Is it possible to achieve 100 per cent compliance across all services without your already over-stretched budget taking a massive hit? Yes, says Dave Wilson, operations manager at Propeller.
If you were asked to prove your organisation was 100 per cent compliant across all services (gas, electricity, general repairs, fire and asbestos), how long would it take to identify, collate and analyse the data that will form your supporting evidence? Hours? Perhaps a day? If you use a range of standalone applications or spreadsheets, it could even take several days.
Recently, I spoke to a senior executive at one housing provider who’d managed an organisation-wide compliance audit just a few weeks before we met. Within hours of completing the audit, the business was no better informed on its current compliance status than it had been at the start of the process.
We know service provision on the scale conducted by housing providers up and down the country is hugely complex, subject to innumerable variables and is ever-changing and needs to be reflected in a more integrated and responsive approach to data management. While this provision needs to be effective and high-quality in order to meet statutory compliance requirements, it’s equally important to provide tenants with a comfortable and safe living environment. But get it wrong just once and today’s tenant is more likely to dish the dirt on social media than grumble in private.
Spending on repairs and maintenance by the UK’s largest housing providers is rising, yet tenant satisfaction levels remained largely unchanged. Add that to the average time it takes for a repair (8.3 days) and the implication for both your budget and customer satisfaction is pretty huge.
While there is no simple answer, at least knowing exactly where you are is essential. Knowledge is the key to maintaining 100 per cent compliance, improving service quality and speed and saving money.
Your organisation already has the nuts and bolts of ‘knowledge’ in the massive amount of data that is generated and stored on a daily basis. But to paraphrase the old adage, it’s not what you know, it’s knowing what you know and putting it to use. For housing providers, that translates into making more effective use of this rich source of information.
That’s why we developed Propeller, a unified management system designed to not only convert raw data into clear and relevant analysis and insights (knowledge) but also, crucially, to allow real-time access that’s always accurate and available, anytime, anywhere to all stakeholders, from contractors and engineers, to administrators, senior managers and even clients. The kind of system which, as one customer put it, provides “one version of the truth” which is always completely up-to-date.
So, to go back to my original question, if you were asked to demonstrate your compliance status, all you’d have to do was refer to the nearest device – PC, tablet, phone – check the service and compliance dashboards and you’d have the answer within minutes.
David Wilson is the operations manager at Propeller.
