with other alternatives.

And what about OneAdvanced DRS, you know OptiTime as was? (Showing my age now)

This is the bit that should make OneAdvanced customers and prospects sit up straighter. OneAdvanced markets Dynamic Resource Scheduler as a core product for field workforce optimisation and it is also being sold on G-Cloud frameworks as Resource Scheduling (formerly DRS).

But the competitive pressure is more real than ever, because Solvares has just bought a supplier that is positioning itself as cloud-native dynamic scheduling software with a housing-first focus, and it is now (most likely) being paired with Totalmobile’s execution platform.

So the likely impact on DRS is not “DRS is dead” (not quite yet anyway). It is more like this: procurements get harder, buyers will ask more awkward questions about what “cloud” really means, and incumbents will be pushed to modernise faster because the Solvares-Totalmobile combo can pitch an end-to-end story with a cloud-native scheduling engine at its centre. Again, this is not an only option, look and think out of the box, you don’t always have to be with the big boys. Often small and perfectly formed is an advantage.

If you are a DRS landlord/user, you probably do not need to rip out and replace. But you should use this moment to extract roadmap clarity and commitments, because serious competition has just arrived with a variant of 100% true Cloud scheduling and (potentially) a much bigger chequebook behind it.

My Take is this could genuinely help providers, if it leads to better scheduling that matches the reality of housing, then actually executes cleanly in the field. However, consolidation is never a charity project. It is a control project. The winners will be the landlords who treat this like any other high-impact supplier change: tighten governance, pin down roadmap and commercials, and keep hold of their operational data and integrations so they stay in the driving seat. Hopefully the consolidated helpdesk will not give you too many sleepless nights.

Is your organisation struggling to justify a software change, or worried not everything has been covered? 

Get in touch , I will drop in for a cuppa & bring the Fox's Chocolate Gingers ☕

       Related Post: As a client told me recently, the right Critical Friend, will potentially save you more money than you spend.

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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.

Pet Shop Boys – Shopping

(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk 07854-655009


Access a quick list of our Social Housing ICT blog posts here , what projects do we get involved in? Access them 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.

File Under: #HomesForBritain,#HousingDAY,#InternetOfTenants,#Shout,#UKHousing, 07854655009, 1st Touch,1stTouch,360,365Agile,3squared,4Js, ACL,ALMO,AMS,AX,Aareon,Abritas,Academy,Accuserv,Accuserve,Active Housing,ActiveH,ActiveF,ActiveFinance,ActiveHousing,Acutence,Advanced,Affinity,Aidenn,Agile,Agile365,AHB,AirWatch,Alscient,Alfresco,Alignment,Allpay,Amazon Web Services,Anite,Apex,App,ArchHouse,Archouse,Asprey e-state pro,Asset Management,Associates,Aurora,Average IT Costs,AWI SX Integration Toolkit,AWS, BI,BO,BPR,BancTec,BigChange,Blockwise,BluTek,Bluebox,Blueprint,BrikHousing,Browser Applications,BC, Business Central, Business Objects,Business Planning,Business Process Review,Business social networking, CACI,Capita One Housing,CBL,CCS IT Keystone CCSIT,CEDRM,CHICS,CHR,CIH,CMS,COA,CORE,CPL,CRM,CRM2013,CRS,CTI,CTX,Cadcorp,Capita,CapitaOne,Capita One,Capital Management,Cashflow,Castle,Castleton,Castleton Technology,Cedar Open Accounts,Cerrus,Change,Charges,Chartered Institute Of 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Internet Things That Make You Go Hmmmmmm

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

Regarding a subject close to my heart, last week I was pleased to receive a copy of the Housing Technology, ‘Internet Of Things in Housing’ report 2017/18. Its very timely as next week its #HousingTech2018 at the Oxford Belfry, and a number of sessions I notice touch on IOT experiences.

Of course, if you read this blog, feel free to stop me and say hi, pick my brains on any of the sector products or suppliers. Aareon QLX/QLF users will probably have plenty to ponder about, based on the recent MD reshuffle announcements. Its always great to meet everyone at HT, which has become the de-facto place to see what organisations are doing and see what products emerging. If you have any ideas for future blog posts too, come and fill your boots!

Back in November 2017, I did a spot at a Knightstone Housing day on data, around IOT. Part of that was a graph indicating explosive growth, anytime soon, in IOT. Much of my session did caution around the security aspects of emerging IOT and the patch-ability of devices. I illustrated this at the time with the story of the hacked Samsung internet fridges, coerced to do a classic denial of service attack. This neatly brought the problem home. I.E. that we are looking at quite raw technology here, that still has emerging standards being carved out.

