tonysmiththathousingitguy @HousingITguy

Some thoughts on IT and UK SocialHousing from a unique perspective of over 27+ years working with over 140 RSL's, Councils and social landlord groups in the UK, Ireland & Australia. (c) No reproduction without prior/express permission Available for independent housing RSL implementation, procurement of HMS, Repairs, CRM, EDM, DLO, Financial, Scheduling systems, critical friend etc. In Scotland I work with the folks at Arneil Johnston Check us out on Soundcloud /housingitguy

Tuesday, 26 April 2022

Get Back

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

You, like me, will have no-doubt heard the recent directive from some of our government MPs, that everyone should get back to the office, as soon as possible. Certain journalists have also suggested home-working is just a ‘remainer-cult’ (while writing the article WFH). So go figure. I have read Lord Sugar is also a fan of getting everyone back into their old workplaces too. That’s clearly from a bloke with a big office portfolio. That may be affecting his personal thinking, or it might be that he cannot connect his Amstrad at home to the interweb for downstreaming.

Of course not everyone has been lucky enough to be able to do their job from home from a computer screen, or have a suitable space there to efficiently perform to a similar level. Good connectivity of course is essential, plus reasonable ability to access and use the same systems and applications etc, that were used originally in the past. WFH potentially reduces car use, use of fuel, carbon footprint and reduction of pollution, if we can practically manage it.

I think the tech generally got introduced within the first two months (March & April 2020) of Covid19 lockdown, as there was no alternative to introducing Teams, Zoom etc for many, otherwise organisations could not operate at all. We all had to adapt quick to a new normal. Organisations on old versions of solutions, suddenly woke up to the problems these created for staff WFH.

Its hard to determine what the motivation is for the current rush back, is it that all those sandwich shops, cafes, train companies etc are feeling the pinch? Maybe it’s that we still have a problem in some quarters, seeing that work is something we do, not necessarily a place to go. Seeing employees nine to five in an office can feel reassuring, although that does not equate to knowing how much actual work staff are really doing.

JRM setting the standard for in-office productivity

If managers cannot measure the work throughput and being completed, then that is poor management, if present in an office or working from home. There are many examples of MP’s being present in the House Of Commons, clearly not doing anything productive. Lounging around or watching porn on their smartphone or tablets.

So do people want to ‘get back to normal’ and have things all face to face again? I would guess not, although in some situations do work much better that way. One example is software demos, I would always want to meet the bidders in real life, particularly if spending hundreds of thousands of pounds. In the quite rare situations where I personally have been able to ‘do things the old way again’, its worked well. Even sitting in the odd motorway traffic jam has not really irritated me, as I am no longer doing it every single day.

If staff have worked from home for a couple of years, maybe they don’t see the point of hours stuck back on the journey in/back, sardine packed peak time trains, office gossip, meetings where disrespectful staff arrive late or leave early. Its crazy to rush back to presenteeism, rather than doing the best to complete the work needed. Its great at times to actually be together with colleagues IRL, to bounce ideas off them and collaborate. That is one particular thing we cannot lose.

Cartoonist Matt's take on it

Not having staff workload monitored is the same problem for WFH as when present in the office. If workload is not being controlled at home, its not likely to change overnight when offices are filled again.

A lot of local and council services have degraded over the last two years. Some of this might be down to staff vacancies, cutbacks or perhaps working from home not properly managed. I was chatting to a friend last week, trying to obtain a death certificate from her city council. These are generally issued to a target of a week. Already 9 days on and unable to progress funeral, probate etc, this is being blamed on ‘Working From Home’ apparently.

Is WFH turning into a convenient scapegoat, maybe taking over from ‘Sorry, our computer system is not very good and that’s slowing everything down’ ?

Would you accept a cut in pay if we choose longer term working from home? How much might it be worth to you?

Another example last week was on an LBC piece on Passport issue delays. Nick Farrari hit out at the Director General of the Passport Office, saying “This woman is on the thick end of £200k pa, she doesn’t go into work and thousands of Brits are desperately waiting for their passports”. Does he think she might abandon her Peloton, slippers & jogging pants, go into the office and start knocking some of the nice new blue ones out herself personally? Does anyone actually have any evidence at all that she is unable to effectively do her job at home? That in fact is the only criteria that really matters for this.

Has your organisation got the ability to really monitor what work is being done, different types of interactions, whether that is one or more physical offices, at home or a hybrid of both? That is the key to where the right place physically, for each member of staff.

