Halton Housing Trust has completed the first stage of a widespread implementation of a mobile working system from 1st Touch. The PDA-based system is already being used by 25 of the housing provider’s responsive repairs workers and will eventually be available to all customer-facing staff.
Halton Housing’s previous mobile technology had a number of limitations and was difficult to deploy across different areas of the business. The catalyst for the change was the housing provider’s implementation of a new Aareon housing management system.
Carole Galsworthy, director of ICT and business improvement, Halton Housing Trust said, “We were aware of the benefits of mobile technology as our aim is to get staff out of the office and to ensure that everyone can work when, where and how they want.
“When we upgraded to the Aareon QL housing management system, it was the ideal time to review our mobile strategy. 1st Touch not only had an existing integration link to Aareon, but also there were things that its software could do that would have been difficult to do with our previous system.”
The most notable benefit of the 1st Touch system is that Halton Housing can now capture everything it and its customers need while talking to them in the comfort of their own homes.
Galsworthy said, “With the 1st Touch system, we gain the efficiencies derived from having workers who don’t need to return to base between each visit, making them more productive as well as saving time and fuel.
“In addition, because 1st Touch is a real-time system, it provides good data visibility so that our customer services team now know the exact progress of all field-based jobs when talking to customers.”
Halton Housing now plans to introduce the 1st Touch system into other business areas such as housing services, voids management and the regeneration and investment team.
