What Over 30 Years in Housing Technology Has Taught Us

By Peter Luck, Managing Director, ROCC

Founded in 1984 and entering the housing technology market in the 1990’s, ROCC has continuously evolved over the years into what is now seen as one of the UK’s most forward-thinking IT suppliers and providers of cloud-first software in housing.

In those decades of supporting housing, we have accumulated a wealth of experience, delivering hundreds of complex projects to the housing market while adapting to the needs of our customers and the tenants they serve.  

We have watched a few trends arrive with great fanfare and quietly leave again, and learned what really matters when you build technology for social housing. 

With that in mind, I wanted to share the top five lessons that have stuck with us at ROCC.

1. People come first, and that includes our own

It sounds obvious, but it’s easy to lose sight of when you’re building software. Behind every repairs request, there could be someone waiting in a cold kitchen, or worrying about the damp patch above their child’s bed. Plus, behind every screen is a housing officer, a call handler or an operative trying to do a good job with the tools they’ve been given. 

That’s why we always design technology and software with those people in mind.

That goes for our own team, too. We believe that a company that listens to its staff builds better software, and better software makes for easier days for residents. The care our people have for the communities our customers serve shows up in the product more than any feature list could. 

I’ve always been incredibly proud of our social values, and I would love more organisations to recognise the importance of putting people first.

2. Listen first, build second

Some of our best ideas haven’t come from us at all. They’ve come from a phone call with a customer who starts a sentence with “wouldn’t it be good if” or from our innovative R-SAB group, which brings together some of the housing sector’s finest leaders. After all, housing teams know their residents and their patch far better than we ever will. 

Many of our customers describe working with ROCC as feeling like we’re part of their own team, more like friends and colleagues than a software supplier. And that’s something we’re incredibly proud of. The feeling is mutual. We see our customers as part of our team, too.

The secret isn’t complicated: ask questions, listen properly to the answers and then actually do something about them. It’s that openness, trust and willingness to work together that turns a supplier relationship into a genuine partnership, and those are the partnerships that last.

3. Simplicity over complexity

Technology loves to show off. We’ve watched plenty of impressive systems collapse under their own weight, because the person using them on a busy Tuesday afternoon, with a queue of calls, just wanted to log a repair and get on. 

Good software should feel almost invisible. A diagnosis that asks the right questions up front prevents an operative from making a wasted trip and saves a resident another day of disruption. If the boiler gets fixed on the first visit and nobody has to wrestle with a system to make it happen, we’ve done our job. Clever is nice, but clear is better.

4. Keep adapting, but don’t chase every new trend

In our time we’ve seen paper job sheets, desktop systems, the shift to the cloud, mobile working and, more recently, an awful lot of excitement about AI. Every wave brought real benefits and plenty of hype. Every few years, someone also announces that the humble repairs phone call is finished. (It’s still here.) 

What we’ve learned is to ask one fairly dull question of every shiny new idea: will this make life better for a resident or for the team looking after them? If the answer is yes, we get stuck in. If it’s a no, it can wait. Staying innovative for decades has had less to do with being first and more to do with being sensible about what’s worth adopting.

5. Be there for the long haul

News flash for some… social housing isn’t a sector you can sell a licence and disappear from. Housing providers make decisions that affect people’s homes for decades, and they need a supplier who’ll still pick up the phone when something goes wrong at 8am on a Monday, or, better still, 11am on a Sunday! That means owning up when we get things wrong, fixing them quickly and skipping the jargon while we do it. 

Trust takes years to build, and one bad week to damage, so we look after it carefully. Our customers’ success has always been our success, and we’ve never really seen it any other way.

Still learning

After so many years in housing technology, the job feels much like it did at the start: helping housing teams look after people’s homes a little better than the day before. The tools have changed beyond recognition, but the reason hasn’t. 

We’re looking forward to picking up a few more lessons along the way as we continue to develop our software, and we suspect our customers and peers will be the ones teaching us most of them.