If we can help your organisation with any aspect of transformation issues/procurement, please just get in touch, for a chat over a brew. I will bring the chocolate Hobnobs 😉

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.

The Beatles – Get Back.
(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: #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,ActiveHousing,Acutence,Advanced,Affinity,Agile,Agile365,AirWatch,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,Browser Applications,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 Housing,Cheaper Housing IT,Chics, Citrix,Civica,Civica CTX,Civica Cx,Civica Genero,Civica Saffron,Clearview,Clik,Cloud Dialogs,CloudDialogs,Coactiva,Codeman,Comino,Commontime,Community Reward Services,Company,Competitive Dialogue process,Component Accounting,Consilium,Consolidation, Consultancy,Consultant,Consultants,Contact Manager,Context,Contractor Systems,CorVu,Cost Reductions,Covalent,Crystal Reports,Customer Relationship Management,Cx, DRS,Deeplake,Designer Software,Development Systems,Director,Document,Documotive,Docuware,Dynamic AI,DynamicAI,Dynamics 365,D365,Dynamics365, ECMK,EDM,EDRMS,ERP,ESRI,Elmhurst,Enghouse Interactive,England,English,EnterpriseBI,Estatecraft,Etive,Exhibition,Exponential-e, Facebook,Factorwise,Field Service management,Finance,Financial Systems,Financials,Footprint,Forms,Freezes,Fusion, Gas Tag,G-Cloud,GCloud,GDPR,GGP,GIS,GasTag,Genero,GeoSolveIT,Getting best from,GoTonySmith,Grasp,Grip,Group Apex, HFI (Housing Financials interface),HG,HRA,Hardware,Hitachi Systems,Hitex,HomeMaster,Hometeam,HouSys,House,Housemark,Housemark 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Monday, 18 April 2022

It Could Be You

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

When the UK National Lottery was launched in 1994, do you remember the advertising slogan promised: “It could be you.”

Since then you like me, might have spend a few bob on it and maybe even had a few (very small) wins from it too. I have always been wary at anywhere I have worked and there was a lottery syndicate. It was insurance paying in that £2 a week, just in case there was a big win and if I wasn’t in, I might have ended up alone as the Critical Friend holding the project. Has anyone else done similar?

Last week it was interesting to see after three decades of Camelot running it, from 2024, it will be a new company in charge. The lucrative licence shootout ended in defeat and was awarded to to Czech-owned Allwyn, which also fended off competition from a number of others. Camelot were not well pleased and had made noises (maybe just of sabre rattling), in the 10 day cooling off period.

A scorecard process during which the rivals were marked on categories such as technology and planned returns to good causes, rated Allwyn higher overall. In what I would call the ‘Method Statement’ section, Allwyn’s pitch outshone Camelot’s in key areas of technology (linking with Vodafone), returns to good causes and efforts to curb gambling addiction. For the process to be compliant, it needs to have been looking forward to what the anointed winner might provide in the future project, rather than dwelling on any past performance.

On past performance, Camelot has had a decline in players, turnover and slapped wrists from the National Audit Office in 2017. Maybe after 4 of these battles to run it, there was appetite for a new face. We all can succumb to thinking the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. There’s nothing wrong with that, although a well structured procurement process, always needs to test that.

So what can we mortals learn, just procuring something under £10m over five years, not a national lottery provider, but some key application software?

Often in the first meeting I have with organisations I am helping to procure feel the process is an overhead, a hassle, that will maybe just throw up an unexpected wildcard supplier. With decent pre-market analysis and good structuring of an ITT, its perfectly possible to be able to reasonably predict two of the top three suppliers, with relative certainty. The secret is shaping the process to known, or determined needs with the help of groundwork. Fortunately, I bring a decade long proven methodology to enforce this strongly.

The best process scoring reflects those needs and priorities, so at the end of the day, hopefully feelings or prejudices are worked out of the process and maximum reliance on pure logic can be best applied in stark black and white. While keeping everyone on track who perhaps only does this stuff once every decade or so, it also provides a valuable audit trail when needing to award and provide feedback to all.

So the way an award (when done properly) and inevitable rejections are communicated, should leave no room for possible challenge. IE to be able to state, “you scored x out of y in this section. What you did well was this, what you could have improved on, was that”, is ideal for everyone. If Allwyn and others were indeed notified in this way, I can see little chance of the latest challenge going anywhere and we will very soon see a new manager of our national lottery.

