Sunday 20 May 2012

Look to Your Orb for the Warning

If you do the Twitter thing, follow me at @hotpixUK

It was a great feeling to see Orbit Group this week scooping Housing Heroes and the Housing Excellence awards.  I would like to wish everyone from David Leach down, Angela Adderley and Roy Evans, the very best, it was so deserved.

I have rich experience of Orbit as a customer, departing customer and a returning customer during my tenure at MIS Active Management Systems.  No legal restrictions bind me from talking about that, feel free to get in touch to discuss further.

I have worked personally with the IT team there at Orbit for over 14 years, during my previous life at MIS and have great respect for them. After over 3 years of trying hard to implement a rival housing system, they reconsidered options. I was there at every point of that really rewarding project and proudly was there the Friday, the new system was delivered live after just over 100 days.


I am not surprised that despite stiff competition that Orbit won through. I have no doubt that the Orbit IT team had also comprehensively underpinned the new CRM system delivery, a resident self-service portal which formed “a bursary for residents to improve their own lives or the lives of those living within their communities”

The Orbit experience reflects a number of factors that I am sure other organisations can take on board to leverage similar benefits.

Firstly, get your housing systems in order. The right degree of integration works wonders at the right price. Your IT team are valuable and expensive in equal measure.

Keep them content and let them contribute to your business objectives. That is one of the key areas where Orbit and David Leach has connected with the main business of Orbit and helped to deliver savings as well as efficiency.

One of the sexiest things that Orbit introduced was iPads. Now this is not new. DFS famously asked staff to purchase their own iPads, Orbit provided them with Citrix access to their main desktop systems. The savings of mileage claims alone were enough to cover costs within four months. Staff are more inclined to work from home, or not come via the office every day. It’s a fact, Orbit have the numbers.

Now, let’s not deny, Orbit at 39,000+ homes is quite large. Although, any RSL with Citrix already, could already deploy this type of solution at little more than the cost of an iPad or Samsung tablet, to deploy their full housing system . Why are you not considering this?

Monster Magnet knew what was going down...




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