Case Study | Aster
ROCC’s proactive dashboard solution is enhancing the productivity of Aster Group’s business whilst encouraging wider efficiencies that benefit tenants.
ROCC has partnered with Aster Group since 2002 to deliver an exceptional repairs service to their customers. Since 2002 the company has grown considerably – it now owns and maintains over 36,000 homes across the South of England with assets valued at approximately £2.1 billion.
Aster Group not only provides homes for rent and purchase, but property repairs and maintenance too. ROCC is helping to drive efficiencies in this area of the business by simplifying staff processes, which had previously been an issue.
Listening to the company’s need for increased productivity, ROCC began working on a brand new project, focused on visualising workflows and reducing job time via dashboard notifications. It is currently in the implementation stage.
Workflows and notifications
The workflow dashboard developed by ROCC is a more proactive solution to improving operational efficiencies that seeks to eradicate staff time wastage often created by generic systems.
Addressing its benefits, Peter Luck at ROCC, said: “The dashboard streamlines communication and removes the need for unnecessary emails between team members, making sure important information is delivered to the right Aster staff, without them needing to look for it. The workflows provide up-to-date, real time information about the status of tasks and directs them to role specific work buckets that focus the users into prompt action and ensures that information is not lost between teams and departments.”
When Aster staff log on, they’ll see a set of purchase orders (POs), and know instantly which to prioritise. The front screen of the dashboard will be populated with the information that is most relevant and useful to the person or team using it.
Richard Brownhill, Aster Finance Business Partner, highlighted how this improved allocation of information will transform the group’s service delivery. He explained that: “The new dashboard will significantly reduce the time it takes for POs to be processed, which in turn speeds up the lead time to commission works and is of course a big plus to our customers.”
As part of our long-standing relationship with ROCC, we are fulfilling our commitment to develop and invest in digitising our systems to provide more efficient services to our customers. This led to us exploring the use of workflows and notifications with ROCC.
Under the hood changes
Evolving alongside Aster’s large, diverse and geographically widespread housing stock, ROCC continues to work on improvements to its system, taking on board the opinions and suggestions of Aster colleagues.
“ROCC carries out frequent ‘under the hood’ updates, upgrades and changes,” said Richard Brownhill. “Constant evolution of the system is essential to ensure effective management of our diverse and growing housing stock. User experience of the system is always at the forefront of any changes – it is critical that disruption is minimised and colleagues are not confronted with a series of changes that would impact their ability to service our customers.”
Richard continued: “ROCC has been excellent when we’ve come to them with any ideas for new features or methods and we input into their road map and future developments which is great for us. It really is tailored to our requirements.”
ROCC listens to the opinions and ideas of its customers and adapts them for future designs; learning from first-hand experience which features can assist colleagues and benefit customers and what can be improved.
Growing with Aster
The longevity of ROCC’s partnership with Aster is a testament to its ability to adapt and grow alongside company goals.
Growing with Aster The longevity of ROCC’s partnership with Aster is a testament to its ability to adapt and grow alongside company goals.
ROCC has allowed us to run extremely thorough reports which enables analysis of our productivity and helps us to identify where we can streamline and improve processes.
ROCC & Aster – A partnership that works
Aster’s overarching vision is that everyone has a home, and as Richard Brownhill explained: “these homes must be safe and compliant”.
This is a vision that ROCC is assisting Aster in making a reality. “ROCC gathers compliance data,” Richard said, “and makes it easy to monitor and manage. We are able to assess the condition of our properties and identify which ones we need to service. From replacing smoke alarms to servicing boilers, ROCC helps us make sure every customer has a safe home.”
ROCC’s dashboard solution and notifications mean that outstanding repairs and maintenance jobs are more visible – this more immediate use of information will improve tenant safety by creating urgency.
Not only is ROCC enabling Aster to ensure its homes are safe and compliant, its software is directly improving customer service for customers.
Richard explained: “With ROCC, we are able to make our customer service more personal. If someone is vulnerable or elderly, we can make a note on the system, such as ‘struggles to hear the door’. This kind of information is hugely valuable to operatives as it gives a greater understanding of the people most important to our business.”
ROCC & Aster – What’s next?
Following the workflows and notification project, a sub-contractor portal is in the pipeline for ROCC and Aster.
“Streamlining the way we manage sub-contractor information will give us even greater visibility and control”, Richard Brownhill concluded.