For years the IT department fought for the chance to demonstrate the business value of technology innovation. Yet after a flurry of CIO appointments in the late 1990s, housing associations appear to have largely changed their view about technology as a business enabler and could therefore be in danger of considering it as little more…
Has IT lost the business battle?Read More →
Contributed Articles
Is your PC really necessary?
Centralised applications and thin desktops are helping many housing associations deliver IT services that are lower coat, more secure and easier to manage. But even within these organisations, there are always users who claim to need a full-fat ‘real PC’. But do they? Thin computing may have been around for 10 years, but it is…
Is your PC really necessary?Read More →
Islands in the stream
A combination of the increasing IT skills of employees, as distinct from the IT department itself, and the user-friendliness of most business applications is resulting in the creation of employee- and department-specific micro-silos of data within housing associations, usually vital documents, spreadsheets or databases being stored on individual PCs or email accounts. The consequence of…
Islands in the streamRead More →
Less is more
Controlling costs is a core objective for any organisation, not least housing associations. As the costs of community needs rise faster than the pace of revenue generation, housing associations need to improve their operational efficiency, with the procurement process offering significant opportunities for gains. Most housing associations have expended little resources on managing the money…
Less is moreRead More →
But is it web-enabled?
I would like to introduce this article by describing a common situation when we are demonstrating our software to housing associations. Imagine a group of people animatedly discussing how the software might help them, when one person, usually a senior director, asks in a knowledgeable tone, “ah, but is it web-enabled?”. When pressed to explain…
But is it web-enabled?Read More →
Some data are more equal than others
The answer is multi-tiered data management – so what is the question? There are many questions to which MDM is the answer. One is ‘How do you reduce the cost of securing the data and information that you rely on for your daily operations?’ Another… ‘Do you set policies to manage the data on your…
Some data are more equal than othersRead More →
