Knightstone Housing Association Ltd is a charitable housing association and a member of the Arcadia Housing Group. They own and manage over 11,000 homes across 38 local authority areas, in the South West of England. Working with local authorities, they are leaders in developing and managing affordable homes to rent and running Government-funded schemes to help people to buy their own homes. Knightstone are a registered social landlord with the Tenant Services Authority. As one of the largest and most dynamic providers of affordable homes in the south west they have been involved in most housing initiatives over the last 35 years and employ around 440 staff throughout the region.

Resident Involvement is a key and growing area of service for Knightstone. As a social landlord Knightstone has specific responsibilities to:

Early in 2009, as a direct response to these responsibilities, the organisation identified that in order to achieve its targets for resident involvement it would need to introduce new IT systems to reduce the administrative burden and improve communications with the residents. The large number of events and consultation it was running meant its existing systems could not provide the levels of service Knightstone wanted to give its residents. Particularly as larger numbers of residents became involved and their communication requirements became more sophisticated.

Knightstone invested considerable time and resource in identifying its requirements for the new system before approaching several software suppliers to determine which provided the most appropriate system. During this investigation Knightstone considered the full spectrum of options from bespoke development through to standard off the shelf packages. After careful deliberation Knightstone decided that the system with the closest match to its requirements was Book-It Software from Instinctive Systems. The ability of the system to effectively target tenants with direct communications of their choice in the form of letters, emails and even SMS messages and the ease with which events could be set up and administered in the communities was particularly attractive.

Steve Grice, Knightstone Housing Association Resident Involvement Manager, said

“We looked at a bespoke development and we would have seriously considered this option but Book-It provided us with the functionality we needed far more economically and in a much shorter timescale. Book-It software was the closest match to our key deliverables, with the remaining functionality being easily incorporated into the system with only minimal additional changes.”

“We hope the system will not only encourage further resident involvement with Knightstone but will also enable us to supply our tenants with the training and skills needed to contribute more effectively to the involvement process, increasing the sense of participation and community.”

After selection, Knightstone agreed a programme for additional development with Instinctive Systems to fully meet their requirements along with a phased installation over a 6 month period. Initial delivery of the customised system took less than 3 months, including creating a bespoke daily import routine to synchronise approximately 20000 resident’s details on Knightstone’s corporate database system with the Book-It software system on a daily basis. A major unexpected benefit brought about by the installation of the Book-It system has been the improvement in the quality of the resident data and the ability to enforce greater standardisation using the built in Book-It software user defined fields. Knightstone took full advantage of the two day on-site training session to fully understand the comprehensive functionality of Book-It software and how they would use it within the context of the Knightstone Housing Association organisation. Kerry Jacobs, Resident Involvement Administration Officer, said “I’m really looking forward to getting to grips with the Book-It system and losing all the spreadsheets we currently use. They are a nightmare to keep up to date, especially as they were shared with the rest of the team. It was such a problem that I was the only one with update rights; everyone else could only view the information. The on-site training was extremely well presented and the features of the system clearly and simply explained. Book-It software will really allow us to move forward with the resident involvement programme.”

Knightstone purchased 10 user licenses and will operate Book-It over a wide area network (WAN) using Citrix thin client technology. The users will be based in a variety of locations from head office, through regional satellite offices to remote and home working.

The next phase of the implementation is to add the Book-It on-line web software to the Knightstone Housing Association website which will allow residents to do things such as view and update their preference details on-line, browse course and event information and book on-line as well as provide on-line post event feedback. This will be further complimented with additional customisation of Book-It, over a 3 months period with each feature added in priority order determined by Knightstone. Enhancements include several reports to analyse residents by location, by age, by ethnicity as well as detailed event analysis. This will enable Knightstone to meet their objectives and continually improve the service they provide to residents, through feedback and lessons learned from all events. It is hoped that these enhancements along with the existing contact management and event administration of Book-It software, which has been continually improved since its introduction in 1995 will totally transform the process of resident involvement within Knightstone.

Stephen Grice, Knightstone Resident Involvement Manager, said

“Knightstone sees the implementation of Book-It Software as fundamental to supporting the delivery of its resident involvement programme and it will allow us to continue to expand and develop the programme over the coming years.”

For more information about Knightstone Housing Association visit www.knightstone.co.uk