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Housing Case Studies

Raven Housing Trust

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Customer Summary

From: Sean Brown, IT Service Delivery Manager

Raven Housing Trust is a social housing provider based in Redhill, Surrey. They own or manage more than 7,000 homes and are committed to investing in homes and neighbourhoods to develop local communities where people want to live. The majority of their customers rent their homes from us, however, they also have customers who either own the lease to their homes or own their own homes on a part-rent/part-buy basis. They are proud of their purpose - Building Homes, Changing lives.

Raven Housing have been a customer of Exponential-e since 2017.

How does the solution / technology / service (use the most appropriate) Exponential-e provide benefit your organisation and your customers?

We use laptop as a service with Exponential-e. This allows us to easily replace user's devices quickly in the event of a hardware fault which is especially useful because we operate a work from anywhere policy so if a user lives a long way from our office we can still get replacement devices out quickly. It also helps us from a cost perspective because we are no longer buying devices ad-hoc, the laptops are all consistently budgeted for.

What qualities do you believe are important in a technology partner?

The ability to respond quickly and appropriately when things go wrong.

How do you see the future of your partnership with Exponential-e evolving?

Next on our agenda will be a redesign of our corporate network, possibly moving away from the VPLS we use at the moment. Our laptops are also due for upgrade next year.

Could you share a "stand-out" moment where Exponential-e excelled?

We have started a project to migrate services away from Exponential-e's datacentre into Azure. Pankaj did a fantastic job scoping out the project and while Exponential-e were more expensive than one of our other partners, we opted to work with you because of the great work Pankaj did in designing the proposal.

Are there any individuals at Exponential-e you feel consistently go above and beyond?

As mentioned before Pankaj has always been seen as extremely competent which helps us trust what he is recommending. The management team of Ed, Terence and Neil Smith beforehand have all been very responsive and helpful whenever we've needed them to be.

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Our Customers
Housing Case Studies

North Star

North-Star-Optimising-internal-and-external-communications-for-a-top-housing-association

Optimising internal and external communications for a top housing association

About North Star

Born in 2006 from the merger of the Endeavour and Teesdale housing associations, North Star is a forward-thinking housing association that not only builds affordable homes across the North of England, but helps create strong communities and personal connections wherever they operate, driving and taking part in numerous initiatives to make a lasting, positive difference in people's lives.

Challenges

In 2016, North Star was preparing to welcome the Darlington Housing Association into its group. As the plans for this merger were put into place, it became clear that the complex legacy IT infrastructure was rapidly approaching the end of its lifecycle, and as a result, potential ways to future-proof and optimise it were presented for consideration.

In particular, with the increasing complexity of legal and compliance obligations, combined with an evolving cyber threat landscape, maintaining robust security and data protection was a key priority. Furthermore, while they had a Virtual Desktop solution in place, it had proven both slow and difficult to manage, which limited staff's options with regards to remote working and omnichannel communication with colleagues and residents.

In light of these concerns, and in order to bring the IT infrastructure back in line with their long-term business goals, North Star seized the opportunity to modernise their entire IT infrastructure, for which they engaged with Exponential-e.

Solution 

Following a detailed review of North Star's goals, requirements and existing infrastructure, a full-scale Cloud migration was conducted, with the entire legacy infrastructure moved to a UK-based Virtual Data Centre, and full server replication to a second VDC, also hosted in the UK. This controlled migration process was managed by a dedicated account team from Exponential-e, ensuring the transformation was completed on time, to budget, and with minimal disruption to daily operations.

All eight North Star sites were connected with a high-performance WAN, ensuring consistent performance of the new Virtual Desktop for all teams, and - in turn - enhancing communication and collaboration.

The existing Virtual Desktop solution was completely replaced with Citrix Virtual Desktops, delivered as a fully managed service to ensure North Star's staff could begin making use of the solution's full capabilities as quickly as possible, and that any initial and future issues could be swiftly identified and resolved, without creating an unnecessary drain on internal IT teams' time and resources.

