Tony Smith,that Housing IT Guy https://uk.linkedin.com/in/tonysmiththathousingitguy @HousingITguy

Some thoughts on IT and UK SocialHousing from a unique perspective of over 25+ years working with over 100 RSL's, Councils and social landlord groups in the UK, Ireland & Australia. Also a healthy music knowledge music over the last 5 decades Available for independent housing RSL implementation, procurement of HMS, Repairs, CRM, EDM, DLO, Financial, Scheduling systems, critical friend etc. In Scotland I work with the folks at Arneil Johnston Check us out on Soundcloud /housingitguy

Thursday 4 April 2024

All Together

If you do the Twitter thing, follow me at @HousingITguy or LinkedIn here https://uk.linkedin.com/in/tonysmiththathousingitguy

An interesting news item caught my eye this week in the socialhousing software world, for the under 6,000 units HMS world in the UK.

Namely the announcement that “Housing Online and Designer Software announce a new strategic alliance”. For others out there asking “who”, these are recent emerging disrupters having a lot of success in this part of the sector and particularly with independent non-council, charity or LSVT providers in Scotland many of who fit in this amount of properties managed. Read the full corporate statement here on the HomeMaster site Great for Phil Sorrell & Ian Thompson.

As readers of this blog will know and my wider contacts, I work a lot in Scotland and love the place for so many reasons, but certainly through the good folks at Arneil Johnston, where we have worked together for nearly ten years now. (Lovely to work with you Donna, a younger, cooler, wiser younger sister I never had).

So, a quick primer (as those Yanks may say).

Homemaster from Designer Software are perhaps the fastest growing Cloud/browser first HMS supplier you have never heard of. The folks behind it if we had one of those Pete Frame rock family trees, you might remember Ian & Craig from Kypera, then Castleton, MRI etc. Having lots of experience of takeover, compromise and other clandestine employment agreements, its franticly baffling to me that when Castleton bought Kypera, there was no restriction for 99 years of the original founders, to create any new housing & finance system.

These guys have indeed found and exploited a window of opportunity, (which looks to still be open particularly in Scotland), to take a number of old Kypera/Castleton sites, smaller older legacy Aareon, Capita, MIS ActiveH sites and others with minimal effort. If they start to expand into the 5-15k zone, more providers should be concerned. Law of the jungle, laggards are eaten.

So, who are Housing Online ?

Well, without coming out of the closet as a fan, I have to say I love what these guys did for ELHA This is one of the most fabulous self-service portals in the British Isles (yes Southern Ireland and all my friends and contacts there, I include you too). Cartoony without being condescending and spookily successful in resident take-up.

So the craic is that Housing Online add that polish to self-service portals, that mere HMS providers cannot. Now this for me has been evident for over a couple of decades since being on the (supplier) dark side. Self-service created by computer geeks and nerds, look just like that. Often they look like the tool they were designed within. A good example is portals developed for D365 CRM, if you are not careful you offer something close to what your service centre sees (with the same 10pt Verdana font too!).

Lets face it, many portals (resident/contractor/finance) need some serious polish. Its not quite like buying something on Amazon in 90secs now is it?

Bigger questions though, is this the start of Designer Software buying up other useful solutions and creating new alliances? Could they in 3 years become the new Aareon UK, or put in a bid for someone else’s housing solution? Who knows, we are in interesting times social housing systems folk.

While this is an interesting story, I should as some point pull out some other disrupter's for attention, maybe I will do that later this year... always remember, if you think you are innovating, feel free to give me a shout.

Acutance Consulting are here to help whatever your size, our smallest an inspirational 34 homes,

please just get in touch , for a chat over a coffee & a few Tunnocks Teacakes ☕😋

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I would be pleased to connect with you on LinkedIn - http://uk.linkedin.com/in/tonysmiththathousingitguy Message me with any issues or queries, you would like to be explored in this blog. We generally receive a couple of suggestions each month.

