Good Technology

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

How good and modern need our databases and systems be in our HMS solution? Well, many a great journey can be had in an old Moggy Minor. Watch out to pull out the choke to start it and remember to push it in once the engines warmed up. Just be satisfied with 4 gears too. Using some older systems can feel a bit like that too. There are plenty of old CTX, Saffron and other old green screen stuff still out there and much of it generally does the job.
Older solutions were designed for a different century in many cases (the 20th) and to meet modern demands, need some adaptation around the edges. Often screens and additional data fields can be bolted on. Although many do not properly relate to main screens or in fact store data correctly. Rather than tightly data typed, a more ‘stringly’ approach used to be the way. Even recording the strands of diversity or successions correctly can often be a challenge.

Older solutions can often have moved on at the database level, but still use a sometimes dated ‘common’ user interface. Compared with a modern, all-windows solution, it’s easy for individuals in a demo to quickly mark it down. The reverse can happen. A great GUI skin on an old database or schema can often sell itself over a really elegant design with a tired GUI. Well there is no justice for some suppliers I guess. If you suspect you are looking at a brand new skin, probe it to make sure it covers all the solution. Once you are implementing it you might find that less prominent modules, such as Planned Maintenance or Service Charges may be waiting in the wings for sometime, for the re-write.

I was chatting with some people recently implementing a new housing system. They were complaining about the type & costs of database the HMS sits on, the (lack of a) schema provided and reporting difficulties. These are all areas that I find essential to probe deeply when looking for a new system. These are key things and certainly should not be left to worry about until you have already paid for a quarter of it and putting it in.

Database licence costs are another element that can form an enormous proportion of costs. Legacy databases such as U2, Progress etc always used to clock up some hefty licence costs. SQL Server used to be the vastly cheaper option. Even this now needs to come under scrutiny since Microsoft’s recent announced price hike. Each user, hopefully concurrent, will be clocking up a licence cost. A merger or change to a group structure can be expensive when a system is rolled out into every corner of the organisation.

Sometimes, organisations do chuck the solution out with the dishwater. One new housing group I am aware of after investing over 6 years of effort into a perfectly stable, but workmanlike HMS are moving to a shinier one used by a smaller member of the group, where little effort has been made to get the most from it. So, another 2-4 years of effort will be needed and already some of the shortcomings are being revealed. My point is that sometimes if the system delivers all you need, maybe that’s enough. If you get your reports, interfaces with adequate mobile and internet links etc, great support and helpdesk, maybe that’s good enough.  

Make sure you have a great reason to be hankering after ‘good technology’, consider the costs and risks. More important still, make sure you understand what problems it will solve and where your ROI will come from. If you are having trouble nailing that, be sure to seek some independent advice.

Read on to: Brass In Pocket

The Red Guitars had the measure of Good Technology.



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

File Under: 360,1stTouch,4Js,Aareon,Academy,ActiveH,Alignment,ALMO,Anite,Apex,ArchHouse,Archouse,asbestos,Asprey e-state pro,Asset Management,Aurora,Average IT Costs,BO,BPR,Browser Applications,Business Objects,Business Process Review,Business social networking,Castle,CBL,Cedar Open Accounts,Change,Cheaper Housing IT,Chics,

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Computer Blue(s)

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It’s shaping up to be a rainy and expensive month for housing associations and housing groups as Microsoft have decided that these organisations no longer qualify as charity, for licensing purposes, unless at least 10% of income comes from donations. Now I haven’t seen a technical definition of ‘donation’, although I can guess which one might be appropriate.

This moves housing associations and groups into the public sector licensing agreement and for most a price hike of an eye watering 400% to the PSA12 framework. Changes take place in September, although already budgets will have been revised to take this incredible hit into account. A mad rush to buy cheap licences will surely take place for the next few weeks.

Microsoft said in a statement: “Microsoft's new discount frameworks recognise the increasing importance of the UK’s 70,000 social enterprises in driving public services. The new frameworks for social enterprises complement the discounts and free options already available to 174,000 UK charities, as well as public sector organisations and public sector mutual’s.

