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Having worked in all sectors of IT across my working life, I can’t say I made a conscious decision to spend getting on for 28 years in SocialHousing ICT, but there you go. Over the years I have been the natural sponge and absorbed whatever sectors I toiled in, even remembering my retail or logistics experience, often decades later.
Many of my friends, contacts and clients will know I spent my first fourteen housing sector years at MIS Active Management Systems, home (originally of HAMIS and) ActiveH, last 5 of which as Managing Director for my sins. Mostly happy times with many decent hardworking people, not without its quirks and politics as most small companies have. Glen Lewis and Richard Chambers will be familiar to many, as will some of the others, a few with a SOH bypass who made a Christmas appearance in my ‘Hamis Recorder’.
In some of the sales demos I attended back in the 2010's pitching for MIS, we often bumped into Ian Lockwood or Chris Harvey coming into the prospect for the afternoon session. It was good to take a good few of those back then. Many of those RSLs are just about back out again now.
When I first started, there were over 25 products/suppliers available to anyone needing a housing management system. With the agreed sale of MIS-AMS announced today (somewhat quicker than Homemaster last month), that reduces the bigger supplier beast to the UK Housing procurement equivalent of the four corners of Jurassic Park. Aareon, Civica, MRI (now Capita owners) & NEC. Which of these might be the most precarious and whose long term fate might be more tied to its VC owners?
A bit like the movie, a lot of these solutions feel like they are sharing a lot of the old shared stale DNA. With such similar multiple solutions in so little hands, it’s a wonder the Competition & Mergers Commission is asleep at the wheel yet again with this new ‘we are thrilled & proud’ PR messaging from the purchaser. Where will this leave InclineIT & ActiveF (ActiveFinance) then?
Still that leaves one true indy innovator left standing, Rubixx. No debt, no external investors or shareholders. What a luxury to only answer to clients. A solution that if you have not already taken a look at, you should take a shufty. Simon Reay has got most legacy solutions on his bingo card, he should have picking up over 30 deals in the last three years. I recall Simon proudly telling be when he had won Melville HA from MIS up in Midlothian. Actually that was the first HMS implementation I ever did back in 1998. Like Simon, I will be fascinated to see how selling a culture of caring about customers, now plays out under a new regime
One class of alternative solutions that I can hardly see spooking the C&MC, are the resellers of CRM based platform housing solutions. You know the ones, Microsoft Dynamics 365 or Salesforce. These are the new alternatives to the traditional suppliers, providing freedom from solutions being bought up and flexibility to do something else. These RSLs often have deeper pockets too. Strangely when some of these housing CRM resellers are historically snapped up by big outfits, they are often suffocated. Why can’t some of the Jurastic’s manage to tap into this potential and take on a reseller building more expensive solutions? Maybe their management structures cannot support it or maybe just the imagination is not there. Maybe we will have to wait until Plentific try their hand at this?
What will the big suppliers propose to the market from their bag of product? Even now I experience confusion where rival options are available. One of the biggest challenges, is often integration, that is particularly older products have not been plugged together before and its still challenging at time in 2025. Just cause it has the same logo on it, should not con you into thinking integration will be a breeze.Also, how much innovation is occurring ? Some of our larger suppliers seem reluctant to invest big.
With the urge of the sector to select best of breed to mix and match, how will this pan out with achieving data standards aspirations? Also, how much more needs to be budgeted for more client side maintenance of solutions, rather than contacting that single supplier help desk?
When merged and the usual skill ‘wastage’ occurs, how well will that combined helpdesk for three housing systems going to function for customers? A new call logging system does not always make a better helpdesk. While Aareon have recently moved to a new system, how will all those support staff and clients take now to going back to a supplier they may have left just a few years ago, or maybe just in a transition away from Aareon?
So how will success be judged here?
Well by RSLs & SocialHousing organisations, probably if these buyouts lead to significant investment & innovative product. That has certainly appeared to have happened with Rubixx and NEC, as can be seen by consistent new wins. Will we see a return to procurement wins from the others, or just a sweating of existing customer revenues? No one wants to just feel like a number in a supplier's sales ledger, squeezed each year by increased costs. Always as ever, are the dangers of suppliers trying to re-contract. It will take 12-18 months to see how this all settles down.
Well if you are staff or customer touched by this today, I wish you well on your journey to or from AWS Appstream, Fixflo, Arthur, Assetcore, MRI Documotive, Homeo, OpenAccounts etc. Thinking about it, these are all blending into each other now, aren’t they? Maybe only Rubixx & the CRM resellers will clean up after this one - lets see !
Any comments, observations or queries, please share.
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Related Post: How best to understand the products you know & the vast options you maybe don't know about?
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.
Bob Mould – Old Highs, New Lows.
(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk 07854-655009
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