Sovini Group was the Winner in the IT Team of the Year category at the Housing Technology Awards 2025. Ian Pritchard and David Cater from Sovini explain how the housing provider has moved from its legacy systems to a modern hosted infrastructure.
Like many housing providers, Sovini had its fair share of legacy systems and IT infrastructure. These were the systems you knew you had to upgrade or replace but always took longer than planned. In 2024, however, our mission was clear: to replace several key on-premise legacy systems, including two housing management systems, and a bespoke workflow/EDM solution. These systems had become increasingly difficult to maintain and support, introduced risks, hindered business process and caused concern that they could start having an adverse impact on our customers and the services we deliver to them.
Challenge #1 – Legacy on-premise systems
The transition from legacy on-premise Northgate OHMS to a hosted NEC system was the IT team’s most significant undertaking yet. The well-documented reasons for upgrading or transitioning to cloud services guided us to focus on several critical areas:
- Eliminating physical servers and storage;
- Enhancing security and support;
- Increasing automation to minimise duplication and risk;
- Streamlining multiple systems into one;
- Improving customer service and reducing interaction with the CSC team.
To get this right, we worked closely with NEC (our core technology partner) and Sovini’s key housing-related teams throughout 2024. Together they built and configured the underlying structure and connectivity required to deliver the wide range of modules within NEC’s HMS, including the build and implementation of a dedicated EDM system alongside it.
Challenge #2 – Workflow/EDM solution replacement
The next challenge was replacing our bespoke workflow/EDM solution with Microsoft SharePoint, internally named FileHive. For years, managing and supporting a multi-server, dual-site Linux-based solution was a struggle; though it worked, it was fragile and support was limited and not cost-effective.
During the transition between solutions, over 3,000 corporate documents were successfully migrated. The integration brought Microsoft 365 integration, enhanced version control, security and system access for all users. The implementation process had only limited problems and was completed in six months.
Additional significant projects
While the above transformations were almost all-encompassing, other significant pieces of work also had to be addressed. The removal of legacy hardware and software continued at pace, initially focusing on data and reporting. Our transition from Business Objects to Microsoft Power BI, Automate and Fabric was crucial. Within just over three months, our data/BI team migrated over 200 reports, far ahead of the expected 6-12 month timescale.
Power Apps thrived, with ten in-house-developed apps enhancing productivity in areas such as disrepairs, case management, safeguarding, delivery planning and attendance management.
As early adopters of Microsoft Fabric, the first phase went live in December 2024. Internal data feeds and integrations were transitioned to Fabric, with future phases aiming to fully decommission our current data warehouse.
Infrastructure & security – The backbone of transformation
Infrastructure and security underpinned all these transformations. To address end-of-life problems with Windows, our infrastructure team completed a year-long upgrade program. They decommissioned 30 per cent of our servers, reducing risk, improving resilience and achieving zero business downtime. They also minimised our licensing costs, enhanced performance and stayed on time and within budget.
A key deliverable was our move to hosted ‘disaster recovery as a service’. With increasing data-centre costs, power consumption and ageing hardware reaching its end-of-life, adopting a more resilient service model was vital. The transition took six months, aligning with other critical projects. This reduced our data-centre footprint, lowered our overall costs and improved resilience and security.
Enhancing cyber-security
Cyber-security was significantly enhanced with a strong emphasis on people and governance. Continuous engagement across all business levels remained crucial. Sovini now offers cyber-security training at the board level and provides accurate and timely ‘executive information packs’ throughout the year. Collaboration with our technology partners led to over £20k worth of complimentary security assessments, enabling the development of a more detailed cyber-security roadmap and the recruitment of a cyber-security analyst.
A people-first approach
Despite the heavy workload, our IT team achieved over a 90 per cent employee-satisfaction rate. This success is attributed to a team-wide culture built on a ‘one team’ ethos, with initiatives such as away-days, social events and flexible working arrangements.
Continuous improvement was supported by allocating resources for analysis and collaboration with directors and business leads, ensuring the identification of the most efficient projects benefiting both customers and the organisation.
The team structure evolved to align our services with business priorities, introducing new roles such as project support, continuous improvement, cyber-security, IT assurance and senior support positions. These additions enhanced our focus on VFM, successful target delivery, improved security and better business integration.
While the changes posed challenges, resulting in some staff turnover, internal growth enhanced the team’s knowledge. Three members of the IT staff were promoted and two members from the wider business joined the team.
Learning & growing together
We refined our approach with each project, learning from past experiences and collaborating closely with the business. This allowed us to address business risks and VFM savings while identifying previously uncaptured business benefits.
The IT team’s contributions were integral to the success of initiatives such as cyber-security, ISOQAR, GDPR and financial audits. Our reshaped ‘IT assurance and data quality’ function significantly improved data-gathering processes and received high commendations from our auditors.
Cross-training united our front-line support, applications and infrastructure teams, with improved triaging processes, knowledge-sharing and skills enhancement. By evaluating core skills, areas for development were identified, addressing succession planning and training risks.
Recognition and customer satisfaction
Recognition for the IT team’s efforts was evident, with six team members nominated and two winning ‘Star/Leader of the Month’. Customer satisfaction with IT services remained above 96 per cent, with frequent comments from our end-users highlighting fast, helpful, friendly, knowledgeable and excellent service.
Reflecting on the year as a whole, the whole IT team at Sovini feels incredibly proud of its success and growth. The challenges faced have strengthened the team, making it ready for whatever the future holds.
Ian Pritchard is the group head of infrastructure and cloud, and David Cater is the group director of technology and performance improvement at Sovini Group. The housing provider was the Winner in the IT Team of the Year category at the Housing Technology Awards 2025.
