Monday 10 September 2012

Good Enough

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

As anyone who reads or lands on this blog will know, I keep a roof over my head from the proceeds of working with IT, particularly Housing IT. Don’t get me wrong, I have a true passion for social housing and work like crazy to help everyone get the most from it. Well working that way, all that effort gets trickled down to all our neighbourhoods eventually. That's what I believe anyway.


I remember having a chat with an IT chap at Arena housing some time ago at a HITEX exhibition, put together by the Northern Housing Consortium. These are coming up shortly, usually at iconic football stadia or places such as Wembley or York Racecourse. This years are at Chelsea FC London 1st November, 6th November in Cardiff at the Marriott, 13th November DW Stadium at Wigan, finally Aston Villa FC Birmingham 15th November. They are worth a look, check them out. Usually they come with an excellent free lunch, make a beeline for the mini shepherds pies and Cornish pasties, my personal faves. I digress...


Anyway, this cracking stubbled chap and I were discussing ASB solutions. Where I was director at the time at MIS Active Management Systems we had a housing related case management module which covered ASB. It would have difficulty fitting with IBS OpenHousing however (now Capita Open Housing) and i think Arena were using ReAct. Now that’s an excellent standalone solution, I asked him if they were making best use of it. He asked me why I was interested as it was unlikely that we would replace it etc.


I was interested as if it was used well, it would be enabling safer neighbourhoods, joined up thinking and better communities. Spookily enough, an Arena scheme Adamson Court is just at the bottom of my road. A happy community there spreads into a happier safer neighbourhood in the surrounding streets. So Arena’s great use of ASB case software directly affected the quality of my life and surroundings. Arena are now merging with Harvest to form ‘Your Housing Group’. As an aside, I am pleased there will be no competition watchdog investigation into this. (blimey have they nothing better to do??).


So, I am always pleased to be able to give some free advice and lend a helping hand. A contact on social networking asked me last week about CORE. You know, the recording at the end of a new let or sale. For the housing management system in use, addition of the CORE module would have cost over £60K. With some VAT on there tooNow CORE relies on so many fields of information to be found in the source letting module, which frankly are never always there. It makes it necessary to pretty much always confirm information on the ECORE website. Now when you look at that in the round and also compare that with other customers (of that same HMS), the logical conclusion is that doing it manually is good enough.


That's certainly not the most profitably option that I can suggest, but it’s actually the right one. As anyone who knows me would guess, that’s what I suggested. Manual is way good enough. No big IT project, funds freed up to spend on 20 new kitchen or bathroom refurbishments. I hope I have done my bit to improve a little corner of south London.




Sometimes good enough is good enough.


(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk

File Under: 360,1stTouch,4Js,Aareon,Academy,ActiveH,Alignment,ALMO,Anite,Apex,ArchHouse,Archouse,asbestos,Asprey e-state pro,Asset Management,Aurora,Average IT Costs,BO,BPR,Browser Applications,Business Objects,Business Process Review,Business social networking,Castle,CBL,Cedar Open Accounts,Change,Cheaper Housing IT,Chics,

CHR,Citrix,Civica,Clearview,CMS Template,COA,Coactiva,Codeman,Comino,Competitive Dialogue process,complex IT procurements,Component Accounting,Consilium,Consolidation,Consultancy,Consultant,Contact Manager,Context, MD , Director , Housing software, UK, United Kingdom,
Contractor Systems,CORE,CorVu,Cost Reductions,Covalent,CRM,Crystal Reports,CTI,CTX,Customer Relationship Management,Deeplake,Development Systems,Document Management,Documotive,ECMK,EDRMS,England, English,EnterpriseBI,ERP Systems,Finance,Financial Systems,Getting best from,Grasp,Grip,hardware,HG,Housemark survey,Housing Blueprint,Housing Group,Impact Response,implementations,In House,In4,Infoflow,Information Technology,Informix,inHouse,in-house workforce, HousingIT, Innovation,Inside Housing,Internet Portal,Invu,Ireland,Irish,IT Budget,IT Training,iWorld,Keylogic,Keystone,Kirona,Kypera,management reporting,Measuring Change,Mebus,Miracle,MISCS, mobile functionality,Monopoly board images and pictures, Montal,MS Dynamics,MS Dynamics CRM2011,Neighbourhoods and Communities,Northgate,Notice,NROSH,OA,OGC Buying Solutions,Ohms,OJEU Limits,OmFax,Omniledger,Open source software,open tender,OpenHousing,Opti-Time,Oracle,Orchard,Outsource and outsourcing,Paloma,performance management systems,PfH,Pick,PIMMS,pimms4communities,Planned maintenance,Plus,PM,Progress,Promaster,Proval,Pyramid, QL,QLX,Registered Providers,Registered Social Landlord,Rent Increase Freezes,Repairfinder,Reporting,Reports,ROCC, Rocket,RPs,RSL,Saffron,SAP,Scots, Scottish,Scotland,SDM,sector,Server Virtualisation,servicing, Servitor,Servitor,Sharepoint,Simdel,Simdell,Slash and Burn,Social Media,Software,SQL Open Housing,SQL Reporting Services,SQL reporting services,SQL Server,Star rating,Stores and Stock,Strategic Asset Management,Sunguard ,Surveys,Sx3,System alignment, Systemwise, Factorwise, Blockwise, Block wise, Task,Terminal Services,Three Star,Today,Total repairs,Tribal,Twitter,U2,UniClass Enterprise,Unidata,Universal Housing,Universe,Unrest,Van Stock,Voice and data,Wales,Welsh,Windows Server,Workflow and tasking,Xmbrace,XML, 07854-655009 , 07854655009 , 07854 655009 , "07854 655009"

No comments:

Post a Comment