Culture Shock - All Together.
(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk 07854-655009

Access a quick list of our Social Housing ICT blog posts here

Could we help you or your organisation? Our contact details are here , get in touch we will be pleased to chat about your problems and help with your organisation issues.

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Thursday 21 March 2024

Forbidden Fruit (that beyond the low hanging stuff)..

If you do the Twitter thing, follow me at @HousingITguy or LinkedIn here https://uk.linkedin.com/in/tonysmiththathousingitguy

We have all encountered the drive at times to achieve a MVP – Minimum Viable Product. Its got to be done sometimes when there is little alternative. Too often the MVP becomes the final solution, we are stuck with solutions that address 70% of the low hanging fruit. Have you encountered that in your organisation or perhaps suffered it in others?

I understand that its sometimes harder to spot or realise this when on the inside. It can feel unusual where I come in as a third party at times and ask, “So why did you stop there”?

Stopping part-way in can happen if we change management or sometimes just get stuck in our ways. We might come to an understanding that “this is our offering”. A post by Paul Taylor on LinkedIn made me think about this a week or so ago. It was one about how self-service often works well, until it doesn’t. That is a bit like modern life at times.

This week I had an issue on Amazon, which eventually got a human response, although it took me best part of a day to locate a link to. In fairness Amazon have had over a decade or two to get a lot of this stuff right. They have way deeper pockets than everyone else too!

Its logical to tackle the low-hanging fruit. However, in a workshop last week including a board member (likely a tenant too), when talking about what to focus on, he clearly say, “Why aren’t we focussing on all this stuff – its all important to customers”. Both can be satisfied, however we just need to realise when we have stalled on the MVP and identify the next biggest piece of low-hanging fruit. Often after solving 75% we struggle to move on to the next 9%, then 5%, then 4%.

It always makes me smile when I hear of solutions sold as starting with an MVP. These are fine if we have a flexible attitude to risk, or even understand where risk can be possible. An MVP indicates we are building something that has perhaps not been done properly before. Not many clients understand that. That misunderstanding can also lead to problems moving that on to a more complete solution. Follow-on costs or new challenges may prevent further progression.

From a customer viewpoint, while the MVP may satisfy basic core processes, further sophistication can missing. Also often absent is the omnichannel response, as its been withdrawn due to expectations of the new solution. This is where frustration starts. No digital solution and little or poor alternative solutions, providing customers and end users with challenges.

Why do we not notice solutions needed beyond the MVP?

You know, it is often very evident if we look in other service areas, such as complaints. While our partnering contractor reports 97.3% KPI compliance to us, a monumental rise in repair complaint interactions may show us a very different metric. Increases in certain customer service interactions, point to failures elsewhere. Listening to other teams or workstreams is always very revealing and far cheaper its got to be said, to pay a consultant to take your watch from your wrist and tell you the time.

Particularly in the digital first realm, if we stop improving and we get stuck in the MVP, we ultimately fail.

Acutance Consulting are here to help with your projects,

please just get in touch, for a chat over a coffee & a few Jammy Dodgers ☕😋

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The Blow Monkeys - Forbidden Fruit.
(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk 07854-655009

Access a quick list of our Social Housing ICT blog posts here

Thursday 7 March 2024

Burnt (out) by our projects

If you do the Twitter thing, follow me at @HousingITguy or LinkedIn here https://uk.linkedin.com/in/tonysmiththathousingitguy

I had three chats this very week with clients about implementation projects and their resourcing. All three have asked suppliers how they might resource proposals and also what other projects they have on-going. That is an important and essential question for sure, although one aspect that sometimes gets totally overlooked, is our own internal capabilities.

I’ve sometimes been involved with big implementation projects that have been delivered to very tight timescales, although all of those have been generously resourced by both clients and suppliers, in order to make it all work. Although suppliers (sometimes quite rightly) pick up the blame for failure and delay, a good 40% of projects that fail badly are let down by poor internal client resourcing or communication.

