Housing Technology 2014 Conference
1st Touch – Mobile technology innovation for housing
1st Touch will show how mobile technology innovation has helped the UK’s social housing and local government organisations achieve significant savings, improve service delivery and deliver higher tenant satisfaction.
Aareon & Partick Housing – Partick Housing heads for the cloud
How small housing providers can get big-business IT support through use of the cloud. The presentation will discuss the process Partick Housing went through to arrive at the decision to move its ICT services and its Aareon housing management system to the cloud, how it managed the process, the various suppliers and the successful implementation. Partick Housing will also talk about what it learned, pitfalls to avoid and the overall benefits this move brought to its business.
Adactus Housing Group – Stop procrastinating and get the cash in! (or using technology to automate income collection)
Adactus will report on its learnings from a recent project which sought to use technology to increase the automation of its income collection processes. The project involved working with technology partners Mobisoft and The Housing Contact Company to automate the identification, contact and progression to Court of non-paying tenants.
Affinity Sutton – Bringing the world of BI to Asset Management
Affinity Sutton has developed an Asset Management Toolkit in its BusinessObjects and SQL Server BI Suite, giving real time, powerful analytics to support new ways of thinking in data-driven Active Asset Management. The large and often complex data models are integrated with its multiple corporate applications to provide insight into asset performance from both qualitative and quantitative aspects. The Estate Financial Model and the Estate Quality Index form the foundation of a range of BI products published in-house from desktop dashboards and ‘what-if’ model scenario planning to on-the-road mobile GIS reports through iPad apps.
Alliance Homes – Transformation is The Business
A look at how Alliance Homes’ process to improve critical ICT systems developed into a much wider business transformation programme, requiring considerable investment in resources and a governance structure to support the decision making process. The presentation will look at progress so far and what will be included in future tranches of work.
AmicusHorizon – Promoting financial inclusion through innovation
A presentation on how AmicusHorizon is committed to helping its customers become financially and digitally included. By using its app and having a truly mobile workforce using iPads and CRM, it is taking its services to customers’ doors.
Ashton Pioneer Homes – The launch of ‘HMS Welfare Reform’
The HMS Welfare Reform is sailing at full steam ahead. Housing providers need to expect and plan for a higher tide of rent arrears. Tenants are already struggling financially and treading water while frontline staff are having to work differently just to keep tenants afloat. Ashton under Lyne is a pathfinder for Universal Credit and Ashton Pioneer Homes will show how it is changing its approach to housing management and the challenges of digital communication.
Bright IT Consultancy – IT strategy cookbook: ingredients for a successful strategy
An independent look at what goes into delivering IT strategies, from connecting with your internal & external customers, risk & governance, in-house capabilities, and change management through to procurement & value for money, big data, mobility & social media, and dealing with suppliers.
BT – Transforming IT Services in Housing
Driving business value is a key priority for any company and adapting to the technology needs of your customers employees and partners is challenging but crucial to success. Organising your technology programmes and initiatives in a consistent, cohesively linked roadmap can help drive technology and deliver true business impact. And while some IT professionals recoil at the thought of allowing employee owned devices to burrow into corporate networks, more of them realise that a BYOD strategy can result in quantifiable benefits as well as increased employee collaboration and productivity when properly planned, implemented and managed.
Capita – Why put all your apps in one basket? The importance of appropriate user interfaces for appropriate devices and roles
Are web-based, front-end user interfaces the ‘silver bullet’ for IT systems – especially for housing? Tom Battersby, head of housing products for Capita’s software services will discuss why a blended approach to user interfaces, with a focus on the device and the role fulfilled by the user, is a better fit for such a diverse business as social housing.
Circle – We used to do projects?
Circle has transformed its approach to managing change from incremental technology projects to large scale organisational change. Nominated by the CIPD in 2013 for an HR Excellence Award in managing change and having the Executive Director responsible for change winning HR Director of the year, a complete transition from delivering outputs through projects to an outcome focussed change approach has taken place. The presentation will look at the transformation, the engagement techniques, the story of investment, the governance and the methodology used to ensure that change is successful. It will demonstrate how the approach ensures that people are at the heart of what we do.
