IMPROVING OPERATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS & EFFICIENCY

RSLmanager - excellence in delivering efficiency, as voted by the Chartered Institute of Housing in the 2006 UK Housing Awards.

Since 1995, Reidmark have been aligning technology alongside business goals. Part of this process is to demonstrate to organisations how they can use technology to help maximise the efficiency and effectiveness of operational activity. One sector that Reidmark have recently been challenging with this technology led systematic approach is the housing sector, including non-profit housing associations.

Business and Information Technology are two ever evolving disciplines that can only be truly exploited with each domain’s continual re-invention, so as to keep up with the possibilities and the latest methods of improving the efficiency of business operations. ‘Effectiveness’ on the other hand, can only be accounted for if such efficiency actually proves to benefit an
organisation by way of improved performance.

In the case of RSLmanager, the only truly integrated IT solution for public sector housing, such results are evident in many forms; reductions in operational costs, increased profitability levels and most importantly – increased customer satisfaction levels. Developed in partnership with Broadland Housing Association; “proud to be one of the largest housing associations in Norfolk and Suffolk¹”, RSLmanager brings with it the very latest in internet based technology, a wealth of housing management experience from a number of known professionals within the industry and some extensive research into housing associations’ key processes - relevant for front line staffs right through to the very executives, who must after all, be the real scholars of organisational performance. 

Driving forward efficiency – the agenda for improved public sector services

In November 2006, the Government published a guidance agenda to raise the importance of efficiency within Local Government and how public sector organisations can work together to achieve the improvements that will sustain and strengthen communities.

According to Nick Raynsford, the Minister for Local and Regional Government, this means “delivering better services for better value for money and striving for greater efficiency.”  

“As ‘efficiency champion’ my role is to assist in the delivery of local government’s efficiency gains target for the coming three years of £6.45bn (2005-2008) – acting as a point of liaison between central and local government alongside the Local Government Association (LGA). I will support those in their drive for enhanced efficiency so that they can more readily release resources for re-direction locally. In total, local authorities spend more than £86 billion each year in delivering services to improve both the quality of life and the quality of life-chances to people across the country. The new agenda of delivering identifiable “efficiency gains” provides public sector organisations with a fresh discipline that will ensure that we focus on how best to get the most from taxpayers’ money. This will be achieved through the adoption of leading edge management practices, exploiting the potential of new information and communication technologies, and developing more focused delivery vehicles with private and voluntary / community, as well as public, sector partners.”

Barry Quirk, 2004, The Challenge of the Efficiency Agenda, The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, Delivering Efficiency in Local Services.

“As housing associations face continued pressure to drive forward efficiency whilst operating within financial constraints, business intelligence has never been more crucial”  so says RSLmanager user and Chief Executive of Broadland Housing Association, ‘Michael Newey’.

“The boards and senior managers of housing providers should, within a statute-backed framework of explicit standards and expectations, be allowed to manage their organisations and work with service users to set and monitor performance quality standards” - ‘The future of regulation of the affordable housing sector in England’, Chartered Institute of Housing, 2006.  

An achievable proposal for improved operational efficiency and effectiveness

The true benefits of having an innovative web hosted application to access, share and process business information are fundamental in setting RSLmanager aside from other traditional housing management systems on the market, and of course from systems currently used within many housing associations today. This paper sets out to identify some key market concerns while discussing the key benefits of RSLmanager that will aid in overall improved business activities, helping to provide solutions to these very concerns that are felt to be hindering efficient and effective operations.

RSLmanager does not just provide an appropriate medium through which to manage information but it provides access to such intelligence that will help to improve a business in terms of its workforce’s knowledge acquisition and its monitoring abilities. Becoming aware of a problem is the first step to providing a solution; RSLmanager takes its users through the
entire process cycle that will enable a workforce to reap the benefits as a result.

Since The Housing Corporation’s 1996 Innovation and Good Practice (IGP) programme, there has been much emphasis on and surrounding the need for good quality, up to date information within housing management.  The programme initially aimed 'to help Registered Social Landlords (RSLs) and others develop new ways of tackling problems' [while helping to] 'spread ideas and knowledge across social housing providers.' Unfortunately, ten years on, vast improvements are still very much sought after. As a result, the use of up to the minute, real time data really does appear to be the way forward for improved efficient and effective business operations.

Real time information is derived from a system’s ability to respond to data entry and transactions immediately at the very instant data input takes place. By sharing information so as to make it instantly actionable, an organisation, together with its contractors, are able to participate in vastly improved operational planning and execution. Such real time processing is not only efficient but is effective enough to synchronise information sources that feed an entire organisation throughout its departments. It will collaborate users in a far greater way than that brought about by merely the ‘sharing’ of information for it will allow a ‘shared view’ to be taken on a whole.

