Herefordshire Housing Ltd. has chosen enterprise-mobile, workforce management software from 1st Touch (www.1sttouch.com) to support the management of its responsive repairs service and trades colleagues across five thousand homes in the county.

1st Touch, which integrates fully with Herefordshire Housing’s existing Orchard Housing Management system, replaces the previous paper based job system by sending electronic job tickets directly to 25 internal trade colleague’s PDAs. This simultaneously reduces dead time, monitors real time job performance and reduces the wasted time associated with trade colleagues returning to base to hand in completed job tickets and collect paperwork. The electronic solution also provides access online to a wealth of customer and property information.

Herefordshire Housing Ltd chose 1st Touch after an extensive review of the market. In addition to the tight integration with Orchard, a key factor behind the decision to go with 1st Touch was the systems’ use of Smart Airtime technology; which sends information in short, encrypted and compressed bursts whenever airtime is available. This was a major advantage, as many of Herefordshire Housing’s homes are rural and a continuous signal is often impossible to maintain. It also saves a great deal in airtime costs. 1st Touch believes that typically users can save up to 75% of airtime costs over “always on” solutions.

Herefordshire Housing Ltd also appreciated the system’s location mapping functionality which allowed management to see which trades colleagues were closest to jobs, allowing them to speed up response times even more.

The 1st Touch system also enables easy, programming-free, user-customisable applications to be created. In fact, any type of electronic form can be generated, replicating closely the current housing management working practices of Herefordshire Housing’s Orchard system; without the need for Business Process Mapping. It also ensures that any future changes or updates required by Herefordshire Housing, be they Orchard based or other, can be incorporated easily. This reduces potential ongoing costs as requirements will inevitably change and grow over time.

Mark Bissell, Herefordshire Housing Ltd’s IT Manager commented, “Overall, this new technology will make a significant difference to our residents in terms of our efficiency, responsiveness and customer satisfaction. The trade colleagues who use the system, within the organisation, will see benefits too as we remove as much dead time as possible through sending information directly to their PDAs and provide them with a wealth of information about the resident and the property.

“We have achieved this without disrupting working practices as we have been able to integrate 1st Touch tightly with our existing Orchard Housing Management system. In addition, if we require any further changes or tailoring, 1st Touch is able to make these surprisingly quickly.

“We are considering extending 1st Touch into other areas of the business and are also studying ways of updating imprest van stock from builders’ merchants; to reduce the amount of time taken for operatives to return to our stores. In all it has proved an effective solution.”

Robert Dent, CEO of 1st Touch welcomed Bissell’s comments adding, “Two important elements here, the smart airtime technology and the tight integration, have allowed Herefordshire Housing to enter into the mobile workforce world with the minimum of disruption. Their already high customer service levels will be even greater as a result of this implementation. Ultimately then, the real winners will be  the residents of the five thousand homes on Herefordshire Housing’s books; who will see immediate improvements in responsiveness and customer awareness in every day terms.

“We look forward to working closely with them in the future and developing other applications that will help both their business and their customers.”