City West Housing Trust – Using technology & business intelligence to deploy resources and practical interventions to support tenants through welfare reform
Related: Video 1 – Video 2 – Video 3 – Video 4 – Video 5
City West has developed new processes and integrated systems to develop sophisticated understandings of the impacts of welfare reform and has used this insight to make decisions about how resources can be used most effectively and where to direct solutions for our affected customers. We will show you how these systems work, how we’ve used the data and the impacts we’re having.
CityWest Homes – Housing services and technology: The exciting challenges ahead
With Amazon and eBay already now prioritising smartphone and tablet applications over website development, the challenge to keep pace for a housing sector where many organisations are only just developing basic portals is becoming increasingly steep. This session will look into the immediate future at the challenges facing the sector and will show how technology needs to be the number one priority for housing organisations in developing their services to meet those challenges.
Civica – Mobility & income collection in a changing world
Social housing providers are under a number of pressures from recent changes in the market, such as the introduction of welfare reform and the summer rent settlement. These factors are causing many to look at diversification, both to mitigate risk and to open up new avenues for delivery of services to different audiences. Whether it be focused collection of income or management of risk in the new world of welfare reform we will look to discuss the drive behind a mobile workforce able to deliver services on the doorstep and ensure the information is available at the right time and place.
Cloud Dialogs – Implementing mobile outside repairs and rents
Using recent case studies in tenancy services, tenancy sustainment, support services and neighbourhoods, this presentation will explore and explain: how modern technology changes the RoI dynamics of a project; how to evaluate an existing process to understand the implementation complexity and potential financial return; managing non¬visit based mobile-working; the difference between static data and active data; why customer data staging is important; and the five major types of work allocation common across housing.
Futures Housing Group – I’ve got a smart phone so I must be mobile!
What is mobile working and what does it really mean to those who interact with tenants in their homes rather than at an office desk. If a mobile working solution relies on the transfer of information and notification of location as its key aims, and staff already possess a device costing under £500 with enough technology within it to land a space craft, why does mobile working have to be so complicated?
GreenSquare Group – Getting ready for UC
A new era: GreenSquare’s experience of the DWP’s pilot projects and its preparations for universal credit.
HACT – Housing, Big Data and Beyond
Advances in technology are disrupting established business and service models across sectors, promising to radically change the way housing providers deliver services and interact with tenants. HACT is working with Microsoft and some of the UK’s leading housing providers to develop new approaches to leveraging the power of Big Data in housing.
Helena Partnerships –CRM in relation to welfare reform and compliance
‘CRM and Service Delivery – The Helena Story’ will show our journey from ‘we need a CRM system and can we build it ourselves?’ to trying to understand the concepts and realities of customer insight and more recently Big Data, as well as the move through Customer Excellence and recent refocus on Value for Money and through this all, trying to achieve the elusive Knowledge Management Approach.
Halton Housing Trust – Digital first: the provision of all services online, integrated with the HMS
The aim of the Digital First programme is to develop the Trust’s services to ensure they are accessible to all customers online and to encourage as many customers as possible to access services this way. This will ensure that the Trust is providing effective and efficient online services with customers having access to the right information, at the right time in the right place. This will also free up additional resources internally to focus activity on rental income collection and advice in response to the Welfare Reform changes. The changes are recognising that not everybody needs or wants to have to call us to access services. It also allows us to spend more quality time resolving issues for customers that need support particularly the more vulnerable.
Home Group – How to embark on an omni-channel strategy
– Why go there?
– How it supports the customer journey; create a deliberate experience with your design;
– Keep it simple; be clear on your desired outcomes and how you will measure your ROI;
– Customer effort trumps channel preference; what the research tells us around what matters universally to customers;
– Insight to action; be fleet of foot through real-time access to the customer voice.
