Knowsley Housing Trust (KHT) is a progressive, not-for-profit, independent Housing Association, based in Knowsley, a vibrant and dynamic urban area of Merseyside, managing over 13,000 high quality homes at affordable rents. KHT has a range of housing stock which includes; houses, bungalows, sheltered housing schemes, as well as low rise and multi-storey accommodation. KHT’s commercial arm, KHT Services, also provides maintenance services for other public sector organisations.

KHT has a mobile workforce of over two hundred and twenty operatives. These operatives cover four contracts for work over a wide geographic area. The workforce is split into multiple trades and disciplines, including responsive repairs, gas servicing, voids and electrical. The business case for mobilising the workforce was overwhelming. An earlier project to introduce mobile working had met with mixed success and there had been technical integration issues.

A key requirement for the Trust was for a solution that interfaced in real time with the scheduling system OPTI-TIME from Xmbrace and the IBS OPENHousing system currently in use at the Trust. The system needed to give and capture data from and to the operative including relevant up to date information for all of the business areas being mobilised. KHT also wanted to be independent of the mobile software supplier for forms changes after they were live.

KHT decided to look at the marketplace for mobile working again and selected 1st Touch Mobile, a solution that was well proven in the Social Housing market, having already been implemented in thirty-five similar Social Housing organisations.

The ready to use 1st Touch Social Housing applications cater for all of the business areas KHT required and were referenceable. Specifically, KHT will use 1st Touch Mobile solutions for Responsive Repairs. Gas Servicing, Voids, Van Checks and Van Stock Management.

Janet Daniels, Operational Director of Corporate Services at KHT is enthusiastic about the potential benefits this solution will bring to the organisation, commenting, “We know from experience, that this can deliver a better level of service to our customers which is one of our key goals. Overall KHT expects to reap the rewards of reduced overall operating costs and increased productivity, with operatives being able to complete more jobs per day, travel less miles and  provide dynamic data to the management team direct from the PDA.”

Importantly, 1st Touch has been fully integrated with IBS OPENHousing, meaning that data is exchanged between the two systems, adding to the efficiency of the operation and reducing the associated costs of running disparate systems. Integration to housing management solutions is normally high cost and high risk with significant risk of failure. 1st Touch has built a reusable integration layer which calls standard IBS Business Logic routines, which are fully supported by IBS, in real time for a timely and low cost integration.

Robert Dent, CEO of 1st Touch commented, “Because 1st Touch Mobile is a solution which not only provides ready to use applications but also a fully functional and easy to use mobile platform, KHT will be able to maintain, change and create the mobile forms themselves in the future, saving time and negating additional costs as their needs grow and change.”

This capability was imperative for a fast moving organisation with several additional forms requirements to the initial specified forms already identified. As further application areas are adopted KHT plans to eventually roll the Solution out to all mobile workers within the business.