NEC Housing to transform repairs management at Reading Borough Council
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Trevor Hampton ·
- · 10 January 2022 ·
- Articles
NEC Housing improves end-to-end repairs management by keeping everything in one place. No more clunky integrations, separate spreadsheets or questionable data. We caught up with Reading Borough Council’s project manager Johnnie Stanley to ask why this ‘all in one’ approach matters.
What’s different about repairs management in NEC Housing?
NEC Housing offers a new approach to repairs because it works for everyone. Rather than trying to stitch together the separate systems used by different teams at different stages, you get one accurate platform for all.
“Reading’s current solution only extends so far,” explains Johnnie. “We’ve got a separate repairs system and then lots of other tasks and services in other databases. The new system will help amalgamate that data to improve visibility and allow us to pull information together quickly.”
Why Reading made the change
Having decided to use NEC Housing back in 2019, Reading realised that extending it to manage end-to-end repairs would give them better results. It would save money, because they wouldn’t be creating and maintaining integrations, and could also keep things running smoothly.
“With multiple systems it can be really hard to have a co-ordinated view of all the problems needing to be resolved” says Johnnie, “This new approach really helps to give a complete overview of all our tasks and where responsibilities lie. Extending NEC Housing into more areas is by far the best option.”
Far-reaching benefits for tenants, teams and partners
This new approach will replace eight systems and release huge opportunities for improvement. By adding NEC Housing’s Contractor Management, Scheduling and Mobile Repairs they’ll be able to:
- Reduce repairs calls dramatically through advanced self-service. Tenants will be able to log a repair and see its exact status, taking the pressure off the call centre.
- Decrease the void turnaround time with the Scheduler. They’ll be able to manage multiple trades at the same time and set dependencies between them. Currently they can only be set in sequence and need lots of manual intervention. With teams working more productively and travelling less, it’ll be better for the environment too.
- Improve productivity with the mobile app. This will ensure better communication between staff in our repair teams, job managers and customers. There’s currently little visibility on progress or job status.
- Improve customer service by sending automatic SMS reminders and alerts if workers get stuck in traffic.
- Efficiencies and cost savings. With one broad support and maintenance operating system instead of two separate ones, there are easy savings to be made. And efficiency will improve too, through quicker turnaround and response times and the chance to complete more repairs each day.
Reading Borough Council’s in-house repairs teams also deliver the same service for Wokingham Borough Council, and the new system will give both local authorities access to the latest information.
Complete repairs management
There’s also many benefits from improved data quality, because no rekeying means fewer errors. With accurate data always on hand, they can improve everything from customer service to cost control.
“NEC Housing Contractors is the right choice for us,” says Johnnie. “By taking a one-system approach we can push the benefits out to every team.”