The managed services model was extended to the security ecosystem, with Exponential-e providing hands-on monitoring and drawing on cutting-edge threat intelligence to ensure the latest cyber threats could be pre-emptively dealt with and any potential weaknesses in the infrastructure could be resolved before they were exploited.

Throughout lockdown, with staff forced to work remotely, the new infrastructure proved invaluable, allowing staff and residents to remain in close contact through a range of channels, including voice, telephony, online chat, and email, with consistently high quality throughout. This not only allowed staff to remain as close to 'business as usual' as possible, but allowed residents to continue accessing essential services as easily as possible, with Exponential-e's monitoring of the infrastructure freeing staff to focus on first-class service delivery and quick resolutions.

The success of this migration represents the first steppingstone towards North Star's planned Cloud-first strategy, with a fully virtualised infrastructure providing the agility needed to effectively respond to unexpected changes in the digital landscape and the evolving needs of their residents.

Solution benefits

  • Improved control and governance at all levels
  • High-performance, omnichannel communication for staff and residents
  • Enhanced efficiency, security, and resilience across the entire organisation
  • Optimal scalability and agility, through a Cloud-based consumption model
  • A strong foundation for a Cloud-first strategy

Housing is an inherently people-focused sector, and IT infrastructure must support that. Our work with Exponential-e has proven essential in this regard, ensuring we can meet our own technology goals, while keeping our residents at the centre of everything we do.

Sean Lawless
Head of ITC and Digital, North Star


Putting technology at the heart of the tenant experience

Helping housing associations drive digital initiatives that transform the tenant experience, underpinned by robust data security.

Find out more in our Housing Associations Brochure.

Click to read Exponential-e & Housing Associations
Tags:
Cloud-first strategy digital transformation North Star Housing Associations
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Our Customers
Housing Case Studies

Cottsway Housing

Cottsway-Optimising-internal-and-external-communications-for-a-top-housing-association

Optimising internal and external communications for a top housing association

About Cottsway Housing

Operating across West Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire, Wiltshire and Worcestershire, Cottsway Housing provides and maintains rental and shared ownership properties for more than 10,000 tenants, from single-person flats to family homes.

Challenges

As a company that emphasises the importance of openness and engagement between staff and tenants, Cottsway has always relied on its internal and external telecommunications solutions. However, their legacy PBX phone system, hosted on-site, eventually became challenging and time-consuming to manage. Concerns over this single point of failure were compounded by the difficulty of simultaneously managing Microsoft Teams for internal use. This combination of legacy systems and disparate platforms meant actionable analytics were difficult to achieve, thanks to a lack of oversight of all channels of communication.

Solution 

Exponential-e proposed, designed and delivered a completely new communications ecosystem for Cottsway, utilising Direct Routing with Microsoft Teams, combined with resilient SIP trunking for external calls. This unified solution successfully consolidated Cottsway's telecommunications ecosystem while providing a range of additional tools for both internal and external communications. At the same time, to answer the ongoing need for effective analytics and reporting, Exponential-e's Contact Centre solution was deployed, allowing for all customer communications to be tracked and monitored, providing managers with comprehensive reporting and a real-time overview of customer satisfaction across the entire organisation.

The new choice of communication channels, combined with dramatically improved call quality, had a highly positive effect on Cottsway's overall levels of customer satisfaction, while staff voiced appreciation of the improved level of collaboration between teams, and the volume of high-quality training material that was now accessible online, thanks to the roll-out of automated call recording.

During 2020, and the forced move to a distributed workforce in response to COVID-19, this infrastructure proved invaluable in allowing Cottsway's teams to begin working remotely with minimal disruption, maintaining contact with their tenants through the same channels, with the same high standard of performance. 

