Within the housing sector, best value plays a vital role with regard to ensuring the whole sector is moving forward, not only in enhancing existing services, but also in terms of meeting industry wide expectations. Technology plays a key role in modernising the local government as it provides key functionalities for the objectives set by the Housing Corporation (HC) to move forward.

There are a range of key issues and processes that have been outlined by the Housing Corporation (HC). These need to be addressed to ensure a more qualitative service is provided. There are a number of ways in which HA's can achieve these objectives :

• Applying a greater level of transparency within the organisation - As an 'open' industry, the organisations' strategies, plans and performance statements are required to be easily available to the whole sector as a means of reviewing their performance. This would require information to be readily available, largely in the form of reports. 

• Review and adoption of strategies for future enhancements - Each HA is expected to publish a 5 year plan that looks to modernise the organisation. As a method of achieving greater efficiency, it is important that each HA takes on board strategies that not only focus on the future but will streamline their existing processes in the short term, providing a greater level of integration and control. 

• Increased level of accountability - The housing sector is one where there is a large amount of cash flow involved. This originates from the HC and private contributors who fund the HA's to provide an efficient level of services to their tenants. Each service provided needs to be accounted for and the details easily available for review. Technology provides a range of tools which enable effective management of the cashflow beyond the everyday running of an average accounting system. Theses tools include budgeting management which, amongst other things, allows the budgeted costs to be compared against the actual costs on an ongoing basis.

Implementing Best Value

In order to parallel the evolving requirements within the industry, HA’s need to ensure they are adopting the key objectives and applying the main processes within their strategy to modernise their organisation. IT plays a very important role in implementing Best Value within the Housing sector as it provides opportunities to offer effective solutions more rapidly.

When adopting any new process it is important to aim for the best possible solution from all angles. This may not necessarily have to be the most expensive or the most advanced (in terms of technology), but one that meets the individual HA’s needs.

The efficiency at which an organisation works reflects upon their processes and objectives. There are a range of technology solutions available in the industry, which can be used to increase the overall efficiency within an organisation:

• The use of historic data - In order to establish a plan (5-year plan) for the future, it is important to use the existing data to determine what is required and the existing trends to help determine the future requirements. The utilisation of historic data enables the setting of future strategies. This data needs to be readily accessible in a format that is easy to understand.

• Reporting - A large majority of HA's still rely on Excel spreadsheets for their accounting and reporting functions. In order to be up-to-date with the current situation within the organisation, implementation of functionality that can ‘tally’ up reports and view them at a glance is imperative. In this case, a Reporting tool that automatically pulls information out of the relevant databases is appropriate.

• Information analysis - The generation and capture of data is vital across all departments (finance, rents, CRM, Housing management etc) as it can be used for regulation and analysis. Previously, this would have proven to be extremely costly and time inefficient, however the use of OLAP (OnLine Analytical Processing) has changed this, enabling instant analysis and investigation of a large amount of data in a multidimensional form.

• Integration and Control -  Straight Through Processing (STP) is ensuring that all the business processes are automated, providing a seamless environment and creating an efficient flow of information throughout the association's working operations. It ensures that all the processes are fully integrated and there is minimum manual intervention. Additionally, this changes the focus on to the tenants as all the details required would be at hand.

• Client Relationship Management -  The main thrust of CRM is to make HA's more accessible to tenants, funders and the public alike. A Deloitte Research study, which polled 261 senior managers of global governmental agencies, revealed that by 2002 nearly 34 percent of citizens will use the Internet as the prime access point for government services. The need for HA's senior managers to effectively prepare the organisations and staff for this shift toward a "customer-centric" approach is an essential part of the success of the sectors Best Value initiatives.

• Workflow - So that a degree of standardisation can be achieved within the departments, various procedures and guidelines have to be drawn and reviewed periodically. What are lacking are tools which work as part of the whole process but give quantified measurements of the various business functions. The processes can be as simple as ordering new equipment or as complex as making actual project changes. Opening up procedures for internal examination and external audit facilitates in the drives for equality, aids the monitoring of performance and exposes the bottlenecks within the working processes. 

• E-commerce - The administrative processes account for a large amount of time spent by the staff. It is important to ensure that there is more focus on the tenants rather than the processes to deal with them. Housing organisations need to ensure that they streamline their processes, freeing up their time for more client focused roles.

The nature of these solutions suggest the current focus within the housing sector is on Best Value and IT is an enabler. Within every HA, there is some form of technical solutions present however, it is important that these are in line with the specific requirements and facilitate any future enhancements without incurring ongoing costs.

Our offering within Best Value

Every association continues to develop its businesses as quickly and as efficiently as possible. With the ever increasing demand for information and cost reduction, automation can often be the only viable solution. 

However, incorporation of new technology is not simply about installing a piece of software or new hardware. It is time consuming and does require tight project management and qualified resources to ensure that the benefits are quickly realised.

At ILLY we regard our business clients as our partners and to whom we offer a guaranteed service which is based on our three founding principles:

Customers are the reason we exist

Quality is not for compromise

Focus and Delivery are our Strength

As a professional software house, we believe in delivering a production quality solution to our clients using a tried and tested methodology. This includes:

	Clearly understanding the business and technical requirements.
	Recommending business solutions which will meet the requirements and enable future expansion using the most up-to-date technologies.
	Guaranteeing a fixed price and delivery to meet our client's expectations.
	Tailored training and service levels to ensure independent usage of the system

Best Value is being adopted widely by all associations to deliver a more client focused service. Technology plays a key role in automating processes as well as providing solutions that can enable associations to place a greater level of emphasis on their clients. We have a range of pre-built components to enable associations to become more client focused. A couple of examples of such components include:

• CIM (Client Interface Module)

• OLAP (OnLine Analytical Processing)