“Charitable organisations and social enterprises looking to buy new technologies from Microsoft will be entitled to different levels of discount depending on their levels of voluntary contribution or how they generate their revenue, if applicable.".

Microsoft will also be increasing private sector prices by at least 25% too this month, in order to “harmonise prices and licensing terms across Europe”. This is a major part of its world portfolio and as many others have said, it risks alienating some of Microsoft’s best customers.

So what are the alternatives? Many of the base components are out there, but how well would the mainstream HMS (Housing Management System) providers interface to OpenOffice or some of the other open source alternatives? Some food for thought here http://www.junauza.com/2010/06/10-best-free-alternatives-to-microsoft.html 

We may not particularly like Microsoft, but housing has got quite hooked on its Office Suites, server software and other applications. Now we are all going to pay for it. Too late now to consider what else you could have bought. From now on, we all need to have every option on the table. Stretching software for longer, missing upgrades for example might help in delaying the pain.

There is still the CTX programme. See http://www.ctxchange.org/ . This would help many of the smaller organisations and even the community library project, which I am involved with in South Warrington, Cheshire. But you have to be a true charity. Even after an admin fee, savings of 92-96% on retail prices are claimed.

With these additional strains on budgets, many will be tempted to approach their bigger HMS and infrastructure suppliers for some annual savings. It’s certainly worth a try, particularly when you size up the cost of a new system compared with your existing annual maintenance. With 10 or more years of RPI adding compound interest every annum, you may be re-buying your system every 3 years. Come to think of it, that Microsoft price hike may not be that large after all......

Oh, and a last thought..... There is one big cloud platform supplier with a massive charity arm, with licences a real fraction of real world ones. Maybe Salesforce.org will prevail one day in the future, for #SocialHousing

The only thing for sure, cash spent on this will be just a little more having to be diverted from neighbourhoods, residents and front line services. Give it a few years and the Microsoft CRM product will be watered down within #SocialHousing so its true benefits cannot be realised, or some backdoor cheaper licence will need to proliferate on the platform, to bring it within reasonable budgets. Lets just see!

Read on to : Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger..

Prince. Now would he have put up with this?...




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

File Under: 360,1stTouch,4Js,Aareon,Academy,ActiveH,Alignment,ALMO,Anite,Apex,ArchHouse,Archouse,asbestos,Asprey e-state pro,Asset Management,Aurora,Average IT Costs,BO,BPR,Browser Applications,Business Objects,Business Process Review,Business social networking,Castle,CBL,Cedar Open Accounts,Change,Cheaper Housing IT,Chics,

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On Her Majesty's Secret Service Charge

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A certain minefield if ever there was one for most housing associations and UK housing groups. We have the ‘Iron Lady’ Mrs Thatcher to thank for most of our service charge woes, with her governments instigation of RTB (Right To Buy) legislation in the 1980’s.  The aim of creating a home-owning Britain was pretty much achieved with very high levels of home ownership, while on the downside decimating quality housing stock.

Eligible residents in attractive and stable areas, (or often their sons and daughters stumping up the deposits after generous discounts) were fools not to take the leap of faith and purchase their own homes. Many of these properties are now in the hands of their second, third or fourth leaseholder, with many original social housing tenants having moved further upward in the housing ladder.

The majority of these properties would have been in communal blocks or at the very least, houses in terraced blocks. Very few are unconnected with a wider neighbourhood or RSL community. Hence at least external repair commitments should still form part of the lease, grass cutting, grounds maintenance, communal door entry etc also often feature. One of the reoccurring themes is that early RTB sales often had incomplete or badly detailed leasehold agreements, possibly omitting responsibility for certain types of service charges.

Systems long since gone failed to record many of these details, leading to many years of charges not levied and disagreements in the current day from recent leaseholders, challenging why they should pay service charges that their neighbours are avoiding (and have been avoiding for decades). Often it’s a long and fruitless battle in many cases to try to claw these back using old records.

