South Yorkshire Housing Association has reported that it has saved over £200,000 and completed more than 1,100 extra jobs during its first year of using a mobile working system from Peak-Ryzex and 1st Touch.
South Yorkshire Housing’s responsive repairs team previously used a paper-based scheduling process for managing all maintenance and repair jobs. This was time consuming and led to considerable amounts of duplicated work. It also meant that the 15-strong team had to go to the depot every morning to receive job information.
South Yorkshire Housing needed a mobile system that would integrate with its existing systems, including its Aareon housing management system. It also wanted to have a real-time picture of its workers’ locations, which in turn ties in with the housing provider’s health and safety and lone worker strategies.
South Yorkshire Housing chose a mobile working solution from 1st Touch. As part of the overall solution, 1st Touch recommended its partner Peak- Ryzex who helped in the choice of a suitable mobile device, with South Yorkshire Housing opting for the semi-rugged yet easy to use Motorola ES400.
Peak-Ryzex also provided a range of mobility services for South Yorkshire Housing, including device deployment through its ‘gold build’ service to ensure consistent device set-up, a next-day exchange service for damaged or lost devices and on-going maintenance and support.
The integrated mobile system enables real-time job scheduling that can easily and quickly take into consideration any emergencies or changes to the workforce. The repairs team receive their scheduled jobs every morning on their Motorola devices, with their job rota optimised to take their home address into account, so they don’t waste time making unnecessarily long or convoluted journeys.
Claire Sockett, systems development manager, South Yorkshire Housing Association, said, “We have seen enormous benefit from the changeover. Not only have we saved significant amounts of money, but we have also improved the productivity of our workforce so that we can now give our residents faster and more efficient services.”
