A2Dominion has chosen 1st Touch mobile software to support its income collection teams while also helping tenants understand and adjust to welfare reform changes.
Following the introduction of welfare reforms, A2Dominion decided that it needed to implement new proactive processes that could support the collection of income from tenants at the same time as helping those who might face difficulties adapting to changes to the benefits system. The new strategy involved boosting personal engagement between its income officers and tenants using mobile working.
A2Dominion chose 1st Touch’s mobile software, mainly because it was platform-neutral and allowed the use of Android devices. 1st Touch was also capable of ensuring that over 70 income officers would have all the information and forms they needed at their fingertips when visiting tenants, including benefit calculators and data on transactions, balances and payments.
A2Dominion’s Civica housing management system now raises an arrears file as an action in its back-office CRM system and in turn this sends it to 1st Touch. This information is then forwarded to the relevant income officer’s mobile device with all the information relating to that case.
In addition to increasing the amount of rent collected, it is expected that the new system will allow income officers to increase the time spent on visits to help tenants. Other anticipated benefits include savings on fuel, print and stationery costs.
Trevor Whittaker, head of business systems, A2Dominion, said, “Following the introduction of welfare reform, we needed new management processes that would not only improve income collections but also enable us to explain the changes to our tenants in person. To do this we needed a mobile solution capable of supporting these two objectives and 1st Touch ticked all the boxes.”
Looking to the future, A2Dominion is planning to expand its use of mobile technology into supporting estate inspections and tenancy management.