Clear problems are created by not having enough resource or not the right mix. Suppliers at their ‘pitching’ stage if asked can indicate how many FTE’s might be needed and from which teams and with the right subject matter experience. Having said that, not many contracting bodies always bother to ask. Reference sites can also share their stories, from which much can be learned. ICT staff should be expected in most instances to not be contributing too much, if individual teams will be expected to take good ownership of their own solutions and processes.

I feel that we need the best quality project staff we can afford to free from the BAU, although I understand the challenges. Particularly in smaller organisations this can be problematic. Back-filling experienced and valuable staff is a serious issue and I normally suggest getting more junior staff to act up, then potentially back filling them which should be easier.

Having additional overtime available is useful, but must not be relied on as a crutch. Also, the possibility of deferring / banking leave and TOIL is useful, particularly beyond the current holiday year if needed.

With all these in place, it is still very common for most of the implementation work to come down to one or two key involved and extremely valuable staff. Sometimes many moons ago, I could have been one of those staff. Opportunity for burnout to occur in these people is high. That can happen quite tragically for the project as they inevitably are a single point of failure.

Looking out for the signs, getting into the office or logging in remotely very early, picking extra work up late evenings or weekends etc, is essential. An open culture of being able to ask for help via managers or project sponsor is essential, as well as being realistic with highlight reports. It benefits no one long-term if there is too much good news. All projects have amber and red periods. If its all greens, the right questions are not being asked.

Look after your project staff and don’t be afraid to consider change control and project extension if needed. Arbitrary go-live targets with little relation to reality or just tick-box completions without delivering the change or transformations promised, do little for staff, ICT or overall process improvements.

As a Critical Friend, either during procurement or afterwards, I do my best to help clients prepare for the above and support everyone when issues occur. If we can do it better together, I think we should!

Acutance Consulting are here to help with your complex projects,

please just get in touch, for a chat over a coffee & a few Hobnobs ☕😋

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David Bryne - Burnt by the Sun.
(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk 07854-655009

Access a quick list of our Social Housing ICT blog posts here

Wednesday 28 February 2024

Life On The Telephone

If you do the Twitter thing, follow me at @HousingITguy or LinkedIn here https://uk.linkedin.com/in/tonysmiththathousingitguy

I had a few thoughts on the whole omni-channel thing this week. Most organisations in social housing and councils that I work with, are trying (or struggling) hard in some cases to crack digital shift. That’s only sensible in a world where we are ever more digitally served and connected.

Tech is getting better particularly when it supports telephony. We have all had the cinema booking experience trying to get into the film at Stockport, with the confirmation back, “Did you say ‘Stratford’ ?”. We do battle with it don’t we?

I do believe we must not throw the baby out with the bathwater however, and ‘tackling omnichannel’ not be a mere tick box. There will always be folk who for all kinds of reasons want to pick up a phone & chat, or walk into an office to see someone who manages their home, patch or area in person. Indeed, today I was in two supermarkets today and in one used self-service tills and in another queued to choose a conventional checkout and had a short chat which brightened up both our afternoons.

For a resident to do something in person they most likely will not have a local office anymore in their village/estate area and maybe will need to travel 25 or more mins on public transport, to make that happen. It might be more important to them and of course it might be better for all than days or weeks of email ping-pong. Certainly if we promote different channels, telephone, email, WhatsApp, Twitter/X, Facebook etc, at least check them on a regular basis. Outside office ours too, as we all have issues 24/7, just not only when your offices are staffed!

Having omnichannel’s that are just a black hole and never answered are worse than not having one. Don’t advertise anything that’s hardly monitored.

Its not just residents and customers either. We are all either provider or customer in real life transactions and experiences and I see that with suppliers and clients I work with. We all communicate differently and like system interfaces, means needs to be taloired with what works best with how the other party would like to interact.

