New Gorbals Housing Association is a dynamic Community Controlled Housing Association that was established in 1989. Over the years the Association has grown and the Gorbals has been transformed through the creative and innovative delivery of the best possible housing, environment and services. The Association now owns and manages over 2500 homes for social rent in the Gorbals and factors 1600 privately owned properties.
The need
On their journey to becoming a creative and innovative service provider, New Gorbals identified that their IT solutions used across the organisation would be key to transforming service delivery. They developed an IT strategy which initially began with the decision to introduce both Housing and Finance back office systems to improve data management and increase efficiency. As the demand for digital engagement and self-service increased alongside technology advancements, New Gorbals required an IT partnership to enable them to deliver industry leading customer service through the implementation of fully-integrated, complimentary solutions.
The solution
MRI Software were able to offer the adaptable, scalable and mobile solutions New Gorbals required to achieve their objectives. Initially New Gorbals chose to implement MRI’s Housing and Finance solutions to improve operations (2006).
This was shortly followed by MRI’s Strategic Modelling solution, again increasing efficiencies across the organisation. They also purchased MRI Agile as the next phase of their business transformation. Agile will enable field-based operatives to update back office systems directly whilst out of the office. The integration between the Housing and Agile solutions will provide seamless data transfer and great flexibility. The decision was then made to improve repairs and maintenance services with the introduction of MRI Maintain.
New Gorbals have also chose to implement MRI’s P2P solution, again integration with MRI Financials was key to their decision making. New Gorbals and MRI’s partnership was further enhanced by their purchase of MRI’s CRM, EDRM, Reporting and Customer Portal solutions, again all will be integrated with their current and future MRI solutions.
Integration between the modular solutions of the MRI suite has played a vital role in their decision to choose MRI as their complete IT solutions provider.
New Gorbals are now leading pioneers of business transformation and digital engagement, working together with MRI to deliver truly unique, future-proof and effective solutions to benefit both their staff and customers.
Key benefits
- Enhanced productivity for operatives
- Easy and secure access to information
- Reduced operative costs
- Integration across all of the business
- Increased billing capacity
- Improved service delivery
The results
The introduction of Housing and Financials radically changed the way New Gorbals operated in all aspects of the organisation. Utilising MRI Housing, New Gorbals were able to run business processes more effectively by making complicated tasks like managing arrears and raising repairs accurate, quick and easy to complete. This is further enhanced by MRI Housing’s ability for inbound and outbound SMS communication; real time alerts and notifications via email and powerful, intuitive reporting that has allowed them to identify key trends, issues and areas for improvement.
MRI Financials has allowed New Gorbals to drive profitability, securely hold their financial data in a single, extensive database and enable faster automated ledger reconciliation. Documents can be shared and edited by staff across the organisation; using one set of data allows them to deliver accurate reporting. This is driven by the inbuilt reporting tools that allow New Gorbals to make well informed business decisions as a result.
Integration between MRI Housing and Financials has made the updating of records a simple, less repetitive and laborious task after being configured to New Gorbals HA requirements. It has removed the risk of manual error, data duplication and inaccurate reporting. With the instant and efficient communication between both systems, New Gorbals are able to provide their staff with the correct information in real time and keep their customers satisfied with accurate, efficient customer service.
By replacing the manual processes in the back office, New Gorbals were then able to focus on further enhancing their customer services by making further significant investment in other MRI solutions which they are now implementing in stages.
The consultants were very efficient, thorough and professional. Our recent expansion has doubled the amount of stock we now manage to over 5,000 units and the new Housing system has coped with this effortlessly.
Mary Reilly, New Gorbals Housing Association.