Two main areas seem to cause problems for RSL’s in the service charge area are the way customer service staff deal with leaseholders and the whole calculation area, taking far too long and involving too many staff. Leaseholders are a different animal to general residents and they do like to be treated in a special way. Statements for example need to refer to ‘Charges’ not ‘Rent’. Not a big change, but important if you are a leaseholder. A simple change too for IT to manage for you effortlessly.

As soon as a leaseholder calls, the customer service team need to be aware of the fact and precisely what the repair responsibilities of the organisation are. Examples are; Just external repairs, responsive work in shared areas, repairs under a limit everywhere or only after consent after an already agreed limit. This is not information that should be blue-tacked to a wall or buried in a tray somewhere. Intelligent scripting software should be enforcing these rules, whether per leaseholder, the scheme they live in, owning body or area served. This reduces any expectation issues or any future difficulty with expenditure recovery.

A recent story I heard of was where a responsive repair was mistakenly done internally for a leaseholder, which should never had been offered or completed. A satisfaction survey was issued and customer service asked “is there anything else we can help you with”? The answer was another internal repair which could not be recovered. This all cost in excess of £674 plus VAT. Two of these each month could make scripting software to prevent it quite a bargain, not counting other benefits.

Calculation of service charges can often take a whole section of a finance team. If you work like this, ask yourself the methods they use. Excel spreadsheets by any chance, looked after by key personnel? This can make the task of calculation very expensive. Even more so when leaseholders query their bill and would like to know (as they legally can ask) where that charge for £8.71 every month for grass cutting comes from?

Your housing system may have a perfectly adequate service charge module that might satisfy your needs. Do you use it, does it fit your needs? Many do have modules, some are so prescriptive, they are unlikely to fit your needs until seriously tested. If you have the one that requires you to record how many windows each of your properties have, for example, it’s unlikely you are using it. I won’t embarrass anyone by naming it, however if you are in a province where you still have the window tax, it’s probably working pretty well for you!

Alternatives are out there that could more than likely reduce your service charge calculation and management team to a ¼. Look at some of the independents such as Blockwise from Systemwise. You may be able to increase your efficiency at minimal cost. Using your main HMS (Housing Management System) service charge module or having a good interface to a specialist like Systemwise, can also keep your customer service staff and others, plugged into this information. This helps better and consistent decision making to occur all-round. Good for your budgets to be spent in the right ways and for leaseholders to receive better and reliable service.


The propeller heads may have encountered service charges, maybe not quite as we know it.



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

File Under: 360,1stTouch,4Js,Aareon,Academy,ActiveH,Alignment,ALMO,Anite,Apex,ArchHouse,Archouse,asbestos,Asprey e-state pro,Asset Management,Aurora,Average IT Costs,BO,BPR,Browser Applications,Business Objects,Business Process Review,Business social networking,Castle,CBL,Cedar Open Accounts,Change,Cheaper Housing IT,Chics,

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,

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Little Fluffy Clouds

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Never a week goes by without someone, generally a user or department manager asking me about ‘cloud computing’. How are other housing associations and groups getting on with this and should all their computer systems be in ‘the cloud’. It always makes me frown a bit, I must admit. Having said that if I had £50 for each of those queries, I would have a useful top up to my pension fund!

The hype and advertising collateral has done a great job of confusing users and making many rash promises that in many cases are simplistic at best. “Put all your applications in the cloud and have them work together seamlessly, access them everywhere on any device, yadda, yadda, yadda...”.  In many cases suppliers are offering what used to be the dull and boringly named ‘hosting’. IE move your data to their servers to host, offsite, rather than in your IT department or data centre. Depending on the application, this might not even make it more accessible on more types of devices; smartphones, tablets, ipads etc, without more expense.

Please however, don’t get the idea that I am anti-cloud, I am certainly not. Many applications (or ‘apps’ as the you’t would have it) work and belong in the cloud. Webmail, Spotify, Evernote all spring to mind. In the housing world, applications like TPTracker and EBS React are often delivered using a similar model, with no software required to be installed on PC’s, laptops or other devices. Integrated links with Housing Management Systems (HMS) can pose challenges, but are not insurmountable. Some HMS systems or part of them can be accessed via browsers, this is more a delivery method than use of the ‘cloud’ however. A true cloud app does not require local software to be installed. Microsoft’s Office365 breaks this rule where used in large business situations. For interfaces with the traditional HMS applications, fat client installs will almost certainly be needed.