For example, one mutual supplier to a client I work with is very telephone orientated. My contact there who is extremely responsive most often asks to, “can we all jump on a call and talk it through”? The attitude is that primarily we change and improve culture, one conversation at a time. This works, although most likely what is discussed would also be exchanged in an email too, just to make sure everyone was on the same page.

In contrast, another supplier contact this week replied to a weeks old SMS query message to a work number, with a “sorry, no one uses the phone anymore”. I dodged a bullet there, I could’ve have wasted more time and left a voicemail there 😉

It was just one of those moments where for a change I was in the position of some of those residents at the end of our solutions and technology. The tech however good will always be somewhat second-rate to a well trained human, who might be relied on to provide more of an experience, than a transaction. You might be familiar with the phrase “people buy from people” that is often used to describe the importance of building relationships in sales. In other words, people are more likely to do business with someone they know, like, and trust.

I think even in 2024 this still holds water. Not losing the human touch, improves our relationships with customers, and the best tech supports that, rather than totally replaces it.

Acutance Consulting would be happy to help you untangle your interfaces,

please just get in touch, for a chat over a brew & a chocolate ginger ☕😋

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Flag Of Convenience - Life On The Telephone.
(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk 07854-655009

Access a quick list of our Social Housing ICT blog posts here

Tuesday 13 February 2024

Jet Set Junta

If you do the Twitter thing, follow me at @HousingITguy or LinkedIn here https://uk.linkedin.com/in/tonysmiththathousingitguy

It's been a little while since I have properly emersed myself in components, Asset Management and stock condition surveys, although I have been involved with many projects over a couple of decades.

Obtaining decent component information is a challenge, while an even bigger one is keeping it up to date afterwards. Its not easy but rewarding from the viewpoint of being able to make insightful budget and planning decisions, going 2, 5 or up to 30 years ahead.

Unless you are managing less than a few (3) hundred homes, an Excel spreadsheet will not cut it. There’s many a module out there of decent quality and some good standalones too. Anyone who has been out into the market to choose one will also know that each has its blind-spots. One I saw a demo of recently (obviously I wont name the guilty party), was only capable of reporting past expenditure, rather than planning potential future budgets based on providing (English) Decent Homes, SHQS or the Welsh Housing Quality Standard (WHQS). Clearly a software supplier with no socialhousing solution, they then asked “why a landlord wouldn’t just do the replacements?”.

It seemed inconceivable that there would not always be budget to just do the work, quite the reverse of what generally needs to be worked with. Decent graphical modelling tools are a boon to productivity in a planning process like this, rather than manually moving assets around a Life Cycle Costing report piecemeal.

The quality of surveyors vary and also their understanding of socialhousing. Often this can be corrected by issuing surveyors with the actual data we want them to collect, before they start a traditional 20% survey. Surprisingly this is rarely the case. The most extreme example I ever saw was a socialhousing asset condition survey completed by an outfit who previously specialised in surveying North Sea oil rigs. I kid you not. We could see how many hanging baskets our units had, but not the state or existence of kitchens or bathrooms.

Often too, surveyors get hung up on life of components and a predetermined idea of condition coding. If we were surveying passenger aircraft, there are certainly many parts for sure, that will need to be serviced after every 5,000 logged flying hours. Unlike an Airbus A320, after 30 years kitchens and bathrooms just don’t drop out of the skies desperately requiring replacement. Clearly in student accommodation or bigger households, these might not last 30 years. Where an elderly resident on the other hand have some from the 1960s that they have looked after and actively refuse upgrades. These would now be getting on for 50 years old.

Surveyors love the idea of doing a survey this year to determine a remaining life and counting it down annually, towards a ‘poor’ or ‘failed’. One popular surveyor used to charge to take data away each year for ‘aging’. While we could at this point make parallels with fine wine, I would make it with real ale. Our asset data like proper beer which is a living breathing thing and is better when nurtured and carefully looked after.

