Jonathan Ralphs, managing director of Infomill, explains how a growing trend in technology is helping both DLO and non-DLO housing associations to reduce their gas servicing costs and meet challenging KPIs.

In today’s fast-moving world, there’s no doubt that all housing associations are feeling the pressure. Driven by the need to reduce costs, increase efficiency and provide excellent customer service, the current HCA Value for Money (VfM) framework has prompted re-evaluation of housing repair systems and maintenance costs across the housing sector. This is only set to continue. Gas operations managers are therefore challenged to deliver against strict KPIs and that is where choice of software becomes paramount.

Technology has been identified as a key area for housing associations and investment is long overdue for many. There is no doubt that the development of IT systems will significantly help associations to meet their demanding cost reduction and efficiency goals.

From our experience, whether it’s a DLO housing association managing gas servicing in-house, or a non DLO association that has partnered with a contractor, re-appraising the current field service system in operation and integrating industry specific software to streamline the maintenance and repair process is certainly proving to reduce overall costs and offer a higher level of tenant satisfaction – something which is often used as a key performance measurement today.

PartsArena Pro is a parts identification tool for heating engineers out in the field. It delivers mobile device access to technical manuals, parts codes and interactive exploding diagrams, allowing engineers to identify the fault or part required on-site. Furthermore, with integration, PartsArena is accessed via the field management software, enabling the engineer to add parts directly into the work order, ensuring seamless and accurate information flow.

This reduces the number of revisits due to errors and ensures that targets are met on job completion time, reducing the overall cost of each repair while delivering a better tenant service due to the fault being fixed more quickly.

Infomill has facilitated many PartsArena Pro integration projects with DLO housing associations, in addition to field service management companies and gas servicing companies. We urge the industry to take note of the proven benefits an integrated system can deliver, as the move can ultimately contribute towards housing associations meeting their demanding KPIs where gas maintenance and repair is concerned.