so thank you for taking the time to join us everyone good morning we'll hang on a couple of seconds just whil else everyone filtered in from the previous meeting no out and then we'll uh we'll get into today's topic introduce the guests which is human Center transformation today so kind of following on really from the from the previous two which has all kind of been focused on um responding to and planning for the consumer regulation changes but also sort putting people at sort of the heart of t
hat from a transformational perspective across the space as well so we'll uh we'll get cracking second um but yeah it's one of those isn't it where you know we talk a lot about technology talk a lot about systems data processes when it comes to transformational projects um but if we consider the sort of the purpose of these changes as a whole and also generally the sort of purpose of the housing sector we need to sort of put people at the heart of that um and I think sometimes we need to just so
rt of make sure that that's that's covered off when we sort of talk about the Ambitions and the goals for it so that's what we'll be covering today and uh yeah we'll get into introducing the Our Guest as well who I'm sure all of you are very familiar with Julia um but yeah we're uh we're just past 11:00 so we'll get started um those of you who are new to us we'll we'll go through some short introduction shortly into myself into prodo and and guest speakers today as well um we do record these so
we do tend to have the sort of the microphones muted um but please do feel free to use the chat for any sort of questions you might want to ask Julia or or any of us from prodo as well we will have some time towards the end for um to sort of address some of those queries as well so feel free to do that um encourage you to do so and then um yeah have a little Lookout in the chat for any sort of helpful links and things we'll be putting in there as well so if you want to sort of follow up on the c
onversation with any of us feel free to do so um but yeah we we'll get into today's topic so as supp just to begin with my name is Jacob I'm head of sales here at Proto um been working with the organization for six years now and I think our role as a as a sort of digital transformation um specialist in the sector has evolved and changed throughout the sort of the time of 20 plus years working with hjs across the country we're very much Focus these days on helping organizations build trust with c
ustomers unlock capacity internally and ultimately those two things feeding into transforming customer experience as well um and our offering across the board is is is quite quite Vari from Digital consultancy Services through to web design web development and also a suite of software products that we have as well around self-service and sort of engaging tenants lots of systems Integrations those sorts of things um so that's us that's prodo um we'll move into a very brief sort of introduction in
terms of background of today's topic and then we'll get into into the main um into the main part of it so so yeah onto today's topic then really which is human centered transformation after sort of having some preparation discussions and um conversations in the past with Julia and sort of discussing the um the journey that Raven how trust had been on but yeah as I said at the beginning I think when we discussed transformation as a whole it's it's really easy to sort of keep that sort of central
Focus really isn't around auditing the system looking into processes specifically finding efficiencies internally maybe sort of cleansing data as part of that as well but what absolutely you can't be forgotten when you're sort of considering the purpose of change and also as we saying earlier the sort of the purpose of the housing sector itself across the board it's helping people and it's improving lives um so human Center transformation sort of having that focus on those people it will place
individuals and communities at the heart of those decisions and decision making as a whole recognizing challenges um specific spe ific needs across the board as well aspirations um and it's really about creating solutions that not only Leverage The Power of Technology but also sort of encourage and Foster that inclusivity accessibility empowering customers and sort of colleagues alike as well um and that's really well aligned so our purpose as a digital consultant software provider in the space
as well at prodo you'll hear you know sort of countless case studies across the board and stats around okay we've you know we've driven Channel shift up we've reduced call volumes we've saved on areas here and those things are all obviously really important measurable to sort of focus on when looking to sort of measure success but I think for us and more so these days and you can sort of see and the consumer regulation changes and tsms Etc it's it's almost that sort of so what piece really you k
now if it is that the time's been saved and capacity has been created sort of where where's that been put forward and what's that meant for engagement what's that meant for customer satisfaction what about digital excluded people and I think it's our Collective responsibility as you know as partners in the space but also everyone sort of across the board to sort of ensure that that transformation is is is serving people in the best way it could be um so I suppose with that said with me today is
our CEO Rob Quail who's got a background of driving really customer Centric change across and sort of product design as well across multiple sectors um and Julia Mixter who you probably will all be familiar with um who has essentially spearheaded transformational change across Raven Housing Trust as well which we're really looking forward to hearing more about um so I thought now would be a good time to introduce yourself Rob and then we can sort of hand over to Julia as well that's that's right
yeah no thanks Jake um lovely to meet you all as Jake said I've been at prodo for about nine months I think now but my background is um digital transformation and software development across a whole variety of sectors um and this sort of topic is really close to my heart because Transformations always start with people and end with people and if you don't put the people at the heart of it then there more likely than not to fail so actually really putting the person in the center of that process
is really key Julia um morning everybody and thank you very much for having me here today and I was hugely excited by prodo to be asked by Proto to have this conversation about uh what we deliberately called human- centered transformation I talk a lot about s of the technology and the process and the data but actually an opportunity to talk about the people at the same Center of transformation is is really very critical for me um so yeah really here today to start a conversation about human cen
tered transformation and in a perfect world this might be less about sort of getting employees and customers on the journey that you as a Housing Association want to take and more about putting their needs at the center of transformation so that ultimately we're making their lives an experience of social housing a better one but we don't live in a perfect world so whilst it's a really Noble aim it isn't always easy or realistic by the way I should say from the outset that whilst I will talk abou
