Six Scottish housing providers and local authorities have signed up for Mobysoft’s predictive analytics Rentsense software within the first three months of 2018, primarily to mitigate the effects of the introduction of full-service universal credit.
Gregor Booth, operations director, Waverley Housing Association, said, “We wanted to plan for the full-service roll out of universal credit in order to ensure our housing teams can work as effectively as possible in dealing with the forecasted impact.”
Before selecting RentSense, each housing provider took part in one of Mobysoft’s ‘discovery days’ which evaluated their existing income collection systems and processes and made recommendations about where they could create efficiencies.
Louise Smith, director of neighbourhood services, Queens Cross Housing, said, “Our housing officers were impressed with the way RentSense prioritises caseloads and this should help them focus their attention where it is needed.
“It also helps that the software can be installed and operational within three months, so we should start seeing a positive impact on performance quickly. As universal credit will go to full service in October 2018, we wanted to get RentSense installed for this pilot period to put us in a stronger position in future.”
Ishbel Wright, team leader in housing operations, East Dunbartonshire Council, said, “RentSense lets us prioritise arrears cases more effectively, thereby making better use of our income officers’ time because they are only addressing the cases they need to, which means we can catch them as early as possible.”
