Enterprise Search & BI from Clearview for Villages Housing Keystone's Component Accounting with Midland Heart Wales
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issue 39 | may 2014 | www.housing-technology.com | £6.95 Grampian Housing goes virtual Keystone’s component EDM at Port of Leith with with Castle Computer Services accounting with Midland Heart Invu Page 27 Page 04 Page 30 Enterprise search & BI from Feature article: SMAC your Optevia wins Dynamics CRM Clearview for Villages Housing IT up deal at A2Dominion Page 30 Page 18 Page 15 Trident deploys CGFirst Readers’ letters - risk management Peaks & Plains’ approach to Board Portal on iPads and big data in housing arrears Page 22 Page 28 Page 06 Kypera delivers full suite to 1st Touch launches self-service Wales & West’s free wi-fi with Atrium Homes app Meraki & BT Page 03 Page 10 Page 20 © The Intelligent Business Company 2014. Housing Technology is published by The Intelligent Business Company. Reproduction of any material, in whole or in part, is strictly forbidden without the prior consent of the publisher. 0402 || housing technology | housing management www.housing-technology.com Editor’s Notes Building homes with technology can increase the number of residents that The pressure on social housing stock is they can support through having fewer unused relentless, with most housing providers doing bedrooms among their properties. what they can to build new properties and Many housing providers are well-positioned make best use of their existing properties to to turn their existing in-house services into maximise the number of residents they can commercial propositions that they can sell to accommodate, with particular pressure on other housing providers and local authorities, those operating in the main cities. such as Gentoo’s StreetWise service for ASB While technology on its own can’t magically management and North Lincolnshire Homes’ create hundreds of new properties, it can be Diamond Net broadband service, in order to used to help alleviate the problem in different create additional revenue streams. ways. The most obvious way is by using Finally, the latest housing development and technology to enable housing providers to work project management software can make more efficiently, such as perhaps replacing the actual viability appraisals and building expensive paper-based activities with cheaper processes faster, more efficient and therefore and more streamlined electronic processes cheaper. or using mobile working to lower costs and increase productivity, and thereby reduce their Exclusive video interviews operating costs, with some of the savings put We have just published three excellent towards building programmes. videos on www.housing-technology.com/ videos, comprising exclusive interviews with Another area is housing providers’ financial the Falklands veteran Simon Weston, OBE management. Despite the difficulties of and George Clarke, presenter of Channel introducing component accounting to meet 4’s ‘Restoration Man’, along with interviews the recent SORP regulations, the resulting conducted during the Housing Technology asset registers should make it easier for 2014 conference in February. housing providers to accurately measure and predict the present and future values of Vital research tool their portfolios. Combined with tighter risk If you weren’t already aware, every news story, management to run as ‘lean’ organisations, feature article, comment and interview from housing providers may then find it easier to the very first issue of Housing Technology is raise capital for additional housing stock. online, indexed by topic, housing provider, IT supplier, date and content type. At the Mutual exchanges have increased in popularity click of a mouse, you can now research new since the introduction of the ‘bedroom tax’, technologies you are considering adopting, with HomeSwapper reporting a 25 per cent review all stories about prospective IT increase in the number of tenants swapping suppliers, and read about the technology homes in the past 12 months. However, many infrastructures of prospective customers. tenants are likely to be unaware of mutual Find out more at www.housing-technology.com. exchanges; by promoting such services to their tenants, housing providers may find that they future events sections Georgia Group: High Impact Leadership 1st Touch: Regional Conference 2014 housing management page 03 Programme Seminar 12 June, The Palace Hotel, Manchester finance management page 04 22 May 2014, Wentworth www.1sttouch.com mobile working page 10 www.georgia-group.com or 01625 441 724 customer management page 13 feature article: smac page 18 Arena Partnership: National Roadshow & Housing Technology: Beer & Pizza 2014 digital inclusion page 20 User Groups 18 November, Olympia, London