The HT IOT report does seem to bear this aspect out quite well. While its maybe not the blazing saddles era, it might still be that of the ‘Good, Bad and the Ugly’, where IOT pioneers dare to tread. Barriers to adoption include recognised areas of security (11%), integration (18%) and a whopping 34% thinking IOT is plain ‘unproven’. Not brilliant for a pretty risk-averse sector, like social housing. So, manufacturers have work to do on the techie stability of these devices.

In a sector that often has large organisations lacking even the most basic necessities, for 2018, it is hardly surprising that between 39% & 69% of organisations, did not think that IOT was important, from an overall strategy viewpoint. Now I can understand if organisations are still awaiting enterprise-wide EDRMS, CRM, Mobile Working and usable customer self-service, in shoving IOT to the back of a large queue. These outfits clearly need to pull their socks up. 

Fact of the matter is that IOT is here and already happening.

I did some work with a construction and building services corporation, last Spring, who specialise in ‘Smart Cities’. They were successfully scaling up a lot of techniques from ‘domestic gadgets’, into new built environments. Car parking and energy efficient lighting, the former which is highlighted in a case study, brought substantial benefits. 

Any organisation lucky enough to be building new affordable housing, needs to embrace the possible benefits of IOT on offer here. Existing voids and care & support environments to different degrees, can easily leverage low cost IOT.    

Interestingly, a rich variety of IOT devices were in use, or planned. Humidity and temperature sensors are by far the most popular installed. Considering the number of our residents, struggling with high costs of heating their homes, and in potential fuel poverty, this is an excellent place to start. Humidity, motion and chemical detectors have been proven in transient void environments, to manage our assets, at a time when damage can certainly occur and every day without a tenant really counts.

For me the key trick with IOT, to make it a success, is integration with our business applications. That is the icing on the cake and means we potentially can build systems that react to information, rather than just record a growing glut of data, we have to mine ourselves for insights.

For instance, we want to know when that care & support resident has not boiled the kettle this morning, (if they usually do), rather than the previous 48 times they managed it between 08:35 and 09:42 hrs. Without clear, useful, clever integration, we create yet more admin. If we have a frequency sensor on a lift motor, we need to know when its oscillation frequency changes, so we can do that (low cost) service check. Ideally too, that smart boiler, notifies us that it is poorly, a long time before it fails.   

This report tells me a number of things. Socialhousing is not being ambitious enough in planning for IOT deployment. Perhaps CEO’s are not being sufficiently informed or enthused as to its potential. Secondly, finance teams & budget holders need to understand the potential efficiencies of the ‘smart estate’. Real time data about our stock, customer usage of energy and behaviour, will reduce repair spend, provide more proactive care & maintenance, potentially reduce energy bills and increase customer satisfaction.

Related Post: Automation via ICT is not always the right thing to do. Just look at the evolution of the Car Wash 

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.

C+C Music Factory - Things That Make You Go Hmmmm.
(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.
File Under: 360,1stTouch,4Js. , 07854655009 ,365Agile," """" ",,#UKHousing,#HousingDAY, #HomesForBritain,#InternetOfTenants, #Shout,1st Touch,3squared,Accuserv,Acutence,Aareon,Academy,ActiveH,AirWatch,Alignment,ALMO,Anite,Apex,ArchHouse,Archouse,asbestos, Asprey e-state pro,ActiveHousing,Asset Management,Aurora,Average IT Costs,App,Associates,ACL,Abritas,AMS,AX,aspireview,Agile365, BO,BPR,Browser Applications,Business Objects,Business Planning, Business Process Review,Business social networking, Blockwise, Block wise,BI,BancTec,BluTek,Bluebox, Castle,CBL,Cedar Open Accounts,Cx,Change,Cheaper Housing IT,Chics, CHR,Citrix,Civica,Clearview,CMS , CCS IT Keystone CCSIT,Civica Genero,Contractor Systems,CORE,CorVu,Cost Reductions,Covalent,CRM,Crystal Reports,CTI,CTX,Customer Relationship Management,Cashflow, COA,Coactiva,Codeman,Comino,Competitive Dialogue process,complex IT procurements,Component Accounting, Community Reward Services, Consilium, Consolidation, Consultancy,Consultant,Contact 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Showing Out

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



Great to be able to get along to the CIH Conference in England's second city, Manchester last week.
Always a very interesting event, I managed to pack in a full day from a 7.30am start in Central Library, to an evening with the super folk of WISH (Women In Social Housing) and Northgate at Albert's Schloss in Peter St.

Great too to meet the super Evie Copland, my favourite follower, from Dumfries and Galloway. I will say hello the next time I am up in the Annan or Dumfries office with @ArneilJohnston. We might even manage lunch. A big thank you to all the people I met, who had nice things to say about the blog.

Lots of new stuff to see this year, IOT is getting an airing I notice, in the back area of the exhibition.