Solution benefits

  • A fully consolidated infrastructure, with a single collaboration platform and optimal scalability
  • Consistently high-quality calls and enhanced staff collaboration through an omnichannel Microsoft Teams solution
  • A smooth transition to remote working for all staff, without compromising customer service or call quality
  • Better staff retention, thanks to an extensive library of online training resources
  • Improved customer and tenant satisfaction across all regions 

We have noticed a huge improvement with regards to staff performance and our ability to respond to customers more efficiently. Since we have gone live, we have also received a number of comments from customers noting how quick we have responded to their enquiry

Rachael Higgins
Customer Service Manager, Cottsway Housing.


Putting technology at the heart of the tenant experience

Helping housing associations drive digital initiatives that transform the tenant experience, underpinned by robust data security.

Find out more in our Housing Associations Brochure.

Click to read Exponential-e & Housing Associations
Tags:
Housing Associations Optimising Communications Microsoft Teams Direct Routing Contact Centre Solutions Unified Communication as a Service
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Our Customers
Housing Case Studies

Metropolitan Thames Valley

Metropolitan-Thames-Valley-upgrades-Network-resulting-in-increased-capacity-at-lower-costs

Metropolitan Thames Valley upgrades Network resulting in increased capacity at lower costs.

About Metropolitan Thames Valley

Metropolitan Thames Valley (MTV) is a registered social landlord, based in Twickenham, South West London. The organisation owns, manages or administers loans for over 14,500 properties in London, Berkshire, Surrey, Hampshire, Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Wiltshire and Sussex. It provides affordable rented homes, shared ownership, market rent, student and key worker accommodation, working with eight NHS Trusts. Since its launch, MTV has maintained a successful record of growth and now has over 220 employees spread across its headquarters in Twickenham and seven site offices.

Solution 

Exponential-e was selected to design and deploy a new fully converged nine site Network for MTV after being selected following a rigorous tender process. Deciding factors included proposed technology solution, level of technical expertise, housing association experience, company reputation, project management, quality of references, service level agreement and cost-effectiveness.

Exponential-e worked closely with MTV to design a flexible and cost-effective solution which would assist the move between MTV's existing headquarters and its temporary headquarters during the refurbishment, whilst providing a short-term solution to the organisation's traffic laden Internet circuit.

A nine site Wide Area Network (WAN) over Exponential-e's Layer 2 Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS) Network was designed to connect the headquarters in Twickenham to three office sites and four remote sites. The robust WAN solution will ensure that MTV's services run smoothly during this period of transition and can cope with increasing capacity demand.

MTV also needed a Network versatile enough to support a range of large applications such as VoIP, Civica's Universal Housing system and Citrix's remote access suite, as well as being able to absorb any extra Network traffic generated.

The organisation's new protocol-agnostic next generation Network designed by Exponential-e, easily accommodates for any additional large applications or changes in Network bandwidth demand.

Solution benefits

  • MTV now has a state-of-the-art network covering a much wider area and with increased capacity. With connections across all nine sites and improved overall connectivity, employees are able to be more efficient and MTV can now provide a higher level of customer service to tenants. The new Network is resilient and makes connecting to remote sites and making configurations simpler.
  • Improved Network capacity and resilience.
  • Network topology designed to provide seamless connectivity between nine sites.
  • Room to scale for short-term and long-term Network requirements.
  • Increased capacity and reach at lower cost.


Universal Credit has been referred to as the biggest change to the welfare system of our generation; and its implementation is set to have a huge impact on housing associations. The shift from a range of social benefits to Universal Credit means that housing associations will inevitably communicate with tenants more frequently and attentively; and manage an increasing number of rent payments directly. Download and read our whitepaper: Using technology to improve housing services in the age of austerity.


 Challenges

With a number of years of continuous growth, TVH's existing Network had reached capacity and was unable to support the organisation's requirements. It faced limited amounts of bandwidth at crucial points on its Network, hampering its ability to operate efficiently and provide good customer service.

TVH's ICT Infrastructure Manager, Gerard Brown explained: "We had reached a point where we had to restrict traffic during various times of the day. But this still wasn't enough with all our remote offices coming in on one connection with very limited bandwidth."

After the organisation decided to relocate its headquarters temporarily for a year in order to undergo refurbishment, TVH quickly realised how restricted it was by the inflexible nature of legacy technology on which its current Network was based.

