Tower Hamlets Community Housing has just embarked on its new three-year IT strategy with support from Waterstons. The focus of THCH’s strategy is to align IT with the organisation’s five-year corporate plan, support performance improvements and lower the cost of the IT infrastructure and service delivery.
After liaising with the housing provider’s internal steering group of business users responsible for IT in order assess and define their requirements, Waterstons completed an audit of THCH’s existing business processes, IT infrastructure and systems architecture.
Waterstons created a three-year IT strategy for THCH, defining the key IT projects, priorities and estimated budgets. A list of remedial actions was also prepared to address any business risks identified in the audit and provide ‘quick win’ solutions, including how to use existing systems more effectively. The strategy was completed between May and September last year and was approved by THCH’s executive team in February 2010.
Over the next three years, THCH will be virtualising its infrastructure to reduce TCO by lowering the costs of hardware and maintenance, implementing a VoIP telephony system for lower call costs and simplified management, and installing Microsoft’s SharePoint communication and collaboration platform to bring together disparate information sources from across different parts of THCH’s operations.
Harneck Chilemba, finance director, Tower Hamlets Community Housing, said, “The Waterstons’ processes helped us define a strategic approach to IT, directly aligned with our five-year corporate plan.”
Formed in 2000 following the transfer of housing stock from the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, THCH manages over 2,800 tenanted and leasehold properties.
