Housing Associations open spending data

Housing Minister, Grant Shapps seems to be making progress with his campaign to push for Housing Associations to make spending data public knowledge – with at least two housing associations, Hertfordshire Housing and Viridian Housing agreeing to open up spending data from next month.

Hertfordshire Housing and Viridian Housing are responsible for around 5,300 and 16,000 properties respectively, with the associations expected to publish the details of all spending which is above £500, and of any salaries which are over £50,000.

The call for greater visibility of spending data follows pressure to expose how public monies are being spent – organisations which receive money from the tax payer should now expect to come under greater scrutiny and be willing to explain financial decisions openly and honestly.

The ability to be able to share this data however will require housing associations to have in place a system which will ensure that all monies spent are being accounted for and accessible – with information being able to be readily accessed.

Although not public bodies, the housing sector in particular takes in money from taxpayers – the majority of which is invested in social housing, with this in mind surely it is only reasonable to share how this investment is being spent? Other public sector areas should beware, with the growing trend of openness and honesty with public spending it is only a matter of time before they too will have to review the systems which they have in place.

Social Housing solutions for the smaller Housing Association

It’s easy to think of Housing Associations in terms of the big boys with high stock levels and major infrastructure projects supplied by the big system integrators. Of course it’s a fragmented “industry” with many small HAs. They face the same compliance and regulatory needs as the large players and need to get appropriate bang for their buck too. Getting efficient can sound a little trite. But it belies the fact that massive changes like welfare benefit reform and a dour economic backdrop mean that cost savings simply have to be top of decision makers’ minds.

This month’s Housing Technology includes an article about Shian Housing‘s adoption of Invu. There are approximately 320 small associations, with fewer than 1000 units, registered with the National Housing Federation and working in London. These form the G20 group, one of which is Shian.

Invu solutions have been implemented in many HAs and the trend is positive. Many of these have been in good sized and growing HAs, like Seren, Cosmopolitan, Adactus and Derwent. The solutions have been complex at times and the results hugely positive. We’re delighted to work on these projects and we hope that these customers are enjoying the benefits they set out to achieve - the fact that they are willing to provide great testimonials and case studies is certainly positive. But the Shians of this world show that careful husbandry, very well defined scope and a pragmatic sense of ambition can allow the smaller HAs to share many of these benefits.

Invu is delighted to work with all sizes of HAs. We’re at the NHF Housing Finance Conference and Exhibition at Warwick University and TAI 2012: The Housing Olympics in Cardiff this week. Next week  we’ll be at Hitex in Edinburgh. Come and ask us about Shian and our other customers experiences.

FOI and Housing Associations

The Freedom of Information Act (FOI) came into force in 2005 and demands that individuals have the right to information, the right to confidentiality and the right to effective administration.

As such the act means that members of the public can demand information at any given time and it must be readily accessible. Considering today’s government is planning to consult on extending the FOI still further, this should give those Housing Associations with limited grip on their documents serious cause for concern.

A housing association typically holds vast amounts of information about each resident – past and present – and each property, making management of the sheer number of documents a trial in itself. It is therefore critical that a system and a set of robust processes are in place to manage such information, allowing administrators easy access to relevant material as requests are made.

Many housing associations are not however sufficiently equipped to easily produce information as requested, and are falling short when it is being demanded. Not being able to produce such information sends out the clear message that Housing Associations are not forward looking, not up to date and are simply inefficient when it comes to the management of documents. Above this, the simple time cost of manually trawling through documents in order to satisfy an FOI request can be enormous.

Housing Associations must realise that it isn’t difficult, costly or disruptive to manage information in such a way that enables ready compliance with the Act – even if the legislation is extended. Culturally it doesn’t have to be difficult either – in a society when information is readily available (the Google Corporation is after all now a verb), it will be nothing short of an anachronism that any organisation cannot access the right information immediately.

Housing Associations must therefore evaluate their processes ahead of more stringent requirements coming into force. The question is not just whether or not the FOI is appropriate to Housing Associations. In a way this doesn’t matter – from an operational and forward-looking perspective, the ability to comply should be a given. 

Further Reading:

http://www.insidehousing.co.uk/home/blogs/data-overload/6519921.article 

A tale of two cities?

In our news section, we’re talking about a tale of two cities. Not exactly original, but it comes to mind with two new case studies – Seren Group in Newport and, a quick hop down the M4 in Cardiff, Hendre. They are both engaged in social housing and both have been delighted with their Invu experience. Housing Associations (HA’s) are waking up to Invu with its wider portfolio of products and integration opportunities with housing systems. Forty plus HAs have adopted Invu and, increasingly, the demand is for document management at the heart of the business.

HAs face a bombardment of documentation, from invoices, to maintenance orders, to tenant correspondence and much more. Service levels can massively improve if the documentation is immediately to hand and a 360˚ view of a tenant’s affairs or suppliers transactions are to hand. HAs come under tight regulation and service levels are an important benchmark, so being able to respond quickly with all queries answered first time is a significant measure of success. It’s also a measure of efficiency and cost saving. Right now there are still many HAs find themselves reliant on paper filing and queries may take hours or days to get answered and then only in part – add in the “whilst I’ve got you”, almost mandatory supplementary question and you could be back to square one. You can see why a good eDM solution is needed.
HAs face particular issues with accounts payable – often working with a host of suppliers. Many of these are likely to be local and small in keeping with an ethos of trading in the community where possible. Quick payment is often critical to these suppliers. However, manual processing of paper invoices can be a slow process. Invu’s invoice processing solutions cut through this – we’re getting increasing and encouraging demand here. Invoices are scanned, the relevant data is extracted from the invoice and then looked up against the finance system for supplier details, POs etc. This then initiates an automatic workflow for authorisation – what might currently be 1-2 week’s worth of round trip can be simplified to minutes, all without the fear of loss and all whilst still having sight of the information for queries. Extending Invu Document Management out beyond a passive repository can make a huge difference to the way businesses work and this is a great example of a sector where the fit is especially good. Invu’s engagement with HAs continues to get closer and stronger – we hope to see our South Walian friends at Seren and Hendre joined by many more HA peers using Invu.many more HA peers using Invu.

Housing Associations under pressure

Housing Technology magazine publishes provides IT, Technology and Telecommunications news to 8,000+ business and technology strategy decision makers in the UK social housing sector and local government. Document Management continues to be a pragmatic solution in the HA space – in fact we’ve been delighted to work with around 40 HAs in increasing depth, making Invu an important presence. 

The July edition of the magazine includes a focus on the importance of getting the eDM decision right and deploying successfully. HAs are facing increasing demands with changes to funding, auditing and governance all eating into resources against a background of cost pressures and a focus on service levels. eDM is not a silver bullet but we’ve seen some genuinely impressive results even with tight budgets.  Find out more by reading the Do’s & Don’t White Paper at: 


http://www.invu.net/info/whitepapers.aspx