What was your fave freebie? Mine was a cardboard VR headset from Aareon, already tipped by me (VR that is, not Aareon), to be the biggest present by this Christmas. Read more at http://tonysmiththathousingitguy.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/virtual-reality-UKHousing.html

What was new, with the systems on the block?

I look at lots of product roadmaps, ever wondering if I will see some of these things live in reality. Do you ever get that feeling? A move to a browser interface is on a few Housing Management System (HMS) provider development roadmaps. HTML5 presentation is a key target for many.

As many people know, I had a hand in helping design the Lettings module in Cx, a few summers ago. Cx is in the Windows 8 tiled Metro interface style and is now rolling out to sites in England and Scotland. This utilises a new database structure, now starting to find its feet in the real world of socialhousing.

Orchard are developing their 'Liberty' re-design, although Capita seem first out of the blocks with an HTML5 solution. Quite soon after announcements last autumn, some screens (sans Progress database, which is a positive) are available. The repairs area is the first to be developed and progress is being made. In contrast to Metro, Capita's take on the GUI re-package, is very much a web2.0 affair.

Users of Amazon, mainstream supermarkets and eBay will recognise many of the design principles used in the new Capita developments, dubbed 'Advantage'. Feedback for office users appears very rich and there looks to be good support for different device footprints and sizes. As declared, the new Capita solution will use the current stable database structure on SQL Server, rather than a new database schema environment, such as been pursued by Civica and Orchard. There is anticipation what Orchard's Liberty will deliver when it comes, its beta release now slightly overdue. My Orchard user contacts suggest we have yet a bit longer to wait for that treat.

Clearly, RSLs and local authorities looking for a new solution now have some alternative options, or existing proven options with a clear roadmap on the same database and new office presentation options, offering stability. Note that out of signal conditions will still need a mobile solution, so choose this with care.

Well, exciting times ahead.

This might be a good time to assess your attitude to browser based GUI's in HTML5 and risk when choosing a new integrated HMS. Do you go with some of what you know, with a new presentation layer, to stay safe?

Catch the blog monthly archive at https://archive.org/details/@housingitguy

Related Post: Are you project managing in the cloud?? 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

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.


Mel & Kim - Showing Out.
(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk 07854-655009


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

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The Sound Of Silver

A funny thing happened to me at a meeting the other day. It was at a pretty large Microsoft Gold partner, they had the lumps of plastic and the several of the flags to prove it. I used to have a filing cabinet with all my MS plastic on it, a few flags filling up the bottom draw too. You know, with those serial cables and spare mice.

Conversation moved to upgrades to ‘standard’ Microsoft products and in particular how bespoke changes around the edges may cause issues. While in the past, this was pretty much ‘always’ a problem. These days any customer or supplier should be looking to use available technology to form an extraction layer from the core stuff under the bonnet.

Workflow is my preferred choice if it is available and particularly if it is main stream. Don’t get me wrong, ABAP and the like is a rich environment, but not many people are coming straight out of college with experience of it. So its skills and that of other very bespoke languages (such as the old Microsoft Dynamics Great Plains Dexterity) can be hard to find and then may have come at a premium.

The discussion moved to Sharepoint and Silverlight in particular. A product released like many others from Redmond with much fanfare and touted as the future of the web. One very much now with a future in doubt. Interestingly the Gold Partner had done a lot of development in Silverlight for a big part of their internal systems. Very disappointing as it was very nearly finished and it was only really recently that effectively quietly they were informed the plug had really been pulled.

Having been director at a Microsoft Gold Partner I felt for the company. So much effort potentially wasted, or at best they had developed into a cul-de-sac, that would need a re-visit in the future. Even worse though is the amount of effort many end users will have put in to Silverlight development, and will have to reconsider if that is still the best technology for them going forward.

A small number of IT people in housing will be aware of the new Civica housing management system just in development. Rumour has it that it will be named Cx (Customer Xperience - geddit?), is being based on Silverlight. That is one decision that surely will have to be re-visited, together with if the coding of the system continues in India. What this space, if I was a betting man, I would guess a move to HTML5 would be best and a look for a different off-shore partner. Vietnam looks likely.

Other popular housing solutions do have some Silverlight content, Keystone Asset Management, the 1st Touch forms designer and several portals for residents and contractors, all spring to mind. 

Sadly, Microsoft and others are always very good at the big product announcements, the futuristic roadmaps and when those products die or are to be retired prematurely, it’s via a whimper rather than a bang. Being in this industry, change is a constant. You get used to it. Still, it never makes life easy as so many tools you rely on today, might often be easily bought up and killed off, or just retired for the next new and shiny idea, coming down the line.

A risk register of applications and connections can be very useful in quantifying exposure to this type of issue. You never know when a quiet obituary may be posted (from Redmond or other places...).


LCD Soundsystem, now I am sure they went through some software tools.



(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk 07854655009

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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