Newport City Homes (NCH), one of the newest and largest social landlords in Wales, has chosen 1st Touch Mobile technology to manage, control and support the work of its field-based responsive repairs and gas operatives. Established in March 2009 with a housing stock transfer of over 9,000 homes from Newport City Council, an overriding objective in all aspects of the new organisation’s housing management strategy is to meet the very highest levels of service delivery to residents.

This approach is reflected most strongly by Newport City Homes’ investment in technology; as NCH needed to bring in an all-new technology infrastructure. Here the aim has been to implement the most up-to-date and robust technology platform with which to ensure the highest possible levels of efficiency and customer-centric service delivery. A key element of this investment was to identify the best mobile technology available to manage, support and control the work of more than 60 responsive repair and gas operatives.

NCH needed a system that would integrate tightly with their ROCC Uniclass and Opti-Time appointment scheduling systems. After a thorough review of the market they chose 1st Touch Mobile technology.

As Neil Jones, Head of Information Services at Newport City Homes says, “We needed to replace our existing housing repairs system with one capable of helping us to improve services to our residents. It would also need to give us additional functionality to manage our housing stock in compliance with the Welsh Housing Quality Standard. We chose ROCC’s Uniclass repairs system to deal with reactive repairs plus planned and cyclical maintenance and Opti-Time dynamic scheduling for making appointments. However ultimately, the success of these systems lies at the sharp end; where our field-based operatives deliver services to residents. For this, we needed to identify an effective mobile solution to work well on the operative’s PDAs whilst integrating tightly with our new back office systems.

“We chose 1st Touch Mobile technology for its recognised integration with the ROCC and Opti -Time systems. However, to a large degree it was also because the system has a proven track record in the social housing arena and because 1st Touch is the recognised market leader for mobile solutions. You can see why when you deal with them as they are professional in all aspects of the service they provide.

“By deploying 1st Touch, it will pull our mobile operations together at the sharp end and deliver an even more efficient service to and for residents. It will also make life easier for the mobile workforce as they don’t have to go back to base to pick up job information and they can make appointments or order parts whilst still with the resident. As the benefits are so clear and straight forward, we are already looking towards a second phase installation which would extend the mobile technology to our Voids operations too.”

For his part Robert Dent, CEO of 1st Touch (www.1sttouch.com) welcomed these comments adding, “Newport City Homes and in particular Neil Jones, has demonstrated a clear far-sighted vision right from the start; identifying and implementing technology systems that they feel have worked well elsewhere in the social housing arena; both in terms of achieving high efficiency levels and more importantly in terms of delivering state-of-the-art services to residents.

“We respect the approach they have taken and are naturally delighted that 1st Touch Mobile technology will be playing its part in delivering the high service levels they are committed to. We look forward to working closely with them.”