Housing 2023: Insights from the Industry
Housing 2023 is the latest industry event offering the chance to align with sector priorities and engage with professionals focused on delivering better tenant services. Importantly, it provided us the opportunity to understand what housing sector teams are seeking when it comes to transforming services.
Key Priorities Identified
Improving the Tenant Experience
Many housing associations expressed that outdated technology hinders improving tenant interactions and delivering better services. Digital Space shared insights on how secure connected cloud services can enhance tenant experience by:
- Enabling easier access to tenant information, allowing staff to understand tenant needs and provide the right services efficiently
- Creating accessible, easy-to-use communication channels for tenants to access responsive support
- Using automation, AI, and IT consolidation to free staff from low-value tasks and allow focus on tenant service quality
Governance and Quality of Care
With evolving regulations such as the Social Housing Bill, housing associations need to balance compliance with fulfilling organisational goals. Key recommendations include:
- Tracking essential data points like fuel poverty, damp, and tenant occupancy
- Reducing effort in aligning reporting with governance while demonstrating progress to unlock funding opportunities
- Using information proactively to improve tenant environments through check-ins and home improvement initiatives
Data-Driven Decision Making
Extracting actionable insights from data is critical for improving tenant services. Recommendations include:
- Leveraging digital data and IoT to enhance operations
- Collecting and analysing data to identify service improvements, trends, and leading indicators
- Aligning operational data to tenant experiences for tenant-centric reporting and decisions
Operational Efficiency
Housing associations need to keep up with digital changes to deliver better services. Key discussions included:
- Improving digital service resilience through cloud adoption
- Using cloud consumption models to reduce costs for licensing, hardware, and legacy integration
- Automating low-value IT admin tasks so teams can focus on innovation and value-added work
Secure Operations
Cybersecurity remains crucial, especially under the Data Protection Act 2018 and with increasing cyber threats. Digital Space supports housing associations with:
- Smarter security solutions to ensure staff safely access applications and data
- Defence against cyber threats through network and cloud configurations, moving toward a Zero Trust architecture
- Enhanced observability across critical systems via network and cloud monitoring to demonstrate protection and identify gaps
At Digital Space, we have a strong track record in the social housing sector, supporting housing associations with cloud migrations, network deployments, and contact centres as part of their digital transformation programs.
Want to learn more? Discover how we help housing associations respond to challenges and seize opportunities:
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