Originally when Mobysoft worked with Soveriegn, you were in the process of merging four organisations, why did you invest in RentSense at that time?

We (Sovereign) were keen to adopt a unified approach to income collection across the four teams. From a management perspective this was important not only because of the potential impact of welfare reform on revenues but we also wanted to create a single entity and culture across what was four different organisations. That RentSense could work across four different Housing Management systems was important and it gave us reporting insight.

How did RentSense help the income teams at the time?

RentSense took away the clutter. It substantially reduced the caseload which had a number of key effects. This meant that officers could start getting through their caseload, and as it was accurate they were not wasting time checking records. These things both created capacity within the team.

The income teams were now focused on risk rather than volume. So, they were addressing their workload in priority order and at the right time. This also helped improve the resilience of the income teams as well. They now realised their efforts were producing the right results and each contact counted.

By deploying RentSense it also meant that teams had visibility of one another’s workload, did that help at all?

RentSense helped contribute to unify the cultures within the income teams. Teams could work regionally and across offices with RentSense, and it helped facilitate the same ethos across the teams.

How did you approach Universal Credit and welfare reform?

We took the approach that welfare reform would become the norm therefore we reviewed our processes and systems and realigned those with our support services

You also took on daily processing too, as one of the effects of Universal Credit is that residents can pay their rent any day of the month, how has it helped?

This (Daily Processing) helps prevent the income team contacting people who have paid earlier in the week and it further reduces the RentSense caseload by around 11% each week, and ensures we are not wasting resource

How else has RentSense helped you and your tenants mitigate Universal Credit?

We want to support them and make it easy to pay their rent. So, when they receive their UC they want to pay us. If they don’t we need to move quickly and RentSense has helped identify debt and do just that, so we are catching debt at its earliest stage. RentSense has helped create resource and resilience over the last couple of years and freed up capacity to deal with welfare reform

How have you found the service and working with Mobysoft?

From a management level the relationship with the Mobysoft account director is key. The sharing of data and insight, especially round the larger issues such as Universal Credit is incredibly valuable for us. Operationally the implementations have been great as has the training, and the team is proactive

Would you recommend RentSense to other landlords?

I have, and do, recommend RentSense. There are many reasons for this, but from a strategic point of view, despite the fiscal environment and welfare reform Sovereign’s arrears have fallen year on year for five years and RentSense has been instrumental in helping us achieving that. It has also created efficiencies and capacity within Sovereign, so we are able to tackle welfare reform.