Back to the original thread of this, if Camelot can’t overturn the decision , there is at least hope for the 1,000 people who work for it, mostly in Watford. They, are likely to be TUPE’d across to the new incumbent. So a silver lining for them

In short, decent social housing system procurement is no lottery, if you get the right help and methodology in place.

If we can help your organisation with any aspect of transformation issues/procurement, please just get in touch, for a chat over a brew. I will bring the chocolate Hobnobs 😉

Catch the blog monthly archive at
https://soundcloud.com/housingitguy/

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Blur - It Could Be You.
(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk 07854-655009

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

Monday, 28 March 2022

Schedules

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

How times have changed in the world of scheduling diaries in Social Housing, for trade repairs and other resident visits.

There was a time when scheduling was the proverbial Marmite, with most housing professionals I worked with, either with the binary choice of ICT/application scheduling as ‘essential’ or ‘not essential as good staff are the key’. In the former case the options were pretty much ‘Optitime’ or nothing really, to automate and aid the efficient scheduling of work to be issued.

Funnily enough, I find you can pretty much ‘carbon date’ repairs people talking about scheduling in the Socialhousing sector, by if they call that product Xmbrace, Optitime, DRS (Dynamic Resource Scheduling), Kirona or OneAdvanced. Also, those guys memories, war stories and battle scars of a migration from version 4 to version 5 of that on-premise delivered product.

However, getting on to nearly two decades of diary scheduling in housing, we are in a very different landscape, one being more dominated by Cloud computing, higher expectations of APIs/integration and native browser delivered solutions as default.

We now have a wide variety and in some ways bewildering array of options open to us, particularly if we are interested in scheduling multiple teams, not just contractor repairs, maybe compliance, arrears and asset management & surveys.

If course a lot of software providers had a go at writing a scheduler (why how hard can it be?), crashing and burning or only having a single user etc. ProScheduler or was it PromasterScheduler is one that springs to mind, that I came across. I think I was always being told that someone new was always ready to sign up to it. Something that does not make sense in practice and clearly would have brought with it risks of little new investment or ideas going into it.

In the move (or rush for some software suppliers) to redevelop/modernise the integrated HMS for the Cloud, many are adding their own integral ‘scheduler’. These can have varying degrees of being ‘dynamic’, at times a difficult noun to define. At the bare minimum these can be ‘drag & drop’ diaries that feed mobile appointments, right up to some aspect of being able to reshuffle tasks (jobs, visits etc if you like). Many contractor solutions these days include their own scheduler option, sometimes after many years of integrating to the old DRS default. Examples include Totalmobile TM with their Optimise option. I think it would be prudent for suppliers to consider retaining the opportunity for clients, to go for the in-house as well as any preferred available external option.

In some recent procurements, I have worked with clients already with seats on schedulers, such as DRS and preferring to move to a new solution taking those forward. After all, they were currently just paying annual maintenance for those diary seats and this can be more economic/convenient than swapping out.

Contractor solutions used primarily outside housing, also often come with their own scheduling facilities. One example is BigChange, that provides bulk-scheduling options as well as the expected mobile integrations.

‘Plug-In’ scheduler options have been available for some time, such as Click (now part of Salesforce Field Service) and the new written for Cloud ‘More IQ’ solution. The latter is backed and designed by a number of original DRS development staff, including Gael Sianson a chap very recognisable from Optitime events. I remember an interesting evening exploring a hotel Calvados menu with him and his colleagues, many years back before the full move to Kirona.

I notice too that FLS (Fast Lean Smart) appears to be gaining some traction in Social Housing recently too. Good modern API’s are essential for these standalone options, particularly where an integration into Cloud/Browser applications or D365 (Microsoft Dynamics 365) are being considered.

The list above is not intended to be absolutely comprehensive, so apologies if I have inadvertently missed any products.

So, what should be considered when looking at the available options?