As a result, TVH decided to seek other options and sent out a tender for a new Network. Its new Network needed to support a wide range of large applications, be cost-effective and provide a high level of flexibility to cater for the temporary relocation of its headquarters.

Brown elaborated: "Our current Network wasn't up to the job or flexible enough to allow us to move with it. Extending it would have been very expensive as we would have had to add a lot of extra components. Exponential-e has taken VPLS technology that bit further, making our whole Network feel like one big Network, even with our remote office sites - effectively making our remote sites appear as if they are part of the same building. Exponential-e was able to provide the glowing reference and the technical expertise we needed to manage the relocation of our headquarters - making our choice simple."

By changing Network supplier, even though we had to break out of the existing contract early and pay a penalty fee, it still worked out more cost-effective to implement the new Network with Exponential-e. In addition, we can now run multiple services across our Network, which allows shared services between departments - making our assets go even further.

Gerard Brown ICT Infrastructure Manager, Metropolitan Thames Valley

Download case study


Putting technology at the heart of the tenant experience

Helping housing associations drive digital initiatives that transform the tenant experience, underpinned by robust data security.

Find out more in our Housing Associations Brochure.

Click to read Exponential-e & Housing Associations
Tags:
WAN Wide Area Network VPLS Housing housing associations
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Our Customers
Housing Case Studies Contact Centre

Sovini

The-Solvini-Group-A-UK-leader-in-social-housing-partners-with-Exponential-e-to-power-exceptional-service-quality-for-residents-across-the-country

A UK leader in social housing partners with Exponential-e to power exceptional service quality for residents across the country

About the Sovini Group

The Sovini Group delivers a growing range of world-class construction, property, and facilities services across the UK's public and private sectors, including a number of social and not-for-profit enterprises, employing more than 800 staff. One Vision Housing, part of the Sovini Group, manages more than 14,000 homes across the north-west of England, with more being built each year, and actively works to make a positive difference to the communities it is involved in.

The Challenge

Working with social housing residents across the north-west, One Vision Housing, part of the Sovini Group, rely on seamless communication with their tenants, whether that's for routine administration, scheduling maintenance, or ensuring emergencies are dealt with quickly and effectively. The need for a secure, resilient, and highly intuitive platform that would support close collaboration between advisors and communication with residents was further driven home during the COVID-19 lockdowns, when face-to-face meetings became impossible.

As a result, once lockdowns ended, the decision was made to seek out a next-gen unified communications platform that would transform the way Sovini supports their residents, replacing the legacy PBX system. Having already successfully adopted Microsoft Teams, gaining buy-in from employees across the company, the resulting RFP sought to build on this success. This meant exploring how processes could be further optimised by tools like call recording and analytics, with ample scope for future development. The employee experience was also critically important - the new system needed to be as user-friendly as possible, allowing advisors to focus on the needs of residents, especially those considered vulnerable.

Exponential-e's well-established contact centre and unified communications pedigree, comprehensive service wrap, and consultative approach that focused on Sovini's operational strategy made a strong impression throughout the tender process. As a result, they were awarded the contract, with a dedicated account team immediately beginning work to establish themselves as Sovini's key communications partner.

The Solution 

Working closely with Sovini's own IT team and customer service team leaders, Exponential-e began scoping out the new customer service platform. Service continuity was a critical priority, with measures established to ensure advisors would be able to continue working in the way they were accustomed to, while enjoying a range of additional tools to support successful resolutions. To this end, as the project specifications evolved, in-depth training was provided for staff via Microsoft Teams. Based on these conversations, comprehensive user guides were created and distributed.

Key to the success of the project was ongoing consultation around potential opportunities for improvement, which strong partnership between both organisations and the inherent flexibility and scalability of Exponential-e's contact centre has continued to support following the go-live date. In particular, the solution's ability to deliver bespoke, real-time reporting, drawing on data generated across multiple channels.