At the end of the day, socialhousing condition of components can only be based on a sampled view at a point in time. While predictions could be assumed, within decent home calculations, many criteria are defined based on components being old (i.e. exceeded expected life) and poor (i.e. usable condition), in order to define a failure.

If we are unable to disconnect ‘Condition’ and age exceeding expected life, we will apparently have more failures than actually defined in the legislation. Our (incorrectly) budgets (incorrectly) may then need to be higher. In fact the biggest obstacle to being more accurate in planning budgets is ensuring all internal improvements are properly recorded. IE timely recording in your system of major void work and planned maintenance improvements. Relevant examples may be whole boiler, heating, kitchen, bathroom replacements, rather than minor upgrades. The former will also reset the clock for component accounting for these items. Another area there which often is spreadsheet or standalone application based. Probably one for a future blog since I have helped suppliers to design in this area as a critical friend too.

For sure, keeping a tight asset component database is of benefit to landlords and residents, opening the door to providing better informed service. Newer boilers, lifts and other M&E equipment where selected, often now have IOT capabilities. Yet another aspect where the asset management solution can earn its keep in flagging up issues before residents realise them, or protecting the asset from much more expensive damage.

Investment in targeted surveys, good data management for assets and some more blue sky thinking, will all bring together potential for better decision making and improving efficiency.

Acutance Consulting love solving asset data issues,

please just get in touch, for a chat over a jammy dodger & a coffee ☕😋

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The Monochrome Set - Jet Set Junta.
(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk 07854-655009

Access a quick list of our Social Housing ICT blog posts here

Could we help you or your organisation? Our contact details are here , get in touch we will be pleased to chat about your problems and help with your organisation issues.

File Under: #HomesForBritain,#HousingDAY,#InternetOfTenants,#Shout,#UKHousing, 07854655009, 1st Touch,1stTouch,360,365Agile,3squared,4Js, ACL,ALMO,AMS,AX,Aareon,Abritas,Academy,Accuserv,Accuserve,Active Housing,ActiveH,ActiveHousing,Acutence,Advanced,Affinity,Agile,Agile365,AirWatch,Alfresco,Alignment,Allpay,Amazon Web Services,Anite,Apex,App,ArchHouse,Archouse,Asprey e-state pro,Asset Management,Associates,Aurora,Average IT Costs,AWI SX Integration Toolkit,AWS, BI,BO,BPR,BancTec,BigChange,Blockwise,BluTek,Bluebox,Blueprint,Browser Applications,Business Objects,Business Planning,Business Process Review,Business social networking, CACI,Capita One Housing,CBL,CCS IT Keystone CCSIT,CEDRM,CHICS,CHR,CIH,CMS,COA,CORE,CPL,CRM,CRM2013,CRS,CTI,CTX,Cadcorp,Capita,CapitaOne,Capita One,Capital Management,Cashflow,Castle,Castleton,Castleton Technology,Cedar Open Accounts,Cerrus,Change,Charges,Chartered Institute Of Housing,Cheaper Housing IT,Chics, Citrix,Civica,Civica CTX,Civica Cx,Civica Genero,Civica Saffron,Clearview,Clik,Cx Assets, Cloud Dialogs,CloudDialogs,Coactiva,Codeman,Comino,Commontime,Community Reward Services,Company,Competitive Dialogue process,Component Accounting,Consilium,Consolidation, Consultancy,Consultant,Consultants,Contact Manager,Context,Contractor Systems,CorVu,Cost Reductions,Covalent,Crystal Reports,Customer Relationship Management,Cx, DRS,Deeplake,Designer Software,Development Systems,Director,Document,Documotive,Docuware,Dynamic AI,DynamicAI,Dynamics 365,D365,Dynamics365,Dynaway ECMK,EDM,EDRMS,ERP,ESRI,Elmhurst,Enghouse Interactive,England,English,EnterpriseBI,Estatecraft,Esuasive,Etive,Exhibition,Exponential-e, Facebook,Factorwise,Field Service management,Finance,Financial Systems,Financials,Footprint,Forms,Freezes,Fusion,Fuzzlab Gas Tag,G-Cloud,GCloud,GDPR,GGP,GIS,GasTag,Genero,GeoSolveIT,Getting best from,GoTonySmith,Grasp,Grip,Group Apex, HFI (Housing Financials interface),HG,HRA,Hardware,Hitachi 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Saturday 27 January 2024

