Housing Mergers and Acquisitions – Where Does IT Fit In?
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Issue 69 | May 2019 www.housing-technology.com | £6.95 - Housing M&A Digital Delivering the Smart data lakes transformation ‘wow’ factor in housing starts with – From HMS Page 35 identity to Microsoft Page 28 Dynamics Page 14 Housing Technology’s Connected Communities 2019 Page 13 Do your projects use Bringing IT all together colourful language? – An interview with Page 42 Castleton Technology Page 08 Dashboards and FEATURE Sovereign’s transformation understanding finance with PowerObjects Housing mergers Page 18 Page 29 and acquisitions – where does IT fit in? Page 30 Spatial analytics in housing Popstar turned curate turned housing patron… Page 10 Page 40 © The Intelligent Business Company 2019. 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. EDITOR’S NOTES Issue 69 | May 2019 Building from strong foundations The centre cannot hold… your data, its internal and external sources In the same way that hastily or shoddily- and final destinations, then de-duplicating, As the saying goes, “good houses are built built houses will be fine for a short length rationalising and cleaning it then, ultimately, on strong foundations.” The same rationale of time, so too will new bright and shiny automating as many of your data-driven applies to housing providers’ myriad plans digital housing services. But without solid, processes as possible. for digital transformation. dependable foundations, both those Only then can you create the right Digital transformation means different houses and those services are very likely to foundations for the long-term success of things to different people, ranging from fail to deliver in the longer term. your digital transformation plans. Yes, it will the wholesale replacement of entire IT For digital transformation projects, those take longer and will cost a little more in the infrastructures and applications through to oh-so-necessary, solid foundations need short term but the alternative will certainly merely ‘reskinning’ existing websites. to be data and associated data-driven be, at best, a false economy. However, what most digital transformation processes. As the expression goes, “If you don’t have projects have in common, regardless of Only connect… time to do it right, when will you have time their size, scope, cost or complexity, is a While it is undoubtedly tempting to opt to do it over?” strong emphasis on the creation of a digital for some ‘easy wins’ through the creation ‘presentation layer’ for access to services, of digital versions of existing analogue whether for housing providers’ staff or their services or processes, these need to be tenants. underpinned by a commitment to review FORTHCOMING EVENTS PAGE 04 HOUSING PAGE 18 TECHNOLOGY PAGE 22 HOUSING TECHNOLOGY 2020 - Housing M&A PAGE 30 PAGE 32 – CONNECTED COMMUNITIES 2019 4-5 March 2020 10 September 2019 | BT Tower | London The Doubletree by Hilton Oxford Belfry PAGE 33 www.housing-technology.com/events/bt19 www.housing-technology.com/events/htc20 PAGE 40 COMPANIES IN THIS ISSUE Accent Housing 42 Esri UK 10 Itica 30 Orchard 04 Thorngate Living 07 Adur & Worthing Councils 06 Etive Technologies 28 Kirona 26 OutSystems 43 Torus 30 Advanced 26 ExtraCare Charitable Trust 04 Localz 24 PeopleDataTech 42 TSG 46 Amazon Web Services 35 Gas Tag 16 Manifest Software Solutions 25 PowerObjects 29 Vantage Business Solutions 30 Ascent Development 42 Greenfields Comm’ Housing25 Midland Heart 22 RedkiteCRM 32 Waltham Forest Council 35 Castleton Technology 08 & 39 HAC Housing Consultancy 11 MIS AMS 04 River Clyde Homes 04 Wandle Housing 14 Cathcart and District Housing 07 Hitachi Solutions 38 MobileIron 37 Salix Homes 34 Civica 09 & 33 Housing Solutions 26 Musgrave Analytics 18 Skillsarena 45 Clearview Systems 30 Hub Asset Management 19 Network Homes 36 South Yorkshire Housing 09 Designer Software 07 Hyperoptic 36 NG Data 35 Sovereign Housing 29 Dumfries & Galloway Housing 39 IP Integration 23 Northgate Public Services 30 Techmums 44 EDITOR DESIGN & PRODUCTION SUBSCRIPTIONS THE INTELLIGENT BUSINESS COMPANY LTD Alastair Tweedie Jo Euston-Moore Subscribe at www.housing-technology.com Hoppingwood Farm [email protected] [email protected] or email: [email protected] Robin Hood Way Twitter: @housingtech London, SW20 0AB EDITORIAL AND NEWS PRINTED IN THE UK BY United Kingdom [email protected] The Magazine Printing Company PUBLISHER Head Office: 0208 336 2293 George Grant www.magprint.co.uk RECRUITMENT [email protected] [email protected] Twitter: @tibcomp jobs.housing-technology.com Twitter: @housingtechjobs HOUSING TECHNOLOGY IS PRINTED ON ERA SILK MADE FROM 50 PER CENT UK-RECYCLED WASTE PULP AND THE BALANCE OF PULPS FROM CERTIFIED FORESTS. 