Utilising the high volumes of data generated throughout interactions with residents to optimise service quality and ensure advisors are properly supported has become a key element of Sovini's day-to-day operations. This has proven especially beneficial during interactions with vulnerable residents, as team leaders are able to monitor the quality of interactions - both live and through analytics - to ensure appropriate training is provided for advisors, and that residents are always properly supported.

This is very much an evolving process, as Sovini's teams continue to explore the full range of the contact centre solution's capabilities and how they can complement and enhance their strategies for optimising service quality across existing channels, and those in the process of being deployed (social media, for example). This includes automating routine processes (where possible and appropriate) and integration with other systems, to achieve a holistic view of the entire operation.

In this way, Sovini continue to utilise leading-edge technology as a means of enhancing the expert support and personal attention their residents have come to expect from their advisors, rather than as a substitute for it. As their teams work with their Exponential-e account team to identify and execute further improvements in the years ahead, the full potential of this new model for customer service excellence will continue to reveal itself, helping establish new standards of best practice across the entire housing sector.

Solution benefits

  • A seamless transition from the legacy PBX system
  • A highly intuitive user interface, supporting faster resolution times, and a better employee experience
  • Hands-on consultation and training from contact centre experts to maximise performance impact and project success
  •  Ongoing partnership that drives continuous improvement, with a focus on performance outcomes
  • Real-time analysis of call data drives ongoing service improvements and process enhancements
  • Data analysis and quality allows for identification of and better outcomes for vulnerable residents, including the creation of specialist training for advisors
  • Intelligent automation to minimise wait times and optimise efficiency 

As an agile organisation it is essential that our systems enable us to support our staff working remotely. This solution very much supports that as well as providing all the necessary functionality we require for a busy, customer-focused contact centre environment.

Jan Conroy
Head of Customer Services, One Vision Housing

The actual migration from one system to the other was seamless for both the customer and the team using it. Our advisors adapted with ease and much prefer the functionality of the new system. There's much more information available to them, and it's very user friendly. When you're handling calls it is important to have all the information you need at your fingertips to provide excellent customer service and this system supports that.

Jan Conroy
Head of Customer Services, One Vision Housing

If I was to sum it up, I think it's a really great partnership. It doesn't feel like a contractor and a client relationship, it feels like a partnership relationship and that works very, very well.

Jan Conroy
Head of Customer Services, One Vision Housing


Helping housing associations drive digital initiatives that transform the tenant experience, underpinned by robust data security

To succeed in a digital world where quality of service is under increasing scrutiny, housing associations need to rapidly transform by adopting modern technologies, redesigning operational processes and increasing collaboration across multiple channels. By investing in a digital future, housing associations can streamline costs, improve operational efficiency and concentrate on creating an improved tenant experience.
Click to read Exponential-e & Housing Associations
Tags:
next-gen unified communications platform replacing the legacy PBX system call recording contact centre and unified communications Sovini
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Our Customers
Housing Case Studies

Gloucester City Homes

Gloucester-City-homes-Combat-Ageing-Legacy-Infrastructure-with-scalable-Resilient-Network

Combat Ageing Legacy Infrastructure with scalable Resilient Network, enhanced Disaster Recovery & Private Cloud.

About Gloucester City Homes

Gloucester City Homes is an independent social landlord providing excellent housing management services to over 5,200 tenants. They own and manage around 4,500 rented homes, 501 sheltered housing properties, 270 leasehold properties, 25 commercial units and 21 homeless units.

They are recognised as one of the best housing providers in the country through independent accreditation, including the cabinet office Customer Service Excellence Standard. Gloucester City Homes has ambitious plans to invest in tenants homes, build new homes and create new job opportunities as a major employer in the city of Gloucester.

Solution 

As part of the engagement, Gloucester City Homes wanted to ensure its IT infrastructure refresh would result in better customer service standards. Since all services are delivered down a single piece of fibre, Gloucester City Homes has the flexibility to easily scale or adapt its infrastructure to meet its changing needs. In addition, Exponential-e provided managed service support and security assurance so that GCH didn't have to invest large amounts of resource in managing the system.