Carefully consider (3 or 5 year) cost of ownership , including integrations, per seat and annual maintenance pricing. What are the costs of adding additional diary seats. Are these cheaper, the more you add?
If an existing solution is already in use, is it economic to swap out? How well does that existing solution function, supporting the Customer Journey?
Speed – For your mix of diaries (repairs, arrears, estate management etc), how fast can appointments be assigned? Will customer service agents have a resident on waiting for 3 seconds or 30? Is it this fast with ten diaries when demonstrated, or the 350 diaries in your actual real world staff team?
Will your scheduler work with self-service quickly and and any repairs diagnostic tool in place?
How many matching metrics are needed? Areas, towns, locations, sub-locations, trade primary/secondary skills, ability/experience, multi-trade, paired visits etc?
Are you looking for an on-premise or more future-proof native in the Cloud solution?
Is there a preference to reduce software suppliers to a consolidated (trusted) solution or a mix of best of breed, with multiple suppliers and application sources/technologies?
Is your scheduler choice already integrated (& proven) to your application software, or is a new interface needed? A rich set of available and well documented APIs can speed up the latter.
Technology - If the scheduler is cloud based, can it support 1,000 diaries as easily as a 100 and scale up/down quickly if required?
How much dynamic scheduling is really needed?
How well would aspects such as road conditions and other minute by minute optimisations be taken into account?
How easy should bulk automatic moving of diary appointments be possible. E.G. from three staff members that have just phoned in sick, having gone down with the Covid19 ?
Also, will features such as 'doorstep' follow-on/up appointments be capable by trade operatives/other staff? IE staff on the scheme as well as office based agents can also flexibly re-appoint. Cloud based scheduling might be a certain advantage there.

At some point it would be interesting to put a blogpost together on some real-world scheduler experiences, or in fact examine one of the newer offerings in more detail if that were practical. Stay tuned if we can do that a bit later in the year.

If we can help your organisation with repair, DLO, contractor, scheduling, mobile or self-service application and transformation issues/procurement, please just get in touch, for a chat over a brew 😉

Catch the blog monthly archive at
https://soundcloud.com/housingitguy/

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David Cutter Music – Schedules.
(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk 07854-655009

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

Tuesday, 15 March 2022

Cyber Insekt

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

Between my last blogpost I published and now, Europe as we know is now at war. Not a ‘Cold War’ like in my youth in the 80’s, but a very ‘Hot’ one as Russia have invaded Ukraine. My hopes and prayers, as I am sure yours do, go to my friends of Ukraine origins in the North West and the poor people of the country, for a speedy resolution.

Over the last decade or so, we have been told that UK conventional forces (apart from Trident nukes), can be reduced and new wars are more likely to be fought in cyberspace. Well, Ukraine hasn’t quite played out like that, despite the Russian GRU having its own ‘Fancy Bear/APT28’ team, dedicated to hack for the soviet government. There has been few recent high profile reports of cyber attacks on Ukraine internet infrastructure etc in the last few weeks, matching the shells/missiles dropping in. By all accounts, over the last five years, since Crimea and Donbas invasions, there has been a lot of probing Ukraine cyber infrastructure, by its neighbour to the east.

Recent sanctions appear to be causing the Russian people problems already, despite not really having an effect on Putin. While the latter is unlikely to unleash his weapons on The West and NATO anytime soon, it is not so far fetched that Russia could be unleashing cyber attacks which could be easily denied instead. Some historic examples, such as the NotPetra Malware Attacks accidently spilled over into other countries and hacks affected commercial companies to the tune of $10b, including Cadbury, Maersk shipping and Merck pharma.

Add to that the LBH - London Borough of Hackney in autumn 2020, who lost all key systems, including their Socialhousing HMS forever. Behind many of those spill overs, appeared to be buggy code and light cybersecurity. We can only wish that UAT drastically improves for future ransomware. Commercial organisations, housing providers, councils & UK / Irish public bodies need to plan for “when”, rather than “if” cyberattacks will be coming for them. There is absolutely no room for complacency.

Its likely more intense Russian cyber aggression can be expected, so all business in The West, should move to a policy of heightened alert and as the US Cyber & Infrastructure Security Agency might term it, “Shields Up”. Our organisations specifically may not be the target, but we may easily become collateral damage.

So, I would say its time to take particular stock of your security and cyber awareness, including interconnectivity, infrastructure and your human staff firewall. Is your penetration testing and that of your Cloud based applications, up to date and are recommendations being followed up to eliminate/drastically reduce risks?

Many actions are very easy to carry out with some loose security, unnecessarily spare open server ports etc. Bringing a website down, supporting a DOS (denial of service) attack, stealing customer or other personal details. IE everything from low level harassment to serious disruption.

