The Home Housing Association is
saving £33,000 a year as a result of its neighbourhood wardens
being wirelessly connected to business applications in the
field.
The housing association manages 46,000
properties across the UK, and says it can save 30 man-hours every
week by allowing its wardens – who monitor and report anti-social
behaviour and deal with maintenance requests – to use an
Internet-based management system in the field.
Home Housing went to technology integrator
Lynx who developed a Microsoft .NET reporting system called
‘SCOUT’, which is a reporting tool with simple drop-down menus for
users to enter details of their visits to properties.
Reports are accessed via web pages and action
can be taken immediately – notifying the council or police, for
instance, of anti-social behaviour, including vandalism.
The system has replaced a paper-based process
as a result of the wardens using XDA PDAs (personal digital
assistants) to process the information. These are connected over
the O2 GPRS (general packet radio service) mobile network to Home’s
Microsoft Mobile Information Server at its headquarters.
Information garnered by the wardens is then processed and stored in
Home’s back office IT systems.
Gary Short, Home’s systems consultant, says
the organisation was now looking to extend the mobile solution to
other parts of its business.
This article was part of Computer Weekly's
enterprise mobile business channel, sponsored by Nokia