Real time information is therefore an evidential contributor to effective cross-enterprise collaboration. Reidmark have been moulding RSLmanager to improve organisational information flows for many years prior to their partnership with Broadland Housing Association, and non more so than to date. Reidmark are also proud to be the providers of the only truly integrated housing software solution that collaborates with the very latest in web technology, allowing users to get the most out of their organisational data in an efficient, effective, real time manner. We are now approaching an era where information is accessible from any location at any one time, and thanks to mobile internet technologies, this can be anywhere from a contractor’s office to a tenant's doorstep.

Data validity - if it’s not up to date it’s not worth knowing

The very quality of information is being increasingly recognised as a critical business concern within organisations, there is nothing that determines its quality more so than its validity. The public housing sector is by no means immune to such data quality concerns, in fact the government faces problems covering the breadth of data quality attributes such as accuracy, completeness, consistency, timeliness, uniqueness and fundamentally, its validity. There are two primary data domains;    the operational and the analytic, the analysis normally being carried out on the transactional data that has been collected   on the operational domain.

This resides at the heart of the business intelligence process, it is bad enough when information required for decision support it lacking, but it is far worse when transactional information that is present lacks quality. In fact, it might as well not exist since we often run the risk of producing results - generating insights that are potentially misleading. If this problem sounds all too common, then rest assured - there is a solution.

Thanks to the real time information environment of RSLmanager, with its immediate transactional response, users can   gain confidence that the data being used to comprise business intelligence by way of reports and graphical representations will always portray the very latest and truest picture of events. Information is contained centrally thus preventing data redundancy while eliminating any secondary transactional processing and data entry between different users regardless of the department they belong to. If any housing management software can offer peace of mind, RSLmanager can. 

A single system - a single solution to many separate problems

Too many organisations literally have independent software applications spread all over the place, but why? From customer service to accounts administration, such applications are promoting data duplication and the risk of user error due to secondary data input. This also increases the risk of data invalidity due to information not being updated form one sole place. Internet based technologies can offer so much more than this, and what were once, and unfortunately still are, accepted as inevitable downsides of the essential office application no longer have to be an issue - nor should they be.  Effective workflow management is the ultimate key to optimising the use of company resources both in terms of people and information. The timely delivery of such information to desk top environments allow it to be acted on at precisely the right time by the right staffs so as to trigger the optimum output of all relevant operational departments and external collaborating contractors.

An online, integrated system like RSLmanager is innovative enough to serve all departments across an entire organisation from customer service, accounts and finance, estate maintenance and property development right the way through to the collaborating contractors. All information is accessed from the same place, and so it’s the very same information that is accessed, viewed, transacted, monitored and analysed.  What’s more, an organisation can really assess ‘the bigger picture’ simply due to the very scope of information obtainable, plus users will only ever see the data they need to see due to the dynamic user access right functionality. It’s all about taking the same information that’s essential to the organisation, but interpreting it in different ways so that it becomes meaningful to its dedicated users and its different departmental audiences. One system providing one solution eliminates complication, integrates knowledge and makes the very most of both human and technological resources. Put simply, it makes for plain old common sense. 

All businesses, including those of public sector housing, have plans, aims and objectives. Whether sophisticated or modest, a business must monitor its performance in relation to these goals in order to succeed. The measurement of performance is of critical importance to the effective and efficient functioning of an organisation, but it is a cruel realisation that many executives do not actually know, and therefore understand, the true extent of their business circumstance. Such executives therefore find it difficult to assign plans for monitored improvement.

By having instant access to Key Performance Indicator (KPI) data, both statistically and graphically, especially those that  have been comprised of valid, integrated, real time information, managers can not only acquire expert knowledge of business critical circumstances, but can forecast for the future of the organisation while implementing action plans for improved operation.

Through a system like RSLmanager, management can dynamically filter this KPI data further to produce tailored reporting  for personal information needs, also allowing for a further acquired, expert insight into business productivity, operability and further business requirements. An organisation can only succeed in meeting its objectives if the executives responsible for driving the business forward can monitor performance in relation to them, this can only happen if the organisation has knowledge of such objectives in the first place.

Through RSLmanager, have organisational Management Performance Indicators (MPI's) and (KPI’s) at your fingertips.  KPI reports include;

• Cost and efficiency - average weekly cost per dwelling on repairs, percentage of rent available that was collected,  rent arrears of current tenants, rent lost through dwellings being vacant.
• Rent - average weekly / monthly.
• Repairs performance - percentage of emergency repairs, percentage of urgent repairs completed within target, percentage of routine repairs completed within target.
• Vacant dwellings and lettings - average relet time for dwellings, percentage of dwellings to BMA households, percentage of self-contained dwellings vacant and not available.

Make use of expertly generated and dynamically personalised MPIs in;

• Arrears management
• Asset management
• CRM - customer service interactions
• Tenancy lettings 

A need for information access privileges between staff and departments

By providing employees with an intuitive working environment also allowing streamlined navigation of an integrated information system, organisations can empower everyone within it from chief executives to front line service providers. As a result, organisations can accomplish more and more every single day from the information environment itself and from the employees who make use of it.