Using cloud storage and services does provide scalability. Peaks in requirement can be easily managed, you just rent a bit more of the service, bandwidth or space. The lack of big upfront costs attract many smaller organisations. Rather than spend £30K on a little server area, a similar amount can be paid on more of a pay as you go model, over fixed term contracts, monthly. Strong SLA’s and guarantee of service are essential. Sometimes a ‘private cloud’ can be the best option, for larger organisations, particularly where vast quantities of data are being managed or generated. Costs based on data volumes or bandwidth can often be expensive. One other factor can be your bandwidth availability to the outside world. If you are on the edge of a town or conurbation, an upgrade to your local node might be a pre-requisite. If you cannot, it may derail your plans.

How fast applications run will certainly be affected by cloud hosting. While I don’t mind waiting 10 seconds to complete my Amazon or Ticketmaster purchase, you probably would not like your staff waiting around too long to update a rent account or a repair request. Use of a private cloud might be more controllable however.

The last elephant in the room is can you rely on your sensitive resident data being stored in the cloud, maybe not in the UK or even Europe. All those NI, HB numbers, DD sort codes and accounts, birth dates etc. Extremely useful if hacked. For me I would be reluctant to put sensitive customer data in the cloud or an application that provides competitive advantage. It’s a tough call and if you feel you want to, needs a reliable partner with some tight contracts!

Read on to: Why you need to name your projects well

Chillout to this.


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

File Under: 360,1stTouch,4Js,Aareon,Academy,ActiveH,Alignment,ALMO,Anite,Apex,ArchHouse,Archouse,asbestos,Asprey e-state pro,Asset Management,Aurora,Average IT Costs,BO,BPR,Browser Applications,Business Objects,Business Process Review,Business social networking,Castle,CBL,Cedar Open Accounts,Change,Cheaper Housing IT,Chics,

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Look to Your Orb for the Warning

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It was a great feeling to see Orbit Group this week scooping Housing Heroes and the Housing Excellence awards.  I would like to wish everyone from David Leach down, Angela Adderley and Roy Evans, the very best, it was so deserved.

I have rich experience of Orbit as a customer, departing customer and a returning customer during my tenure at MIS Active Management Systems.  No legal restrictions bind me from talking about that, feel free to get in touch to discuss further.

I have worked personally with the IT team there at Orbit for over 14 years, during my previous life at MIS and have great respect for them. After over 3 years of trying hard to implement a rival housing system, they reconsidered options. I was there at every point of that really rewarding project and proudly was there the Friday, the new system was delivered live after just over 100 days.

I am not surprised that despite stiff competition that Orbit won through. I have no doubt that the Orbit IT team had also comprehensively underpinned the new CRM system delivery, a resident self-service portal which formed “a bursary for residents to improve their own lives or the lives of those living within their communities”

The Orbit experience reflects a number of factors that I am sure other organisations can take on board to leverage similar benefits.

Firstly, get your housing systems in order. The right degree of integration works wonders at the right price. Your IT team are valuable and expensive in equal measure.

Keep them content and let them contribute to your business objectives. That is one of the key areas where Orbit and David Leach has connected with the main business of Orbit and helped to deliver savings as well as efficiency.

One of the sexiest things that Orbit introduced was iPads. Now this is not new. DFS famously asked staff to purchase their own iPads, Orbit provided them with Citrix access to their main desktop systems. The savings of mileage claims alone were enough to cover costs within four months. Staff are more inclined to work from home, or not come via the office every day. It’s a fact, Orbit have the numbers.

Now, let’s not deny, Orbit at 39,000+ homes is quite large. Although, any RSL with Citrix already, could already deploy this type of solution at little more than the cost of an iPad or Samsung tablet, to deploy their full housing system . Why are you not considering this?

Monster Magnet knew what was going down...




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Calling All Nations

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Earlier this week I was in an interesting meeting with a housing association in the South West of England. A quite exceptional lady in the meeting (you know who you are), had already asked me to answer a few questions about where I thought the marketplace is at the moment. In particular ‘What the future looks like for Housing IT – what are the great innovations?’

