JMC IT has just completed a two-phase, 18-month project for the merger of Manchester’s Harvest Housing Group and Liverpool’s Arena Housing Group to form Your Housing Group. The new group will now own and manage around 32,000 properties in the North West, Yorkshire and the Midlands.
Salford-based JMC originally won the initial £600,000 tender against five other companies and then extended the system development to a £2 million project via a framework agreement. JMC designed a centralised IT solution that replicates the entire network between Your Housing’s data centres in real time. The network provides the foundation for the group to ensure advanced service delivery to tenants, flexible working for staff, a comprehensive disaster recovery solution and reduced administration and environmental costs.
The first phase involved the implementation of a virtual desktop infrastructure for communications across 30 sites. The second phase consolidated the network across the two existing groups, including a joint email solution that took effect from day one of the merger.
Simon Morris, executive director for finance, Your Housing Group, said, “Rolling out an IT infrastructure that affects more than 1,400 members of staff across almost 30 sites demanded a great deal of planning and a very trusted relationship between us and JMC.
“JMC presented us with this tailored and future-proof platform, which has been critical to the success of the consolidation of two of the North West’s biggest housing providers’ IT systems. JMC advised us on what was possible and took a very flexible approach to delivering this extensive project.”
