Housemark sets sights on developing real-time data analytics programme

Housemark plans to launch a pilot with 10 social landlords to create a real-time data analytics programme.

Rob Griffiths, chief executive of Housemark, highlighted that while this process is currently done manually “on the fly,” the golden opportunity for the sector lies in having access to real-time data, across a whole range of business areas.

This will help landlords to analyse their data and make comparisons against benchmarks on an ongoing basis. 

For the pilot, Jonathan Cox, Housemark’s director of data and business intelligence, stated that the company will choose registered providers (RPs) that are “reasonably well-advanced” in their data systems and have knowledgeable data specialists.

Housemark, the data company co-owned by the Chartered Institute of Housing and the National Housing Federation, will gather data from the 10 RPs regarding their priorities and the challenges they’re facing to define the scope of the product.

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Griffiths said that, currently, data is something the sector “needs to get better at”, explaining that social landlords continue to face challenges with data being scattered across various locations, including offline spreadsheets and different software applications.

He gave the example of a landlord having 80 different software products and storing data in 18 different places.

In addition, he said that to reap the benefits of artificial intelligence and machine learning, the sector “needs to go through the pain of fixing its data”.

“Landlords have data at a granular level, they can tell if you there’s a barking dog at a property or if two people need to go on a callout, but the data is in pockets,” he said.

Housemark’s focus will be on helping the sector to bring its data together, “I think that will keep us busy for the next two or three years”, Griffiths said.

Griffiths mentioned the goal of expanding Housemark’s customer base to include smaller landlords, as the company currently serves primarily customers with over 1,000 units in a market of 1600 social landlords.

Cox said that standard benchmarking indicators “don’t really provide insight for smaller landlords”. For example, if a team has four staff members, a turnover rate of 0% might not accurately portray the operational challenges they face.

However, Housemark offers several clubs designed to assist landlords with addressing particular problems, which can be particularly helpful for smaller landlords.

For example, Housemark has a voids club, which helps RPs troubleshoot to improve their voids performance.

Cox highlighted that these clubs are valuable for landlords managing 1,000 units or fewer, as they typically do not have dedicated data and customer experience staff members in their teams.

He added that, given the required investment in services and the additional costs for building safety, achieving net-zero, and building new properties, along with limited resources, data is crucial for landlords to “square the circle, enhance productivity, and create lean, efficient processes”.

Earlier this year, Housemark relocated to a larger office at the University of Warwick’s Science Park in Coventry.

Griffiths explained that Housemark intends to do research with the University on implementing AI and machine learning in the sector, but that the sector needs to fix its data issues before this can happen.

Griffiths added that Housemark is continuing to grow and has recruited people into 18 new roles, including a chief technology officer.

In the second half of the year, Housemark will be looking at how its products can better serve the Scottish market. Currently, Housemark has around 28 customers in Scotland.

Following the first year of the Regulator’s tenant satisfaction measures being in force, Griffiths said: “We’ll also be enhancing what we do in the tenant satisfaction measures area and looking at what good tenant engagement looks like”.

He concluded: “Everything we are doing is to get social landlords from being reactive to being proactive and predictive”.