Intrinsic – Enablers of Business Agility
Intrinsic works with housing associations to improve customer service and tenant experience, while delivering operational efficiencies. We’ve developed an approach called Dynamic IT which provides you with options focused around delivering on-premise technologies, cloud services, consultancy and a suite of managed services enabling you to transition to a more agile, flexible environment whilst empowering your employees and providing customer service excellence. Join us to learn more.
Knightstone Housing Group – Business transformation and the role of IT in delivering smarter ways of working, better tenant services and greater efficiencies
In June 2011, Knightstone launched its ‘Take on the Future’ business transformation programme through which it refocused its area, reshaped its services and refreshed its ways of working. This session provides an overview of why and how it did what it did and the critical role that IT investment played in enabling a smarter way of working and better service delivery for residents.
Looking Local – Exploring Universal Credit, multi-channel access & joined up public services to drive channel shift, business transformation & digital inclusion
The range of digital channels and devices today gives people multiple ways of accessing information and services, and along with that comes a range of complexities for service providers. Public sector organisations often face similar challenges in terms of customer access and effective digital service delivery; by working collaboratively Looking Local has shown that there are real opportunities in terms of savings, business transformation, channel shift and engagement.
MET & Citrix –Totally Transform IT
The benefits that housing providers can gain by adopting more mobile and flexible work styles can really transform the way the organisation operates. MET and Citrix will be discussing how housing providers can overcome some of the perceived challenges of adopting mobile working solutions and demonstrating some of the technology available to simplify the management and security of a very wide range of end user devices.
NIACE & EMH Group – Digital inclusion, welfare reform and universal credit
Welfare reform is having a profound effect on social housing and with a further £12 billion savings planned from the welfare bill coupled with the ‘Digital by Default’ agenda, housing providers must invest in the digital agenda.
This workshop will report on an EU-funded digital inclusion project where NIACE and EMH Group developed the digital skills of four key resident groups; sufferers of domestic violence; older people; BME communities; and the homeless. It will look at the realities and lessons learned in relation to the ICT infrastructure; digital skills of staff, approaches used and the impact of the programme. It will also extend the argument that investment so far has failed and discuss why digital literacy programmes should be based on the needs of providers and residents rather than on numbers.
Oneserve & Sovini –Project 65: Elevating service delivery though the cloud
Project 65 has been a partnership program between Sovini Property Services and Oneserve to help us deliver our property maintenance services through the cloud. It represents the most fundamental change in our business processes for over a decade and has transformed the way we work. With our entire field force now using mobile devices running the Oneserve application, we’re delivering more jobs, more quickly, first time, every time and are on track to save over £400,000 in year one.
Orbit Group – Going beyond ‘likes’ and hashtags: a digital journey at the Orbit Group
An overview of how the digital strategy within Orbit is helping to change culture, support innovation and improve services.
Orchard –E-RP?
For many years the social housing sector has matured and consolidated. With the added pressures of recession and welfare reform, registered providers are turning to commercial ventures to balance the books. The growing challenge of integrating business operations, data and processes suggests an ERP-style solution, but this must support the unique responsibilities and realities of the social housing sector.
Peaks & Plains Housing Trust – Making your income & collection systems deliver £s for pounds: an advanced rules-based approach to tackling income management
Ever wondered how your Income Officers think? This session will show you how Peaks & Plains has created an in-house system that understands the human element of prioritising arrears to maximise rent collection in the tough times of Welfare Reform, resulting in the best collection rates in seven years.
RHP – Nudging customers in an omni-channel world
How did RHP go about learning more about its customers? What did it discover? How it go about making changes in the way it delivers its services in an increasingly omni-channel world in order to provide its customers with more choice, convenience and control?
Salford City Council – AYOD, BYOD, CYOD…..what next DYOD, EYOD…. Destroy, Encrypt your own devices?
