Housing Associations and Digital Transformation – What Is Your Strategy?

The switch to digital and automated processes is nothing new for housing associations. A look back at the SFHA’s Digital Checkup website and we can read through blogs from 2014. That’s almost a decade ago now. Doesn’t time fly when you’re having fun implementing a digital strategy? It’s interesting to look at what was being discussed in 2014 as not much has really changed since then. One article details a list of activities that housing associations can engage in as part of the going digital strategy. This ranges from website creation or a revamp to social media and, the areas that we’re more interested in, using IT more efficiently, and IT strategy.

As the sector has been discussing digitisation since 2014 (or even before, we’re using the SFHA’s Digital Checkup as a benchmark), we thought it would be useful to do a review of the digitisation of the property factoring function within housing management, and how, if at all, it has been given any more focus now.

Back to 2014 – property factoring in housing associations

We’re not going to pretend to know how individual housing associations were carrying out property factoring processes and services in 2014. We know that the Property Factors Act 2011 will have had an effect on regulation and governance and best practices within housing associations, but we don’t know that this would necessarily have paved the way for major improvements to efficiency, accuracy, compliance, and customer satisfaction.

We can take an educated guess that most housing associations would have been managing property factoring by using very manual, laboured processes such as Excel spreadsheets, and potentially even less sophisticated methods using a calculator.

What we do know for certain, is that Housing Management Systems were definitely not doing what was needed for successful property factoring management.

2020 – the year that propelled everyone into the fourth industrial revolution (whether you liked it or not)

2020 was the year that we were all forced into doing things differently, a behaviour change that was dominated by digitisation. For housing associations that weren’t quite there yet with their digital strategy, 2020 would have been a bit of a wake-up call, and might well have sent tremors of action through the organisation due to necessity.

Whether we liked it or not, we had to find new ways to communicate remotely, and it may just have been the nudge that was needed for many housing associations to fully embrace the ‘Let’s get digital’ campaign launched in 2014 by the SCVO.

2023 – does your housing association consider automated property factoring processes in your strategy?

As we head full-on into 2023, hurtling towards 2024, in a world that seems to be changing more rapidly than ever before, is your housing association ensuring that housing stock is maintained at a high level? That it is easy to communicate with customers about the factoring of their home? And that you can efficiently manage the entire property factoring process from start to finish?

If the answer is no, then it might well be a good time to review where this area of your organisation could be making some headway. Housing Management Systems are still not doing what they need to for the property factoring function, which leaves housing associations in a pickle. The best time to address this would be during the procurement process when you can take the time to identify exactly what is needed to implement the processes you need, within budget and as part of the entire housing management software process.

Please do get in touch with our UK-based team today if you would like to have a chat about what we can do for your housing association