As part of becoming a digital-first organisation, Exponential-e provided GCH with Hosted Data Centre services, Server Replication to a second Data Centre as well as Managed Firewall, Infrastructure support. Exponential-e's super-fast 100 Gig Ethernet Network delivered the virtual desktop infrastructure that provides employees with access to a persistent, personal desktop from any device or location for all 120 staff.

In just a short space of time GCH has already seen the benefits that a secure and stable infrastructure delivers. Staff can now move from a desk to a meeting room to home and pick up their desktop in exactly the same state as they left it.

GCH recently underwent a programme where its 5,200 tenants needed to renew their tenancy agreements as part of its separation from the council. Previously this would have been a manual, paper-based process. However, the flexibility of the infrastructure has meant that GCH have been able to use a combination of mobile phones and laptops to run events that allow tenants to refresh their agreements from designated locations throughout the city, something that was more convenient for its tenants and enabled more efficient processing. Instead of tenants completing vast amounts of paperwork and staff entering this on to the system manually, the information could be processed immediately on-site.

Staff at GCH experienced a noticeable improvement to user-experience with quicker log-in and load times, as well faster processing time for data / screen refreshes. For the organisation, this brings significant productivity gains.

  • Gloucester City Homes has enabled its employees to work in a more productive way; there has been an increase in the allowance of flexible working, primarily due to the solution provided by Exponential-e allowing employees to work on the same work applications from any location. This in turn leads to better satisfaction amongst the workforce and also improved customer service levels.
  • The replication of server data to a second Data Centre means that Gloucester City Homes can rest assured they are protected in the event of a disaster. They can promptly and easily access their data from a secondary source and quickly get their business up and running again if the need arises.


Following Exponential-e's successful track record in the housing sector and the recommendations that it was able to provide from existing customers, we have confidence that our partnership will be successful. We now have a network in place that allows us to focus on meeting the needs of our tenants and delivering a working environment that helps attract and retain the best talent.

Lesley Williams Gloucester City Homes

 Challenges

Gloucester City Homes (GCH) has successfully transitioned from operating as an arm's length management organisation with all its ICT infrastructure and services being provided by the local council, to an independent body with complex backend demands controlling everything from renewing tenancy agreements to managing burst drains. The transition has given GCH independent control over housing assets and necessitated all tenants to sign new occupancy agreements.

The separation from the council gave GCH the opportunity to refresh their IT strategy and transfer to new IT infrastructure. They wanted a provider that could offer a diversity of provisioned services and ensure they continue improving customer service levels. In terms of previous support, they had an in-house team managing applications; but also used costly outsourced technical and support resources. A need to enable their staff to work remotely and from various locations, such as within the homes of tenants, also meant that they were looking for a provider that could deliver a remote desktop service and increase the productivity and flexibility of their employees.

Solution benefits

  • Improved User Performance - with a resilient Network in place, logging in and loading high-bandwidth applications has become quicker.
  • Data Stored in a Secure Data Centre - adhering to 9 ISO accreditations.03Business Continuity - enhanced Disaster Recovery through a hosted Data Centre and replication to secondary Data Centres.
  • 24 / 7 Support - constant access to service desk support to easily rectify any faults.
  • Enhanced Security - through identity and access management controls that enrich endpoint security coupled with a private Cloud Network that ensures data resides on the clean side of the firewall.
  • Greater Flexibility - to combine different services into a cohesive solution, delivered under a single service level agreement with a single point of contact to manage enquires and resolve incidents.

Universal Credit has been referred to as the biggest change to the welfare system of our generation; and its implementation is set to have a huge impact on housing associations. The shift from a range of social benefits to Universal Credit means that housing associations will inevitably communicate with tenants more frequently and attentively; and manage an increasing number of rent payments directly. Download and read our whitepaper: Using technology to improve housing services in the age of austerity.

Download case study
Tags:
Network Disaster Recovery Private Cloud Virtual Desktop Managed Firewall
  5139 Hits
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