Following A2Dominion’s recent appointment of Mears Group as its new repairs and maintenance contractor, Manifest Software Solutions has completed the integration of A2Dominion’s Dynamics 365-based RedkiteCRM repairs management system and its associated processes with Mears’ own systems within just eight weeks.
At the start of the project, A2Dominion identified key areas to focus on as part of its repairs improvement programme. These included: schedule of rates identification; making a booking and appointment tracking; rationalising repairs descriptions; enhancing customer communications; refining surveyors’ reporting and inspections; variation approvals and rejections; and two-way repair notes.
Manifest’s extensive experience of integrating all kinds of systems used by housing organisations combined with its use of its own pre-built, UK-hosted integration layer meant that it was able to rapidly integrate and connect all the systems involved between A2Dominion and Mears.
RedkiteCRM’s repairs accelerator product for Dynamics 365 fast-tracks the logging and management of repairs and work orders. The overall solution required real-time, two-way communications between RedkiteCRM and Mears’ own systems, all of which was delivered via the Manifest’s cloud-hosted integration layer.
This enabled each system to communicate natively with each other, removing the usual delays associated with the development and testing of custom connectors. Because the Manifest integration layer orchestrates the exchange of data, secure logging and custom dashboards could be incorporated to provide A2Dominion with total visibility of the data passing between its systems.
James Berger, solutions architect, A2Dominion, said, “This has been an exciting journey, delivered by Manifest within a really tight timeframe. It has been pleasing to see our solution take shape and go live in parallel to the mobilisation of our new repairs service contract.”
Sarah McRow, director, RedkiteCRM, said, “The speed of the integration was astonishing, given the size of the project. It’s the quickest one we’ve been involved with at this scale – a normal timeframe for repairs projects can take up to a year, but everyone was motivated by the go-live date, achieved in no small part due to our really solid relationship with Manifest.”
A2Dominion’s responsive repairs management system and processes have now been integrated with Mears’ systems, all within eight weeks. Since going live with the new solution in October 2023, thousands of repairs and maintenance jobs have been processed.
A2Dominion’s Berger said, “The proactive nature of Manifest’s team really helped with the success of this project, and we are very pleased with the result; we now have a reliable source of information which both our contractor and A2Dominion can trust.”
The housing provider reported that the results of the project have included: greatly improved operational efficiency; more streamlined scheduling; better customer communications; smarter reporting and job tracking; and more ‘first-time fix’ repairs.
RedkiteCRM’s McRow said, “Manifest has the same ethos as us which is about delivering effective solutions as quickly as possible. When we work with our housing customers, and they mention Manifest, we breathe a sigh of relief because we ‘get’ each other.”
Alan Swift, managing director, Manifest Software Solutions, said, “It’s been a pleasure to work with such an excellent team, with everyone collaborating to make this happen in record time. The strength of the partnership between A2Dominion, RedkiteCRM and Mears resulted in this incredible success story.”