Well wow, what a question? Aside from the usual things (depending on where you are now, integrated housing systems, mobiles or tablets, scheduling, better reporting...), one area I highlighted was one I think will become more and more prominent.

That area if you asked me today is automated calling. This is a technology already fully utilised within the automotive industry. If you own or lease a BMW, Lexus or Merc, or similar quality car and use an authorised dealer, you may have already encountered some of this Voicescape technology before. As my associates, friends and family will know I am not a petrol-head, preferring comfort over speed. These systems are tuned to get a response quickly, helping to make retention of customers a reality. The silent auto-dialler experience coming out of call centres from Mumbai to Cleethorpes does not wear well with these petrol-heads. That proven experience also should work with hard headed customers and residents of Housing organisations too.

As this computer telephony technology is automatic it could be set to make any number of calls a day, fully recorded and audited for a whole week and beyond. This could be to chase your arrears, ask a question about the repair that has only been performed 30 minutes ago, or help with annual survey of family size, essential now the so called ‘bedroom’ tax is coming.

Increasingly too, particularly in bigger UK cities, ‘ambulance chasers’ finding the squeeze on PPI and accident claims are now targeting social housing tenants to open ‘disrepair’ cases. “Has your landlord failed to repair...call us now, no claim no fee.....” yadda yadda yadda.. This technology could issue an automated call every three months, just to ask “Have you any repair issues to log, press one for no or if satisfied with condition of your home, two for yes”. Proof of response or even attempting to survey has been shown to assist in court.

The changes to HB payment, are probably the ones on your mind though. To chase arrears a simple call could be set up: “This is a call from the Ideal HA, your landlord. We would like to discuss your increasing arrears debt. Press one to speak to us to assist (creating a priority inbound call), or two to make a debit or credit card payment now....”
Where language preferences are held for the resident, this could easily be carried out in Urdu, Bengali, Spanish, Mandarin etc. Of course, the better your contact profile data, the more effective this could be. Stats are all easily available from the process, to see the effect on arrears collection improvements etc over time.

I, like many other well informed housing professionals consider the current policies, as squeezing RSL’s and Housing Providers too much. The emergence of universal credit in the hands of residents, not split into HB paid direct to housing providers causes problems in my opinion for RSL’s and Residents. I grew up in social housing. If I were there now on the breadline, like many of your residents, I know that if I had money in my hand, maybe I would pay my menacing loan shark (or PoundsToPocket etc) first, before my caring HA. Still, we need to work within this idealology, I take my pointers from David Orr on that one, when you cannot fight it, work with it.

So the logical outcome is that HA’s will spend more money either with housing officer visits and/or CRM outgoing calls, unless IT technology can further assist. Traditionally, the HMS would be generating plenty of arrears letters. I don’t know about you, but I don’t tend to open my letters very fast, unless they are in a red envelope. I always tend to answer the home phone though, or mobile or read texts sent to me.

It’s no surprise that in court, letters are assuming a lesser significance. To be able to document that numerous calls or texts a day for many weeks were sent to a resident, (together with traditional activities) and what responses came back, can be a more compelling argument. Even more compelling are the possible costs. At only £3 a tenant per year from someone like The Housing Contact Company, Call-2-Collect represents pretty good value, when the cost of a letter is about £12+ or a single call centre conversation about £4+ every time.

That’s why I think that this is one of housings current and future innovations, an untapped technology. Look out; it’s probably coming down your road, sometime soon. While it’s not ‘The’ Silver Bullet, it’s certainly one I would like in my Universal Credit & Housing reform Bill holster.

More on the Housing Contact Company at http://www.housingcontact.co.uk/


Maybe this is what INXS meant back in the 80s.



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Lets Work Together

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

Wow, workflow. A module always certainly specified by right thinking housing and computer consultants. Have you got workflow? Did you implement it? Does it just sit at the bottom right of your users screens, teasing you (if so I think I can guess what HMS you are using)?
Well, I asked you more questions than answers there people didn’t I?

