User Story: Viewpoint Housing
Viewpoint Housing solves their data management problems with Infor PM10
The client
Viewpoint Housing Association is an established provider of housing with care and community services in the Lothian and Fife Scotland. Viewpoint has a diverse portfolio of properties and offers a wide range of services. With over 1200 properties dedicated to providing sheltered and extra sheltered living for people over the age of 60 and a further 200 mainstream properties for people over the age of 18.
The challenge
“We saw quickly how we could analyse any element of cost by time for the whole organisation or right down to an individual Flat No” said Financial Controller Henry Mackintosh.
Viewpoint has many of the problems common to a medium sized Housing Association in Scotland.
Data is loaded from their accounting system and is reformatted, adjusted reanalysed and represented in different Spreadsheets. This was such a time consuming process that it was only completed quarterly.
With over 350 staff keeping track of the costs by location on a weekly or monthly basis it is impossible without a system to capture the data on a periodic basis.
The Trust manages the income and costs of their properties using a Spreadsheet model. This analyses all of the associated costs of providing care and was designed to be the basis for the additional reporting required by the various local Authorities in its Caring for People Program. The structure of the spreadsheet model does not allow for any time based analysis and does not deliver any flexibility without major effort in restructuring or rewriting.
The approach
Viewpoint responded to marketing information from CFMS about a multidimensional database called Infor PM10 which claimed to give the best of database technology whilst maintaining a spreadsheet interface. They followed the FastStart™ approach (CFMS’s risk free implementation process) which allowed them to see the product with their own data. “By the end of the first day a year’s worth of data from Sage Line 100 was loaded into Infor PM10 and we created a time-based analysis for the first time, we also looked at the rental ledger in our spreadsheets and created a time/property/service based model. This was enough to convince us that Infor PM10 would make a significant difference to the way we worked” continues Mackintosh.
“Since that time we have set up a process to download and analyse our payroll by home and department on a weekly basis. We also loaded a year’s data from our spreadsheet based rental ledger by every detail. We hadn’t collected data by Authority before and just by applying an additional level of consolidation to our data, we are confident that we can have the analysis at a level which is crucial for meeting the differing reporting requirements of our surrounding Local Authorities” says Mackintosh.
“We set up the software on our Network so a number of people can work together and we are very impressed with the speed of analysis." said Mackintosh.
The results
“The main benefit will be getting control over our data from separate sources and to be able to analyse it at speed. We will then be able report to levels which are just not possible from large spreadsheet models. In fact we spent so much time preparing the numbers the amount of additional analysis was almost nonexistent”, explains Mackintosh.
Conclusion
Mackintosh concludes “Infor PM10 will have a significant impact on the way in which we prepare and deliver our management information. It will allows us to respond to the changing demands of the Local Authorities and to help us ensure that we are making the correct return on our investments”.
User Stories:
Infor PM10
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"Infor PM10 will have a significant impact on the way in which we prepare and deliver our management information. It will allows us to respond to the changing demands of the Local Authorities and to help us ensure that we are making the correct return on our investments."
Henry Mackintosh
Financial Controller
Viewpoint Housing Association