Methodist Ministers Housing Society has moved to cloud-based computing for its housing, document and asset management systems with support for mobile working, following systems migration and integration by IEG4 and the adoption of HousingPoint from HousingIT.
With a view to improving productivity and cutting costs, IEG4 migrated the housing provider from an old on-site version of Microsoft Exchange to Exchange Online, part of Microsoft’s cloud-based business productivity suite. This removed the need for MMHS to upgrade internal servers and reduced IT staff costs and administrative time. IEG4 also implemented mobile and remote working for senior staff. IEG4 also moved 70,000 documents from a legacy document management system to Microsoft SharePoint to mirror existing working practices.
HousingIT, IEG4’s sister company, then implemented the asset management module of its web-based HousingPoint housing management system. The HousingIT system is hosted on Windows Azure, enabling MMHS staff to access the system from a web browser in any location. Using the HousingPoint Surveyor’s Tablet application, surveyors can now carry existing stock condition data with them, and then update and add component conditions easily. Once a survey has been completed, the data is sent back to HousingPoint and is instantly available to other users.
Through customisable reports and screens, MMHS staff can analyse the investment requirements necessary to maintain its housing stock and produce planned maintenance programmes on specific house components over any number of years, with the data also capable of being exported for further manipulation.
Shelagh Morgan, chief executive, Methodist Ministers Housing Society, said, “Data from stock condition surveys was previously stored in an Access database managed by external consultants. This data was then used to produce a series of spreadsheets for further analysis but because the spreadsheets were only produced annually, our decisions were always based on out-of-date information.
“By using HousingPoint, we are now confident that we have up-to-the-minute information to make decisions on investment that could make a difference of thousands of pounds. And from an IT and budgetary perspective, we pay for the software via a monthly subscription and it’s hosted in the cloud so we have no additional hardware costs.”
HousingIT’s system also includes Decent Homes Quality reporting, an asbestos register and HHRS reporting. In addition, MMHS documents in SharePoint can be ‘surfaced’ in HousingPoint, meaning that a user looking at a repair request, for example, on a recently replaced component can also search for a warranty document stored in SharePoint tagged with the house’s property reference.
