Within the social housing sector, information management systems play a huge part in the overall satisfaction of both employees and customers (tenants). From property repairs and maintenance to rent accounts, the systems that manage this data are integral to the overall running of the association. This is what makes housing management systems so important. But the housing management system chosen across the company doesn’t have to manage every single part of the housing association, and more often than not, it doesn’t. While having multiple platforms or systems isn’t out of the ordinary in the social housing industry, having an integrated, joined-up view of tenants across all systems is.
Throughout 2021, we’ve held bi-monthly Housing Breakfast webinars to discuss key problems and solutions with some of the UK’s top social housing providers. Across these webinars, we’ve often discussed the customer engagement benefits of Dynamics 365, at which point we hear the response “but we already have a housing management system”. What makes Dynamics 365 special is that it’s ‘customer centric’ and intelligent with prevalent examples of modern technologies like AI which often aren’t enabled in most associations existing systems. Even better than this, it has great API availability so it can hook up/into a number of different aspects of your housing system such as ASB, complaints, neighbourhoods. This means housing associations can enjoy small, medium or large portions of the market leading CRM capability Microsoft provide, regardless of your incumbent situation.
Crimson’s Enterprise Integration Platform for housing associations fast-tracks the integration of business and data systems within the cloud with its prebuilt connectors and data mapping experience across contact, rents, cases and more. Not only is this an easy process to manage, but it also standardises future integrations. A centralised integration portal also helps to identify and solve problems and promotes scalability.
The ability to integrate with a number of platforms (Northgate, Civica, Orchard, MIS, Capita etc.) gives social housing providers a joined-up view of their tenants. A hybrid approach offers ‘the best of both worlds’ for managers, while keeping their options open for future connectivity opportunities. Using Microsoft’s integration capabilities, the Azure Service Bus, Logic Apps, Data Factory and API Wrappers provide an enterprise class integration layer to existing systems, which makes adding or removing systems in the future is even easier.
Modern, cloud-based integration from Microsoft can unlock opportunities for business and customer engagement solutions with a hybrid model, allowing the housing association to adapt over time. By complimenting existing solutions, the change-over period is quicker and easier, with a lower level of risk.