The Ultimate Checklist: What Social Housing Providers Should Look for in Repairs Software

Choosing the right housing software to enhance your repairs and maintenance service is a critical decision. Tenants expect a responsive, top-quality service, which means the pressure is on social housing providers to navigate market challenges and keep satisfaction rates high.

The best software will shape an organisation’s cost-effectiveness, efficiency and compliance. That’s why social housing providers must have full visibility of which software features are important and how they can deliver excellence.

With so many options available, what should housing associations, local authorities and maintenance contractors look for? 

In this article, we will share our essential checklist of software features that’ll enhance your repairs and maintenance management and delivery. Plus, we’ll explain how ROCC’s market-leading software can support you.

Here’s what you should be prioritising.

1. Repairs-focused by design

Generic property systems often don’t focus enough on repairs and maintenance functionalities, which is problematic for social housing providers. As repairs are high-volume, high-impact activities, you need to ensure your software is purpose-built for delivering these jobs. 

Repairs software should streamline all aspects of reactive, planned, void and cyclical maintenance. By having a single version of the truth, you can reduce errors, duplication and delays.

This reduces the amount of administrative headaches and eases the financial burden. 

2. Real-time visibility and control

Full transparency and visibility across your service is hugely important. Teams need live oversight of repairs status, resource availability, costs and KPIs, so they can perform efficiently and address problems before they escalate. 

Real-time dashboards, detailed job tracking and live scheduling tools are just some of the features you need to look out for, helping mobile operatives and management to keep operations running smoothly. Plus, they’ll also prevent overspending.

3. Advanced appointment and scheduling tools

Inefficient scheduling causes expensive delays and dissatisfied residents. You should invest in software that enables dynamic scheduling tailored for housing services, ensuring the right operative gets to the right job at the right time, first time. 

It does this by optimising routes, availability, skill matching and tenant preferences automatically. By balancing efficiency with customer choice, the right software provider will reduce no-access incidents and deliver faster completions.

4. Enhanced mobile working tools for operatives

Mobile operatives carrying out repairs and maintenance work are the face of your organisation, so they must be given the right tools to succeed and enhance your reputation. By giving field-based teams everything they need, you should see an improvement in productivity and tenant satisfaction.

Whether it’s digital job tickets and asset histories or stock management and real-time updates, operatives with the right technology at their fingertips can stay productive wherever they are.

5. Seamless contractor and supply chain management

Nowadays, many social housing providers work with a combination of internal teams and external contractors. This means that silos are more commonplace than ever before, which is why your software provider must support multi-party collaboration.

Flexible contractor portals, SLA tracking and integration options are all required to achieve a unified, accountable ecosystem. No matter how complex your delivery model is, the right repairs software will have you covered.

6. Data-driven asset management

High-quality repairs software shouldn’t just fix issues, it should also help to prevent them from occurring in the first place. Repairs data should be connected with asset condition and lifecycle planning, empowering strategic asset management. 

Clear insights allow social housing providers to shift from reactive to proactive maintenance, improving homes, reducing costs and extending asset life.

Software providers should also offer enhanced security measures to protect this data. Social housing providers are responsible for handling vast amounts of sensitive data, from tenant records to financial transactions, so security risks need to be minimised and compliance with data protection regulations must be maintained.

7. Scalability and integration

Organisational growth or restructuring is a given at some point, meaning systems must keep pace. Your repairs and maintenance software should integrate easily with finance, housing management, IoT sensors and other enterprise systems.

Seamless integration into your wider digital ecosystem will help to avoid data silos and enable a true single source of truth across your organisation.

During periods of instability in the sector, such as what we are experiencing now, these software requirements become even more vital.

8. Resident self-service

Repairs start and end with residents. Your chosen software provider needs to offer a system that makes it easy for your tenants to report issues, book appointments and track progress 24/7.

There shouldn’t be an over-reliance on phone calls, so look for providers that offer user-friendly resident portals and integrations with tenant apps to streamline communication, reduce call volumes and improve satisfaction. 

Clear and responsive communication is key to boosting satisfaction among your tenants and building trust. As is the ability to collect resident feedback, with tools that facilitate easy-to-use surveys or rating systems.

Tick off your checklist with ROCC

The right repairs and maintenance software is incredibly important for social housing providers. However, finding a software provider that ticks all of the right boxes and meets the requirements of our checklist isn’t easy.

Fortunately, at ROCC, we’ve built our platform with these priorities in mind.

Whether you’re managing thousands of homes or just starting your digital transformation journey, our solutions deliver the operational control, tenant experience and long-term insight you need to thrive.

If you’re looking to modernise your repairs and maintenance operations, why not speak to a member of our customer service team today? Our tailored approach will ensure you achieve long-term operational value and growth.