Information is most valuable to those employees whose roles are directly influenced by it, and so for this very reason, also aiming to reduce the complexity of the system, RSLmanager comes complete with a dynamic access control functionality. Additional expenditure limit restrictions will not only control company expenses but will also control authorisation of such
data that should and should not be visible to specific staffs. In order to tailor employee working environments even further,  an electronic whiteboard will supply direct access to the most critical business information that each user faces from the  very moment login occurs.

A need for improved access to critical business information

The key to getting the very most out of organisational information involves tailoring it to suit the requirements of the employees who action it. For even greater impact, technologies are finding new ways to bring most imperative business information to the employee, eliminating search time while drawing immediate attention to critical paths leading the way to improved business operation on a daily basis.

RSLmanger’s electronic whiteboard is a fundamental tool that immediately greets a user with key information alerts, performance figures, and organisational news features. As it is tailored to match an employee’s departmental  requirements, it makes for a truly relevant tool that allows direct communication between other team members, line managers and employees in general. The user alert functionality make it almost impossible for employees to overlook their most important information triggers such as; arrears updates, day to day repair detail, purchase order authorisation requirements,  employee absentee detail, leave requests, customer property transfer detail and customer rent enquiries. What’s more, Chief Executives can access absolutely all of their required data sets solely through a specially adapted ‘board’ area. Thanks to innovative web based technologies such as RSLmanager, CEO’s no longer have to worry about searching endlessly for the necessary information that enable them to make critical business decisions, instead the information is continually presented to them on a permanent basis.

A need for dynamic reporting

The manner in which reports can be collated from existing data by housing managers and executives is proving just as imperative as the quality of the data itself. Live, realtime reporting should be available across every stage of a business through the appropriate reporting mediums. Unfortunately not all information systems are demonstrating enough flexibility so as to generate information in required formats or of specific, tailored content.

Reporting is an essential aspect of every day operation so that staffs may analyse information in such a consistent and collated way that it becomes meaningful enough to analyse, to bring about conclusive evidence in the form of statistical results or graphical representations and finally to implement improved performance objectives off the back of the very results that highlight a problem or situation.

It is through the quality with which business circumstances are reported that can often determine the level of knowledge acquisition that takes place throughout the organisation. With reference to the variety of reports that housing managers and executives must provide, using the Audit Commission as guidance, it is a far gone conclusion that RSLs and housing
associations alike have their work cut out in order to provide the right reports that indicate suitable levels of organisational performance. Not only do the Audit Commission work with housing associations through regular auditory means so that  they may improve their services to the public, but they also work along side the Housing Corporation to promote more
efficient and effective organisational operations on a whole.

Reidmark are well aware of this and have therefore been working in partnership with Broadland Housing Association,   using Audit Commission guidance as a key driving force. As a result RSLmanager integrates within it the necessary dynamic reporting means whilst providing added functionality by way of expert filtering and added data presentation functionality.

Through RSLmanager, generate up to the minute, detailed reports suited perfectly to meet your information needs;

Improved management and employee interaction - driving HR efficiencies and effectiveness

The communication between a manager and his or her employee is an essential contribute to successfully sustained working relationships that generate positive morale across an organisation and effective output as a result. How business leaders within public sector housing instruct and communicate with their teams significantly influences their performance, and what’s more in today’s business environment, employee communications and the relationships they support are now being asked to deliver demonstrable business benefit.

Although a ‘performance culture’ is said to stress goal attainment, together with the value of effort and quality, a ‘people culture’ on the other hand also emphasises employee involvement, trust and commitment and so one is equally important as the other.  The fact is, internet based technologies containing live real time data, can actually help organisations reinvent business by capturing new improved communication value. Web based applications like RSLmanager are doing just this. Not only is RSLmanager innovative enough to allow collaborating contractors to access key information thanks to the availability of the internet, as well as providing a medium through which improved organisational workflow management can be achieved, it also makes for a pretty effective intranet. Staff and departments can use RSLmanager as a communication tool in order to send messages and to assign tasks on a frequent basis. The multi-directional communication between sender and receiver is what makes this kind of communication efficient. A receiver’s ability to send a response or to generate an update eliminates assumptions and replaces guesswork with knowledge obtained directly through the electronic bulletin board, the first thing users will see once logged in.

Thanks to dedicated personnel tools such as the ‘My Job’ module, users can immediately carry out direct communication with a line manager who through the very same channel will update a statement or request with the relevant answers. Not only can employees keep a personal audit of all requests and managerial feedback, but it allows employees, including
management, to tailor and manage a personal electronic diary detailing everything from employee skills and qualifications  to aspects of the employment post. Employees can make direct communication requests to line managers specifying absences, career track, employee development, disciplinary details and staff expenses. Staff can keep permanent records  of all holiday periods that have been requested as well as gaining access to employee handbooks, policies and procedures. With the use of valid, real time information, not only can communications take place all the time between staffs efficiently and effectively, but employees can stay ahead of their personal information and requests, as can their managers, who after all have a responsibility to.

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