Seconds Too Late

If you do the Twitter thing, follow me at @HousingITguy or LinkedIn here https://uk.linkedin.com/in/tonysmiththathousingitguy

Back at the start of this century, interfaces were always a continual bugbear. I’ve written many times about integration issues and suppliers. Closed solutions are not helpful, although ones way too open can bring a different type of hazard, such as increased cyber-attack risk.

These days I see more organisations trying to put more eggs in one basket, if that’s practical. That might mean trying to use more of a traditional HMS’s (already integrated) modules or keeping everything within the umbrella of a CRM/product stack, such as MS D365 or F&O etc. This should reduce issues and allow a more joined up approach. Its 2024, we shouldn’t be manually re-keying information or unduly feeding and watering interfaces on a hair-trigger each morning.

Some interfaces cannot be avoided however, such as when using partnering repairs contractors etc. Some of the ways that these interfaces let us down is through poor data. Examples I see are Repair Works Orders completed before they were issued, invalid data-types presented, reasons for cancellation or lateness not supplied, where mandatory for the main system.

Inevitably, some slight attention may be needed each morning, if hundreds of orders are being updated daily, with interfaced solutions, just down to the complex nature of repair scenarios. One scenario I have encountered before is where two server date/times are slightly out or not completely synchronised exactly with time on mobile devices. Thus a few seconds can make the difference between on-time and what looks like a completion in the future (or before something is issued).

One recent interfacing issue I have come across with one Contractor system on an interface, is a problem with calculating if priority KPIs have been achieved or not. ‘The Regulator’ defines a 24 hour or 7 day priority target as exactly that. If a resident logs a repair at 10:11 on Tuesday, anything completed until after 10:11 Wednesday is within target. Similar for a 7 day (urgent) or 28 day (routine) repair priority.

Unfortunately this interface just works on providing a mandatory late reason if completion is after the next day. So, a contractor would have until 23:59 (& 59 secs) to be able to report a job being completed within target. The regulator would not agree however, nor does the HMS raising the client repair. The latter rejects anything properly late that does not have a (late) reason supplied, so as you can imagine, a lot of updates do not update smoothly. Imagine my surprise when I was told its been like this for a long time.

A sad blast from the past

Now I remember even the very earliest calculators when I was at school could manage subtraction, as well as the novelty of making words too. Premature boys were big fans of these, you might recall. So you would expect the top level processors, servers and databases of today could easily manage this feat too & much more. The DateDiff() SQL Server function would be my go-to thing to use in the failing calculation above, although you could always go old-skool longhand.

Now this has been logged on a slow-moving helpdesk for a few weeks already and I have reigned in my sarcasm and not yet pointed anyone to search Google for DateDiff() – well I don’t want to be outed as an IT Geek! It will be funny if this comes back as a chargeable fix to just make software work properly. However, that will add fuel to the fire of the DIY brigade and the folk keen to use D365 to squeeze out the traditional (failing, entrenched?) suppliers. I can see them saying it now, “See Tony, these suppliers can’t be trusted !”. In this instance, I would probably be inclined to agree with them too!

Acutance Consulting would be happy to help you untangle your interfaces,

please just get in touch, for a chat over a macaroon & a mug of chai ☕😋

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Cabaret Voltaire – Seconds Too Late.
(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk 07854-655009

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