Improving digital capacity and capability for Almond Housing

“Our priorities are straightforward: we want to deliver excellent customer service. Delivering more of this digitally will enable this as well as the ability to do more to support those customers who need extra help.” John Davidson, CEO of Almond Housing.

Almond Housing, based in West Lothian, has a long and successful history of providing quality homes for social rent. Almond employs 50 colleagues, and together, they’ve been successfully transforming the social rent landscape in West Lothian for more than 25 years, reaching over 2,500 customers.

But they have little experience of digital transformation. So, where do you start?

Successful start

John Davidson continues: “We thought we had done all the right things in developing our ICT strategy. In 2018–19, we had procured and implemented a new Aareon QL housing management system. It was mostly successful, but we felt that we were not providing colleagues with the right tools, capturing the customer contact information, or offering the customer a different way of engaging with Almond. We recruited an experienced IT Manager, Mark McGregor, who has enabled us to progress, and identified that we needed an improved system, but we still didn’t have the expertise we needed to do it all ourselves.”

Meet Golden Marzipan

John first came across Golden Marzipan during lockdown, as it hosted some breakfast briefings on the topics of the day, including digital, agile and customer experience. Almond commissioned Golden Marzipan to review the current systems and help it to select a CRM system.

However, before the project started, Golden Marzipan completed a digital maturity assessment. This helped Almond benchmark with others and prioritise where (and how) it should invest its resources.

Prioritising projects

After the short review and report, Almond had a roadmap of projects for the next two years. Initially, this seemed like a long and daunting list. The implementation of Aareon QL highlighted the inconsistencies of adoption, realising benefits and achieving value for money.

A project prioritisation tool helped to differentiate between the competing demands of departments, systems, and skills gaps.

You can find out more about digital maturity assessment, project prioritisation and digital strategies by contacting Golden Marzipan.

Almond’s final digital roadmap highlighted whether the project should be ICT-led or business-led. This was an important step in agreeing on responsibilities for planning, projects, and procurement.

Supplier engagement

Almond now had an assessment, some priorities and a plan for the next couple of years. What it needed next was the confidence to start moving forward.

“Golden Marzipan helped us clarify what we wanted from a CRM system and then facilitated some discussions with different suppliers. We recognised that the grass wasn’t necessarily greener with a different system and so we regrouped and put in place the foundations for good project management.”

People and culture

Steve Dungworth, co-founder, and Director of Golden Marzipan, says that many smaller housing associations don’t always have the necessary experience and skills to undertake large digital transformation projects. He says, “For us, making changes is about building capacity and capability within the organisation. This means focussing on the softer side of projects: people, culture, and skills.

“This is why we built our digital maturity framework and assessment that looks at things in the round. Technology is only useful when it is used for a clear purpose and benefit for your customers, residents and users.”

Just the start

Last month, the Almond team started on their new project to update their housing management system and review their ways of working to get the best out of their CRM module. The project is led by Sandy Young, Director of Housing Management. Sandy points out that through working with Golden Marzipan, there has been a different approach that has engaged and involved colleagues. He says, “We started by challenging ourselves on how to get the best from the system by reviewing what we do and why.”

"This is just the start,” says Sandy, “now we have more confidence to manage suppliers and systems, we’re excited about the opportunities to deliver more services digitally to our customers.”

Golden Marzipan is a digital and change management consultancy, created by like-minded people who simply believe in the potential of the housing sector.

Find out more

Contact: Steve Dungworth, Director; steve@goldenmarzipan.co.uk, ? 0333 210 7531 or visit Golden Marzipan’s website.