What was income collection like prior to RentSense?

We wanted to maximise our rental income, as maintaining the level of income into the housing revenue account is one of our key risks on our strategic risk register.

So why did you decide to invest in RentSense rather than more staff?

Our performance as an organisation was good, prior to RentSense, and we benchmark ourselves against our peers who face similar challenges.

What was income collection like prior to RentSense?

We had developed this module and spent specific time on work flows and heavily developed the arrears side of the system. We were happy with the system as a HMS, it was a case of other organisations seem to be using RentSense and having success with it on top of their existing HMS.

So why did you decide to invest in RentSense rather than more staff?

We introduced other innovations to complement RentSense, as part of a package of mitigating future risk of welfare reform around maximising productivity. We looked at how do we use the current staff we have more effectively and still maintain that income recovery.

What was income collection like prior to RentSense?

That was the key thing as we know that just because there is an arrears balance it does not mean to say that the customer is not going to pay and hasn’t got a history of paying, so why are we bothering looking at those low risk accounts and its more about looking at those higher risk accounts where payment patterns are more unpredictable or the system can suggest they’re less likely to pay. It was the additional intelligence the system could bring over and above what the HMS could offer,

So why did you decide to invest in RentSense rather than more staff?

We have a growing number of people on Universal Credit so we have greater risk to the rental income and yet in reality it has not dipped, RentSense has helped us maintain our income and at high levels. Compared to performance a few years ago this is quite an improvement, and given that it was only implemented in May 2016, and there is that transition period where staff get used to a new system, yet we have managed to maintain our performance.

So why did you decide to invest in RentSense rather than more staff?

It has been positive on an operational level we have regular contact that appears to quickly resolve any issues that may arise. The implementation also went very well and we have regular contact with the account director and that helps identify best practice.