ROCC Blogs - Business and Market

20/12/2011

ROCC attended the quarterly seminar of the Direct Works Forum held at Ansty Hall Hotel near Coventry. There were representatives from circa forty housing associations and local authorities present.

There was an excellent broad range of presentations, covering employment law in relation to agency staff and the affect that the changes to the compulsory retirement age will have in Social Housing organisations. There were also sessions on gas safety qualifications and the effectiveness of carbon monoxide detectors from Corgi and CoGDEM. Ian Rumsden from Together Housing presented a very interesting piece on their experiences from piloting the Tenants Cashback scheme.

There were lively discussions on a number of the topics, together with an excellent turkey dinner no doubt appreciated by all.

19/12/2011

ROCC were delighted to present to the South West Waste Recycling forum’s Christmas meeting which was held at SITA UK’s Materials Recycling Facility in Bodmin, Cornwall
Richard Cutler and Chris Potter presented a paper entitled ‘Using Technology in the waste and recycling sector’ which focused on three main subjects; Waste Dataflow, Mobile Working, and Dashboard Reporting.
The event was extremely well attended by people from both Local Government and the Private sector and proved to be an exceptionally informative day as well as capturing the festive spirit with mince pies and a Secret Santa.

To learn more please visit our Software Events page.

20/05/2011

There is considerable change happening in the Social Housing market, particularly amongst the private contractors. These changes are mainly due to two major events; the comprehensive spending review and the collapse of Connaught’s and ROK which left many housing clients high and dry in delivering critical frontline housing repair services to tenants.

To some extent this has caused a fundamental re-examination of whether it is more beneficial to in-source or out-source the housing repairs function. The crux of this is a comparison of the relative efficiency and costs of each option and how the risk is managed if contracts are out-sourced to ensure contracts are secure and front line service delivery adequately protected.

With Connaught’s and ROK exiting the market one might of thought this consolidation would generate less competition as there is are less players bidding. However this seems to have had almost the opposite effect because smaller contracts are being let as social landlords are reluctant to put all their eggs in one basket and this has attracted a larger number of smaller companies to bid.

In this highly competitive market private contractors are increasingly looking to IT systems as a differentiator both in the contract bidding phase and during service delivery. During the sales phase contractors are looking for innovative solution which sets their bids apart from the pack and smaller players are at least requiring comprehensive solutions which allow them to bid on a level playing field against the bigger companies. Once the contract is won the emphasis is on efficient service delivery and ensuring the conditions of the contract are being satisfied and managed.

ROCC have seen some contracts being brought back in-house and others being split into smaller lots and let to different contractors or in some circumstance a combination of part in-house and part out-sourced (for example out-source the operatives and in-source the supervisors and contract managers).

The IT system needs to have the following key functions:

• Multi –contract/ multi SOR
• Real-time reporting dashboard
• Customer satisfaction generation & management
• Good, easy integration with multiple client systems
• Electronic invoicing
• Electronic supply chain management
• Mobile working
• Job costing
• Easy Integration with the desktop
• Materials management in real-time

As far as the housing client are concerned they are looking to IT to help them manage the outsourced contract and police the performance of the contractor using traditional KPI’s and also to give an early warning if things are going fundamentally wrong which puts the overall contract at risk. This means providing sophisticated monitoring of job turnaround times, commitment accounting (value of work in progress etc), proactive post inspection regimes and the trading account information.

05/05/2011

I Following my recent visit to Newport City home it is just over a year since the repairs and maintenance system went live. The system has bedded in well and is continuing to deliver the benefits originally identified, but things never stand still and the system is currently moving forward with the introduction of advanced repair diagnostics using the national schedule of rates. Read the full case study

29/11/2010

I think the comprehensive spending review will have wide ranging effects in the way IT spend is justified in Social Housing departments. I predict the growth of large public sector landlords, the importance of shared service, increased pressure on void turnaround times, customer satisfaction are a few of the hot topics which will need addressing in the coming year.

In my opinion suppliers must focus on delivering the most cost effective solutions to their clients; good intelligence data, mobile working and accurate job costing will all become essential components in the housing repairs solution
You can read more of my thoughts on this in my paper: Using IT to Save Money in Social Housing