DocuWare > Case Studies > Enabling an Excellent Housing Service

Enabling an Excellent Housing Service

Customer Company Size

SME

Region

Europe

Country

United Kingdom

Product

DocuWare
Link2

Tech Stack

Document Management System (DMS)
Electronic File Cabinet
Bar Code Scanning

Implementation Scale

Enterprise-wide Deployment

Impact Metrics

Productivity Improvements
Cost Savings
Customer Satisfaction

Technology Category

Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration
Functional Applications - Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (ERP)

Applicable Industries

Buildings

Applicable Functions

Facility Management
Logistics & Transportation

Use Cases

Inventory Management
Real-Time Location System (RTLS)

Services

System Integration
Data Science Services

About The Customer

The Challenge

Mosscare Housing Ltd. is a charitable, not for profit housing association committed to providing a high quality, high value housing service to communities and individuals in Greater Manchester. This includes the City of Manchester, Tameside and Trafford. Mosscare was founded in 1967; today the association manages around 3500 buildings and apartments. All administrative maintenance for managing the properties are handled by the 100 employees of Mosscare. Many of the buildings were previously the property of the city. Before introducing a Document Management System (DMS), about 150,000 pages of paper had been collected in their paper archive. Every Mosscare employee must be able to comprehensively advise potential tenants. To make this possible, all of the company’s documents must be easily retrieved and viewable by multiple employees at the same time – without spending valuable time on copying or searching for documents on a colleague’s desk. Their existing software, Link2 (a housing property management system), should remain in place, and documents should be readily accessible from within this system. Employees work on about 70 computers running Windows 2000. They planned on storing all kinds of information about real estate properties and existing and interested tenants in the DMS system. This means that many different types of documents from a variety of sources would need to be processed. Multiple employees working in different departments would also need to access the information.

The Solution

With DocuWare’s help, all relevant documents are stored in an electronic file cabinet. Mosscare’s staff all work with DocuWare and have direct, simultaneous access to all the documents they need. The existing paper archive was digitised by an external scanning service provider. All documents are completely current and constantly updated, for all to see. To give authorised personnel the quickest access possible to documents placed in the archive, incoming paper documents are scanned in the mail-room, while faxes and e-mail are captured digitally. Documents now only move through their offices electronically. To generate this workflow, they used specific indexing. All the details about tenants, information about their 3500 buildings such as architect’s plans or other necessary repairs and maintenance measures, correspondence between employees and tenants such as letters, faxes, inquiries and contracts - all this is handled the same way today. Mosscare has to remain up-to-date with data information retention regulations regarding the manner in which a tenant’s details are handled. An applicant is put on a waiting list and the organisation matches the applicants to a property in their preferred area. If an applicant reaches the number of points required, they are offered a property; the applicant then becomes a tenant and signs a rental agreement. As stated previously, Mosscare works with the community to provide more affordable properties, helping to improve those communities.

Operational Impact

Retrieving documents is now very efficient. The staff can find and submit requested documents without ever leaving their desks, never having to waste time searching for missing documents since nothing ever leaves the records room or needs refiling.
DocuWare is helping to avoid many of the operational problems previously experienced and common to associations of this size, such as those caused by the lack of communication between co-workers, duplicate filing by different teams, and a general shortage of physical space.
With DocuWare, a user can track and follow the history of a tenant and property, from the planning stage to handing over the keys. Staff members can reallocate their time to consulting tenants in detail instead of looking through files. For customer service, this means that information can be quickly and comprehensively tapped into, whether it is to aid an interview or answer an inquiry. Tenant requests can immediately be processed. Providing tenants and potential tenants with this kind of knowledgeable support is rewarded with customer trust (faster service, well-informed advice) as well as a rise in employee satisfaction, since they are able to cover a wide spectrum of tasks without spending their time searching for information.

Quantitative Benefit

Time saved from not searching for information and space savings are also helping to improve things in the world of property management.
Building and maintenance measures can be more easily monitored and controlled since the available information is always the most current and, whenever needed, anyone can access documents from into the past.
Tenant inquiries can be immediately answered. Since copying and paper materials are eliminated and the space needed to house electronic data is far less, DocuWare does not only save time, but real, hard costs.
Based on her estimate, she believes that their investment was amortised in less than 2 years.