Established in 2011, PanConnect by Housing Insight was developed from a vision to provide the housing sector with an adaptable holistic set of software tools and business-focused solutions to enhance housing management processes.
By 2013, product development was directed alongside strategic partnerships in the housing sector, including United Welsh Housing and Trivallis Housing. 2015 saw Housing Insight successfully launch its core systems, Tenant Self Service and Mobile Staff App. Later that year, having won a competitive tender, Housing Insight partnered with the customer Solas (now part of Pobl Group) to build a platform for their supporting people team. This was the start of the PanConnect suite of solutions.
“Our focus is on creating outstanding customer experience at every touch point. Digital engagement is critical to this. The future will be defined by a mobile workforce with the ability to access, capture and store information on the go. PanConnect will enable us to mobilise our support services, taking our brand and service out into our communities. This will be transformational to customer relationships while making our staff experience more rewarding.”
Nick Taylor, Director of Operations, Solas
The wins keep coming
With another successful tender win at Bron Afon Community Housing to provide our Mobile Staff App for its compliance, neighbourhoods and general needs housing teams, complemented by our Customer Self Service Portal and App, the housing provider continues to work closely with us, amending the solutions to meet its changing needs.
Rise to fame
With a growing and established presence in Wales, new customers continued to join us, with our PanConnect Mobile Staff App and the Self-Service Portal and App becoming the go-to solution for South Wales. Following successful integrations with multiple housing management and other third-party systems, we then began to grow in the north of the country.
After a number of PanConnect wins in Scotland, Caledonia Housing said:
“We have invested in a product that we see being used in all areas of the business. The dedication from both companies means that we see this as being an integral piece of software at Caledonia and we look forward to working with Housing Insight to deliver technology for today and tomorrow.”
As the company grew, in terms of both our customer base and our internal teams (support, technical and sales), our core values of maintaining strong customer relationships and understanding clients’ requirements remained a key focus for the business. With a clear road map for planning future growth, we continued to align our resources to meet our customers’ needs. Our strategy has always been to build solutions to improve business processes in partnership with our customers.
Here comes the lockdown…
In March 2020, the country was put into lockdown, a situation that impacted the housing sector dramatically, but with changing customer priorities, we were able to adapt. Our commitment and support gave them added confidence in our ability and the solutions we had in place enabled our customers to continue their day-to-day activities. Our Customer Self-Service Portal and App enabled customers to increase engagement with their tenants, pushing out bespoke messages and updates, allowing them to fully self-serve without the need to call.
Tenant communication improved with the addition of our two-way SMS communications hub. Our Mobile Staff App enabled our customers to continue to have staff working in the field, ensuring that compliance deadlines were still met.
Alongside additional solutions such as our Applicant Portal and Tenancy Sign-up, we were able to offer organisations the ability to complete virtual sign-ups online, thereby reducing their voids and waiting lists.
At the start of 2020, Housing Insight was set to have a record year; the pandemic didn’t change this, we just needed to adapt to achieve this. We chose to not take on any new customers from the start of lockdown until June, allowing all of our resources to be committed to our current customers.
We had no reason to furlough any staff members, and our sales team committed their resources to account management and ensuring that all customers knew what was available to them.
As lockdown lifted, we opened our doors and began taking on new customers. Our Self-Service Portal and App proved to be the most popular, with three new customers coming on board, immediately allowing them to deploy an out-of-the-box solution with limited need for internal development resources, enabling them to truly achieve customer engagement through self-service.
The future is bright
Housing Insight continues to grow while remaining independent and offering flexible solutions to the housing sector. We have embraced the work from home ethic and believe that this sector can use the challenges of this year to change and improve their processes with the use of technology.
“What has pleased us the most is that we have found Housing Insight to be a very competent supplier and an excellent partner. It is keen to understand our business and ensure the solution meets the needs of our internal users and their external customers. We are very optimistic about our relationship with Housing Insight and looking forward to developing the platform alongside them.”
We have launched multiple modules to provide specific solutions to complement business processes including a Rents solution to combat arrears and a Voids solution to complete pre- and post-voids processes which then align with our other digital solutions such as our Applicant Portal and Tenancy Sign-Up, giving users improvements across the business, allowing them to continue to do their work in the field or at home.
The future is truly bright for our customers and our team.
For more information or to learn about our forthcoming webinars, please contact us at sales@housing-insight.co.uk.