4 | HOUSING MANAGEMENT ExtraCare selects Orchard to support OpenAccounts “We realise that having a system on its own doesn’t always offer a complete solution. The customer service and support element is the reason why Orchard became our choice to provide support for our OpenAccounts system and so far we haven’t been disappointed.” Correction Wishing to unlock In the March issue of Housing Technology, the “Unlocking value through data insights” article contributed value through by Orchard Information Systems and Red The ExtraCare Charitable Paul Todman, financial planning Olive was published with an incorrectly accountant, Extra Care Charitable Trust, attributed ‘dashboard’ screenshot. data insight? Trust has chosen Orchard said, “Orchard proved its credibility by The intellectual property rights to helping us with a sales ledger problem the dashboard screenshot belong to Information Systems to which took less than a week for us to Musgrave Analytics, an analytics and support its OpenAccounts solve with Orchard support; this had been visualisation company specialising in outstanding for over three months with social housing. Red Olive apologises for finance software. our previous supplier. any confusion caused. River Clyde Homes saves £55k with MIS-AMS Are you kept awake at night by Customer Behaviour, Tenant Engagement, Regulatory River Clyde Homes has Lorna Williams, business performance and Lorna said: “We were about to start on our Governance and Viability Compliance, KPI Statistics, Fraud Detection or GDPR? systems manager, River Clyde Homes, said, annual tenancy audit and knew this time we completed an extensive “After reviewing our current system, we wanted to embrace a more digital way of Orchard is at the forefront of predictive analytics. We help you rethink landlord/tenant realised that there was quite a bit of work working, so we bought the ActiveH mobile upgrade programme to do to make our internal operations more surveys module to help us to complete the relationships by providing better insight into tenant behaviour. streamlined and efficient. With help from whole auditing process better and faster. the team at MIS AMS, we have created our Engage with us to develop the right strategy to unlock the value within your data. of its rent arrears and “We had 5,400 properties to audit so being own unique system, with modules, groups able to use a digital system to capture the and rules to really give the business exactly data-capture functions relevant information minimised the scope what it needs in terms of reducing arrears. for human error and made the whole using MIS AMS’s “Since the introduction of the new system, process for our team and our tenants much we’ve saved over £55,000. We now have more efficient. The initial audit was such a ActiveH software, Housing Digital Asset Finance Analytics Mobility Services one system instead of two that’s easy for success that we are now deploying the MIS Management Engagement Management our staff to use and gives us a 360-degree AMS mobile surveys module across the resulting in savings of view of our tenants.” business for all of our other surveys.” £55,000. River Clyde Homes has also recently gone Want to know more? live with ActiveH’s mobile surveys module. 0191 203 2500 [email protected] orchard-systems.co.uk www.housing-technology.com Wishing to unlock value through data insight? Are you kept awake at night by Customer Behaviour, Tenant Engagement, Regulatory Governance and Viability Compliance, KPI Statistics, Fraud Detection or GDPR? Orchard is at the forefront of predictive analytics. We help you rethink landlord/tenant relationships by providing better insight into tenant behaviour. Engage with us to develop the right strategy to unlock the value within your data. Housing Digital Asset Finance Analytics Mobility Services Management Engagement Management Want to know more? 0191 203 2500 [email protected] orchard-systems.co.uk 6 | HOUSING MANAGEMENT Building DIY systems in low-code – A pragmatic alternative? Paul Turner, Systems & Performance Manager, Adur & Worthing Councils Adur and Worthing Councils are Off-the-shelf software is often standalone how this would all fit within our leadership and without open APIs, it can result in data vision. two district councils near Brighton silos. For example, we estimate that Adur & which have had a shared officer Worthing councils have around 400 such We wanted tenants to shape the future data silos, which clearly doesn’t fit in with service so we interviewed around 30 structure since 2008. Over the past our aim to have joined-up systems and people involved with our repairs service, few years, we have begun to use our approaches. including tenants, customer-service agents, operatives, external contractors own low-code platform to develop We looked at developing with open- and administrators. Their feedback told our own systems. This approach source software. One attraction of open us that we were doing some things well source is the ability to share it between but the customer and user experience fell has been recognised as being organisations and to be able to both short in some areas, such as from setting innovative; we won a SOCITM provide and receive shared applications.