Capita has developed new modules for its OpenHousing system, including additional CRM functionality, upgraded mobile services and new reporting tools. The new modules are expected to be available from October 2009.
Explaining how Capita positioned its new modules against dedicated applications from other suppliers, Vanessa Parfitt, OpenHousing product team leader, Capita Software Services, said, “Our products have been designed to completely integrate with the OpenHousing system and therefore do not require extensive interfaces in order to work.
“We are actually experiencing quite a significant shift with lots of customers moving away from third-party applications that require regular and constant reconciliation, back to a single supplier. A number of customers have spoken about their need for ‘one source of the truth’ rather than being stuck with different answers from different applications.”
Details of the new modules include:
- Home ownership module for the creation and maintenance of shared ownership applications, including matching functionality across a range of criteria.
- Possession Claims Online (PCOL) module to simplify the online submission of claims for possession.
- NROSH data dictionaries for customers to extract the necessary priority 1 and 2 fields for the NROSH submission due April 2010.
- Contact Manager Lite provides additional CRM functionality, particularly for recording all contact information in reception areas or call centres. For organisations with CTI or Capita’s CallScripting module, inbound telephone calls automatically populate the caller’s details. The module links to Capita’s Customer Dashboard, Call Scripting and Contact Management modules to enable details to easily passed to other departments where necessary.
- Master Query module will be available for the major customer contact modules (Contact Manager and Contact Manager Lite), enabling reports and queries to be generated via the customer contact modules for all staff that need them.
- Two new mobile modules –HHSRS Mobile enables surveyors to collect housing health and safety data on site, easily record it on the PDA, then synchronise with and update the back-office system. Mobile ASB extends Capita’s Contact Management module, enabling ASB information to recorded on the PDA during a visit, presented to the informant and then electronically signed.
- OpenExec is Capita’s new management reporting tool, which generates real-time performance views and identifies trends over time, types of work, teams or individuals.
Internal testing of the new modules will be completed by the end of August 2009 and will go to three beta test customers in early September. They are scheduled to be beta-tested for six weeks and should be generally available from mid-October 2009.