Whatever next – are we merely working through the alphabet? No matter what it’s called, the key risks remain and need to be considered and assessed against the benefits of utilising own devices can bring. This presentation will question how or if an organisation’s ICT department can control, secure and protect personal, sensitive and confidential data from an audit perspective.
Saxon Weald Housing – Nudging closer: Can behavioural change smooth the way for Universal Credit?
A background in tobacco control led Saxon Weald’s communications manager to explore whether behavioural change has a part to play in helping people move to single payments. A short (and deeply unscientific) look at whether the lessons learned in the campaign to reduce smoking have any relevance when it comes to helping people to take financial responsibility.
Sovereign Business Integration Group – The rise of the housing cloud
Organisations are seeking to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the drop in network and data centre operating costs. Following the path well-trodden in other sectors, housing providers are looking to cloud as part of a broader strategy to deliver what the sector needs in terms of cost savings, value for money, efficiency of operations and improved availability of systems.
The Housing Contact Company & Accent Group – How and why is customer satisfaction important in 2014?
The rationale for measuring customer satisfaction has changed in a number of sectors over recent years. We will explain how the automotive industry and social housing have much in common regarding how the financial crash impacted the incentive for organisations to measure satisfaction. To some now an unaffordable luxury, Accent Group will demonstrate how and why satisfaction is critical to its operations.
The Hyde Group – Positioning ICT for business efficiency and growth
How the Hyde Group transformed its ICT function, including the adoption of ITIL principles, the outsourcing of some services and a ‘root and branch’ review of all of infrastructure and systems. This gave the group the ICT systems it needed to support the group’s business transformation programme, One Hyde One Vision and maximise value for money.
Tower Hamlets Homes – Demand- and insight-led housing management to transform organisational performance
As a systems-thinking organisation, Tower Hamlets Homes has leveraged value from existing and new ICT investments to deliver performance through processes. This has facilitated the use of customer insight and business intelligence to deliver ever-improving services to meet and exceed resident expectations, against a backdrop of public sector austerity and the need to deliver cashable savings.
unITe Solutions (South Shropshire Housing & Severnside Housing) – Collaborative working to deliver IT transformation and business change
A review of the business drivers that saw the creation of a shared IT Service (unITe Solutions) to deliver transformed IT services to Severnside Housing and Shropshire Housing Group collaborating in the delivery of IT; and how collaborative working practices and services, with the common use of IT systems, has been developed and delivered while addressing various IT and business challenges, while also achieving the numerous benefits that were the aim of the shared IT service.
Wales & West Housing Association & F-fectis – Showcasing the results of research into the cost drivers for IT in housing
Where is the major cost pressures on providing IT services in housing? How does my unique association compare with others? For years IT Managers have tried to answer these questions and others like them using benchmarking without great success. Working with 17 Welsh HAs and the Dutch consultancy company F-fectis, hear how we tackled these questions from a different perspective and find out how close we got to answering the value for money questions and find those IT cost drivers.
West Kent Housing Association – ‘It’s your call’ – how we’ve influenced and improved the customer journey at West Kent by delivering a ‘right person, right answer, first time’ service
Do you put your customers at the centre of what you do? Are you trying to maximise the business benefits of new technology and manage change at the same time. We set out to improve technology, streamline business processes and start to change the relationship we have with our customers. Learn how West Kent achieved real success by focussing on three areas, technology, service delivery and cultural change.
Yorkshire Housing – The impact of welfare reform on the customer experience
Improved customer offers in the light of welfare reform – find out how Yorkshire Housing has approached the impact of welfare reform on the customer experience. They will share their approach, the lessons learnt, and give an insight to changed services, which have not only improved their customer experience but also better for the bottom line.
Your Homes Newcastle – Doorstep Delivery: A warts and all account of introducing a pilot project for mobile working
Since October 2013, twenty members of staff (carefully selected to represent a full range of skill and confidence with technology) have been using tablets to access and update customer information away from the office, particularly in tenant homes. In theory, this should save huge amounts of time by sweeping away pre-visit form printing and office-based rekeying. But what happens in practice…?