During the Housing Technology 2023 conference at the start of March, three areas stood out as being top of the guests’ wish-lists and concerns. The first two were data management and cybersecurity, both of which were widely covered during the wealth of presentations at the conference.
The third area was collaboration. Not in the sense of yet more inter-departmental, Zoom-based meetings, but between housing providers.
We all know that the housing sector has a very different dynamic to other sectors, in no small part because we’re not competing with each other. We’re all largely doing the same things with the same overall aims.
Now think back to a recent technology or business project – let’s say it was integrating your shiny new dynamic scheduling system with your legacy housing management system, and with your slightly-creaky CRM system as well for good measure. It probably took some time to work out how to do it, it almost certainly involved some developmental dead-ends and re-thinks, and it likely took time to iron out the post-live teething problems.
One or more of your peers will have already gone through almost exactly the same exercise and will be only too happy to share their experiences with you; indeed, perhaps you can trade their experience with your own experience of another project that they’re about to embark on.
Housing Technology believes that all housing providers could gain so much benefit if they just asked their peers, “What did you do, and how did you do it?”
Over the coming months, we’ll be focusing on the sector’s ‘hive mind’ to encourage collaboration; please get in touch if you have any views on inter-provider collaboration and knowledge-sharing – we want to hear your views!