This should be a time for all organisations to take stock of their cybersecurity as we are in heightened times. Keep on top of the main touchpoint areas in the office or when staff are working from home :-

Have regular backups of all your key systems and data. Keep copies securely in the Cloud/off-site and check periodically that they can be recovered.
Apply any new security patches for your operating system, web browser and all other software on your devices to keep them secure.
Install and regularly update anti-virus and anti-malware software across all your devices. regularly test they are operating as expected
Use strong complex passwords and change them regularly. Also, where possible use two-factor authentication for added security.
Promote use of different passwords for different websites/services or consider using a reputable password management tool.
Encrypt any sensitive data and do not send passwords or other sensitive data via email unencrypted.
To protect against phishing or ransomware be cautious of clicking on links sent to you/staff within emails, social media websites/apps or unfamiliar websites.
Use a firewall and check that your internet router/firewall has the latest firmware installed.
If you operate Wi-Fi networks, make sure it has encryption (eg WPA2) and regularly change the Wi-Fi password.
Use a VPN (a virtual private network) if you are accessing your systems over public Wi-Fi or an insecure network.
For remote meetings using Teams, Zoom, Google Meet etc, make it mandatory to have participant cameras on, so any strange bots or unknown attendees do not use more ‘manual methods’ to compromise systems in the future.

Be aware and staff safe, in what is becoming an ever more dangerous world, in Ukraine and also potentially in a digital way, much closer to home.

Catch the blog monthly archive at
https://soundcloud.com/housingitguy/

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The Fall – Cyber Insekt.
(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: #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,ActiveHousing,Acutence,Advanced,Affinity,Agile,Agile365,AirWatch,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,Browser Applications,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 Housing,Cheaper Housing IT,Chics, Citrix,Civica,Civica CTX,Civica Cx,Civica 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Sunday, 27 February 2022

Clear Horizon

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

It’s been described as “one of the greatest injustices in British legal history”. It led to the wrongful convictions of huge numbers of British submaster-people.

The technological horror story started when the UK Post Office installed Fujitsu’s Horizon accounting system in its branches in 1999. Not unlike new software, it was said to be full of bugs. One major flaw caused it to falsely to report shortfalls running sometimes into thousands of pounds. Rules were that managers of the system at each post office needed to compensate for imbalances, before they can start the following days transactions.

The key bug apparently was around lack of designed in resilience, when transmitting batch details via the internet. Slow speeds were common in the early noughties, as well as some lack of resilience. Where batches intermittently failed, they were re-submitted, doubling the amount in the reconciliation. With hindsight, a schoolboy programming error, that could be easily mitigated by better acknowledgement routines.

736 sub-postmasters were prosecuted unlawfully. A terrible miscarriage of justice. More on that here - https://news.sky.com/story/horizon-it-scandal-former-subpostmistress-contemplated-suicide-after-being-accused-of-stealing-by-post-office-12545482

So, what can we learn from the Horizon scandal, to help with our procurements and implementations? Well, quite a lot!

1-   Know your risks to start with – No supplier will ever outline risk, its always for the buyer to determine. If your appetite for risk is low, look for established/proven product, avoid the blue sky

2-   Have a fair contract in place for both parties. Do not just sign up to your suppliers template contract without digesting and possibly challenging it

3-   Have a thorough test plan for UAT and execute it – if you have not got sufficient expertise in your organisation to support this, buy it in.

4-   Volume testing is key, to replicate real world conditions.

5-   Any new development utilising connectivity, needs to be tested to death with slow, unreliable or intermittent web links.

6-   Invoke contract clauses to satisfactorily rectify issues, before even considering go-live

7-   Ensure resilience is built in. Warnings when limits are exceeded (allocated disk/web space etc) well before failure, diagnostics for all services designed in, particularly for reconciliations and audit

8-   Avoid the exercise becoming a ‘Poker Game’. Just because you have chucked in x million pounds, it doesn’t mean that you need to keep wasting time/money, rather than considering to ‘fold’.

9-   Don’t feel forced to go-live too early, or just go live with one little module, to tick a ‘met the deadline’ box.

10-   Trust your users more when they report issues. As we know, systems do exactly how they have been programmed, often erroneously. All systems have vulnerabilities, bugs and quirks. Admit to them and improve the system with suppliers to remove issues and reduce user generated waste.

I’ll put my cards on the table. I help plenty of organisations big and small, to procure the right solutions compliantly, but I also help many that have already become unstuck. Generally, its one or more of the issues above, that has made the situation way worse. Learning from our mistakes is a hard route, easier to have some good Critical friend on board to help OR learn from others who have made mistakes.

Do let me know your feelings via DM or comments 😉

Catch the blog monthly archive at
https://soundcloud.com/housingitguy/

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

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