The range of responsibilities of social housing providers for handling and managing neighbourhood issues has broadened considerably in recent years. In particular, the focus on anti-social behaviour highlights how the relationship between landlord and tenant is changing; there is an ongoing pressure to remove barriers between departments and to provide ‘joined up’ services. Service providers…
Coping with anti-social behaviourRead More →
Contributed Articles
The integration game
One of the biggest issues that 62 social housing respondents in our customer service survey said they faced in 2008 was managing the integration of new software with existing business systems. Indeed, they have every right to be worried. Organisations are under increasing pressure to update their IT systems in order to meet their operational…
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Has IT lost the business battle?
For years the IT department fought for the chance to demonstrate the business value of technology innovation. Yet after a flurry of CIO appointments in the late 1990s, housing associations appear to have largely changed their view about technology as a business enabler and could therefore be in danger of considering it as little more…
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Is your PC really necessary?
Centralised applications and thin desktops are helping many housing associations deliver IT services that are lower coat, more secure and easier to manage. But even within these organisations, there are always users who claim to need a full-fat ‘real PC’. But do they? Thin computing may have been around for 10 years, but it is…
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Islands in the stream
A combination of the increasing IT skills of employees, as distinct from the IT department itself, and the user-friendliness of most business applications is resulting in the creation of employee- and department-specific micro-silos of data within housing associations, usually vital documents, spreadsheets or databases being stored on individual PCs or email accounts. The consequence of…
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Less is more
Controlling costs is a core objective for any organisation, not least housing associations. As the costs of community needs rise faster than the pace of revenue generation, housing associations need to improve their operational efficiency, with the procurement process offering significant opportunities for gains. Most housing associations have expended little resources on managing the money…
Less is moreRead More →