infrastructure page 23 May onwards, various UK locations www.housing-technology.com readers’ letters page 28 www.arenapartnership.co.uk By invitation only general news page 30 editor design & production subscriptions the intelligent business Alastair Tweedie Jo Euston-Moore Subscribe at www.housing-technology.com or company ltd [email protected] [email protected] email: [email protected] Hoppingwood Farm Twitter housingtech printed in the uk by Robin Hood Way The Magazine Printing Company London editorial and news www.magprint.co.uk sw20 0ab [email protected] United Kingdom publisher George Grant Head Office: 0208 336 2293 [email protected] Twitter tibcomp housing technology is printed on era silk made from 50 per cent uk-recycled waste pulp, and the balance of pulps from certified forests. © the intelligent business company 2014. housing technology is published by the intelligent business company. reproduction of any material, in whole or in part, is strictly forbidden without the prior consent of the publisher. housing technology | housing management | 03 Kypera delivers full suite to Atrium Homes NCH’s implementation of Kypera Housing is part of a large transformation programme around customer service. The programme also includes the deployments of Microsoft Dynamics CRM with a data warehouse to deliver many of the housing IT system functions both inside and outside the contact centre. Owen Barrett, IS Atrium Homes has just completed the deployment of a manager, Newport City Homes, said, “The big issue I’ve suite of new products from Kypera following a three-month always had is the datasets we keep are numerous, complex implementation period. The housing provider is now using and costly. We need to rationalise and CRM is the perfect way Kypera Housing, Kypera Financials and Kypera Mobile within to do this.” an integrated infrastructure. Having completed the Dynamics CRM implementation, NCH Stephen Black, chief executive, Atrium Homes, said, wanted a modern rents and service charges system based on “As part of the procurement exercise, we ran an initial the latest technology that aligned with its existing Microsoft presentation which was designed for the suppliers to show platforms and CRM and provided back-office support for its us what their systems could do. This proved very useful in finance, income recovery and home ownership teams. informing Atrium staff not just which systems might work for us, but also which people we could work with. NCH reported that it chose Kypera Housing due to its Microsoft compatibility, ease of use and value for money. “Kypera’s value-for-money approach supports our key objectives, particularly our goals of protecting our long- New chief operating officer term financial viability, maximising income and using Kypera has appointed Philippa Scobie as its new chief resources efficiently. Kypera’s offering is economical, operating officer, with the position having been created will help us to be more efficient, and the introduction of following a management restructure due to the company’s mobile working will enhance our effectiveness in delivering recent growth and the success of its latest software built our services to Atrium’s tenants.” on Microsoft’s .NET platform. Newport City Homes to implement Kypera Scobie will be responsible for all day-to-day operational Due to go live in June 2014, matters and for managing the future growth of the Newport City Homes is in business. She is a qualified accountant and joins Kypera the middle of implementing with more than 11 years’ experience as a financial a new housing management controller, including stints at Lehman Brothers and system from Kypera alongside Bedfordshire NHS Trust. its Microsoft Dynamics CRM system. COMPANIES IN THIS ISSUE • A2Dominion 15 • Grampian Housing 27 • Salix Homes 16 • Adactus Housing 10 • Hillcrest Housing 11 • Severnside Housing 24 • Aspire Group 34 • Housing 21 32 • Shropshire Housing 24 • Atrium Homes 03 • Midland Heart 04 • Solihull Community Housing 16 • Broadacres Housing 11 • Newport City Homes 03 • Trident 22 • Carnegie Trust 23 • Peaks & Plains Housing Trust 06 • Villages Housing 30 • Coast & Country 25 • Places for People 09 • Wales & West Housing 20 • Denbighshire Council 04 • Port of Leith Housing 30 • WM Housing 23 • Gentoo Group 13 • Radian Group 32 04 | housing technology | housing management www.housing-technology.com Capita wins Denbighshire housing services contract Capita’s software services business Peter McHugh, head of housing and The implementation of the Capita signed a contract in January 2014 with community development, Denbighshire software replaces the council’s previous Denbighshire County Council to provide County Council, said, “A key reason why paper-based processes. Provided a comprehensive housing management we selected Capita’s