Project Description

Scotland’s Housing Network were using Excel spreadsheets as their primary tool to manage member  details, contacts, membership levels and information associated with housing associations and local authorities. This information was spread across various Excel sheets and was becoming difficult to manage. As well as this, the team required a refresh of their business processes and platforms. Bridgeall worked with the team to combine all sheets to create a single source of truth, refine their business processes and carry out a complete digital transformation project.

“SHN is a small charity and do not have their own internal IT team, the process of the digital transformation project had challenges along the way, but Bridgeall were with us on our journey and took the time to get to know our organisation, how we operate and were able to adapt to our ways of working and suggest improvements along the way.”

Andrea Finkel-Gates, CEO, Scotlands Housing Network

Scotland’s Housing Network

Set up in 1995, Scotland’s Housing Network is a membership organisation for local authority and housing association landlords.  They are Scotland’s largest provider of benchmarking and data insights and are dedicated entirely to the Scottish social housing sector. With over two thirds of social landlords in Scotland as members, they work collaboratively to drive up performance and deliver quality services.

Challenges

As a small team, Scotland’s Housing Network were finding it difficult to manage the increasing number of members within their system. They were using manual processes to input data which led to many sources being disconnected and creating inconsistencies within their processes. The team was looking to make the best use of technology to reduce the administration burden and make it easy for members to interact with them and each other.  To tackle the project the team identified the following key areas to focus on: their website, CRM, business intelligence and an internal systems project.

Our Approach

To begin, a customised model-driven Power App was implemented which allowed for a single source of truth for member management. Spreadsheets were migrated into the system which allowed for a unified interface for Scotland’s Housing Network staff.

The solution was then integrated with their newly launched website to provide a simple interface to create and manage events, mailing lists and also manage website logins and enquiries.

A CRM system was created using the core functionalities of Dynamics 365 Sales and Marketing allowing for Scotland’s Housing Network to use the accounts and contacts to manage members and memberships and also utilising the information stored here to empower their marketing campaigns to more efficiently manage these activities. Customised dynamic marketing lists were set up and campaigns created for these marketing lists guaranteeing that their communities of practice were always kept up to date with minimal manual upkeep.

To make sure the system met requirements, the core Dynamics 365 Sales and Marketing functionalities were expanded to include capabilities to manage website logins and sign-ups. A direct integration between Dynamics 365, Azure and the website ensures everything is managed centrally and the process is easy to follow.  Utilising some of newest features of the Power Platform such as custom pages and modern commanding further tied this all together to provide a tailored experience which has reduced the need for manual input thus saving time and costs with improved efficiency.
To ensure the team were on top of their data, we moved to the business intelligence project which involved implementing Power BI reports and links to analytics to allow members to view and interact with reports, guidance, and training on adoption of new technology. These reports were then integrated into the website to provide a unified seamless experience for the user.

As a result of our efforts, the Scotland’s Housing Network team has been able to realise the following benefits:

  • Increased efficiency in dealing with member management, website, and marketing activities.
  • Unified marketing and events – the system is now integrated with the team’s website so they can show events easily and take registrations with ease.
  • The model-driven application provides a seamless and unified experience for SHN staff to be able to manage members. The ability to manage website logins using CRM provides a great benefit as there are not multiple disparate systems to manage. Event management has been made simpler by managing all events on the system which then automatically syncs to the website. This removed the need for any 3rd party systems to manage events. The marketing module provides an easy to use and manage process for targeting campaigns, which provides capabilities for dynamic member lists reducing overhead in keeping marketing lists updated and maintained. The addition of email templates ties the experience together, reducing the time spent on these activities greatly.
  • The Power BI reports provide a clean and easy to use interface for end-users and any tweaks and amendments to the reports are easily achievable with Power BI desktop.

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