Not so long ago the call centre industry in the UK employed over one million people and was a major contributor to the GDP, listed in the top five industries by the Department of Employment in 1998. How things have changed. In the space of 12 years, the rise of outsourcing and off-shoring has transformed…
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Contributed Articles
Beating the Budget
On 22 June 2010, Chancellor George Osborne made his first budget speech to the House of Commons in which he pledged to ‘balance the books’ by 2016, slashing a massive £11 billion from the annual public expenditure bill, with £1.8 billion being earmarked for savings in social housing in this parliamentary term alone. I think…
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Sharing map data
Housing managers often face a costly and time-consuming task when sharing licensed mapping data with their contractors. Now, geographical web services can help keep the process both quick and legal. Housing providers have contracts with all manner of suppliers including grounds maintenance firms, architects, surveyors, engineers, planners and environmental consultants, and geographic information is an…
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Ahead in the Cloud
Organisations across both public and private sectors are increasingly leveraging cloud-based services as an alternative IT delivery model, attracted by their rich potential for technical, financial and operational advantage. The enterprise-class, on-demand, utility-based platform that characterises today’s cloud-based or managed services offering is indeed a compelling proposition; it is setting new standards of affordability, accessibility,…
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Unified comms for better customer service
Housing providers of all sizes are increasingly turning to unified communications (UC) to adopt new ways to communicate with tenants and residents while also increasing employee flexibility. One of the main reasons for implementing UC is because customers expect to reach their housing providers via a wide range of integrated communication services. This is not…
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Retaining your core IT
While most hardware and software vendors will argue that core, business-critical systems should undergo regular replacement and upgrades, organisations across the housing sector should be considering exactly what outcomes are achieved by such an approach. Does core system renewal improve overall business performance, add extra return on investment or improve business processes? All too often,…
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