Workflow means many things to all types of people. The top and bottom of it should be that intelligent workflow is that piece of glue that makes your housing system mould around your individual processes. An extra piece of flexibility and programmability that enhances basic module integration. The better ones are close to common languages like VBA, almost like a macro in nature. Its a bonus having it embedded right into the whole system too, rather than it being a little fragmented.

A minimum should be work tray management. iWorld users will know what I mean. The generation of tasks that might be directed at say a HO (Housing Officer) to call or visit a resident or a customer, as output from processes, are an ideal example of workflow. The system progressing tasks to follow your organisation processes.

Other places where workflow scores is when an exceptional circumstance occurs and different actions are needed. Rather than staff noticing that the resident logging an urgent repair is an elderly double stick user, in order to qualify for it to be upgraded to an emergency priority, the system could do it for them. They don’t even have to know, or you could remind them with a message if it has occurred. The programmer in you may recognise this workflow snippet:

If (Contact.Vulnerability = “DSTICK” or Contact.Vulnerability = “BLIND”) and Contact.Age >= “60” and WO.Default.Priority = “Urgent” then
       WO.Default.Priority = “Emergency”
       MSGbox(“Be aware, Default priority escalated to Emergency on this order as resident old and vulnerable. This follows our customer care policy”)
EndIf

The emergence of workflow should reduce the need to run out and change your housing management system every five years as your organisation changes. Also, it is worth having some of your IT team or key module champions aware of, or able to write some workflow to add flexibility inside your organisation. The alternative is to spend costly days with your systems supplier and often wait many weeks or up to 18 months in some cases (people tell me) for work to be completed.

So, does your housing system fit your organisation processes or not? If it doesn’t and you are already trying to use your workflow facilities to the max, you have a problem. Maybe you have no workflow, you should be looking perhaps for some more modern HMS solutions in that eventuality.

As mentioned, some Housing Management Systems (HMS) have workflow built in by design. Others use workflow as a bolt-on. In some cases, testing automation (or manual scripting) software  such as ‘Testcomplete’ can be used to achieve certain actions. This can have variable results, but is prone to major upgrades with application software, causing problems.

Do you think your organisation is being best served by workflow? Here’s a no-brainer tick list, see how well your workflow is performing:

• Arrears process (assisting in allowing totally flexible processes, emailing and texting where appropriate, generating outlook or mobile appointments for your staff setting up visits and appointments)
• Void process (alerting other teams as soon as notice provided, organising/scheduling a void inspection, communicating with lettings or asset team, updating your web pages, if this would be a CBL advertisement, automatically passing to the local CHR is you use one)
• Satisfaction Survey (automatically linking with external services you might use, like Voluntas, generating outgoing calls automatically if using one of the emerging caller systems (more on that in a later blogpost methinks), creating follow up tasks for CRM or P&Q (Performance and Quality) staff to investigate demand failure)
• Repairs (take into account resident profile like vulnerabilities, religious beliefs, age etc in prioritising and appointmenting repair, automatic awareness of defect periods and neighbourhood factors, like notification of asbestos in the scheme etc to contractors, links with text, email and mobile modules, automatic determination of financial codes)

As the above shows, the logic of workflow can prevent the need for ‘everyday’ decisions to be taken by staff, meaning that residents and customers see a consistent approach. E.G. if they are a double stick user and aged 62, their urgent repairs always well get upgraded to a 24 hour emergency, who ever or however a works order is initiated.    

In the current environment, how is your system workflow performing to make your organisation more efficient? If it isn’t, prepare to ask some questions or find someone who can!


Canned Heat, they might have needed a decent short-back-and-sides, but now they knew a thing about working together.


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

File Under: 360,1stTouch,4Js,Aareon,Academy,ActiveH,Alignment,ALMO,Anite,Apex,ArchHouse,Archouse,asbestos,Asprey e-state pro,Asset Management,Aurora,Average IT Costs,BO,BPR,Browser Applications,Business Objects,Business Process Review,Business social networking,Castle,CBL,Cedar Open Accounts,Change,Cheaper Housing IT,Chics,

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