t some of the things that Raven has done some of these opinions of my own so I'll just add that little disclaimer at the beginning um because if you ask people what they want from your services they may well say I want someone to talk to who's actually going to spend some time listening to me um where what you want to do is to actually digitize your services and make them more efficient so then I think it's really important to be upfront and to say you know in the context of our needs to minimiz
e the cost of transactional process and do them online so we can invest more in your home which Services is it really important that we keep personal and human and I honestly believe that whilst you're going to hear me talk a lot about putting human needs at the center of transformation at the same time uh housing associations cannot realistically provide services in every way that every person wants them to with uh limited funds the sort of hotels and banks that offer true individualization do
so at an incredible ibly high cost um and housing associations simply don't have those funds so to invest in personalization in some areas I think really does require efficiency in others so throughout this presentation I am going to try and walk a tight rope of what might be ideal and what is actually realistic in the discussion and I apologize in advance if I uh contradict myself through some of this as we go through I think it shows some of the complexity of what we're trying to do in social
housing so I just want to step back for a second and reflect on something that's probably bothered me since I've started out in social housing about six years ago um the history of social housing has discussed the damage that it can do when we attach negative perceptions to and judgments around people living in social housing um and I think whilst there is a really good reason to ensure fair and equal access to services for all residents there is perhaps some risk attached to some of the aims ar
ound the new consumer standards um and at the worst end clumsy attempts to group customers by protecting characteristics and Design Services for uh groups could give a slightly uncomfortable sense of othering uh you might have customer Journey maps that Branch off to specific services for children with something like ADHD or other mental health concerns or other needs it could lead to very very complex service design and high costs that potentially may have little real impact so whilst the inten
tion is positive the execution with limited budgets and teams and expertise may not actually deliver what is needed and I think there's a risk in the midst of all this sort of frantic service redesign we may forget that we're all collectively human um and at one time or other we may all become more or less vulnerable and the Ombudsman themselves their own definition describes this as quite Dynamic a highly paid manager could quite easily experience family breakdown and alcoholism and be homeless
within weeks so vulnerability often links to a complex set of circumstances often stemming from childhood and not always app parent on the surface so trying to design services that can dynamically respond to changing circumstances could be complex challenging and expensive on the other hand if you like a healthy debate I think there is absolute evidence that putting the human at the center could actually save money so humans have some very basic needs such as the need for food water air shelter
and then higher order needs and remembering people as humans and not just customers means we may be more likely to take the time to hear their stories and their person experiences to really enrich our understanding and there's a website which I'm not even going to attempt to pronounce because I will get it wrong uh on this slide but if you want to read a little more around sense making which I think is a really interesting concept and there's a reason you may have noticed that maso's hierarchy
uh triangle is upside down so I went to um A din conference in November and the excellent MAF pots was there and he shared his view on homelessness from talking to a lot of people who had become homeless and one of the biggest reasons was relationship breakdown and that people rarely hang on to food and shelter without self-worth and positive relationships and I think that's a hugely important concept to reflect on and understand in the context of rising incidents of mental health conditions inc
luding anxiety and depression and depleted Social Services because the role of housing associations in helping to achieve positive outcomes where mental and physical and Financial social health are intrinsically linked has actually never been more important because being listened to and understood cannot not sorry can not only help limit the escalation of mental health problems but actually can act as a mitigating factor in the first place so listening to the human beings in your homes uh you ma
y find that the homes and services that you deliver genuinely uh can lead to life-changing outcomes and I think there was a great case of that in Great Yarmouth and this was highlight Ed by Ian rght on LinkedIn by ending choice-based lettings and adopting a system based on conversations with people about their housing problems the council managed to cut their waiting list from 6,000 in 2010 to 309 by 2015 and that is a phenomenal change and you can only begin to think about the positive impact t
hat had on the mental well-being of those people and I commented that it reminded me of a coach who said that humans have three basic emotional needs to be listened to cared for and understood and I think it showed that Great Yarmouth had taken the time to be human so how can we be human when we start to think about digital transformation if you move on to the next slide please so um you know we don't have a huge amount of time today so I'm only going to give a sample of the ways that we tried t
o be human and customer first in our transformation in Raven so right at the beginning we started with a big piece of customer research that we started that we called the voice of the customer and before even putting pen to paper on our transformation strategy we did this research to find out what our customers really wanted from us to understand what needed to change and more importantly why and I think any Housing Association considering transformation would or should do the same this should f
eed into the priorities and I think what was really important for me about this research it wasn't about the Digital Services people wanted if you look at what was on this slide it was some human Concepts what does your home mean to you how can we improve the trust in our relationship what are your future life aspirations and how can Raven be a part of those next slide please and from this research whilst we saw a lot of customers were satisfied we were able to have much more human and detailed
conversations with the 10% who felt their needs weren't being met and from those conversations you get rich insights such as the answer to an unsuitable sized home for customers isn't always moving that's a big disruption sometimes they just want us to sort out the storage um the importance of repairs becomes really emotionally heightened if there are very young children in the home and it's important to understand not that just that someone is just living with a disability but the impact of tha
t disability on how they lead their life and how they go about their day-to-day business these human conversations led to much greater insight about how we needed to transform and we put it into our strategy and we put the customer needs at the heart of our service design and we put customer first into our culture statement so there was a constant reminder of this kind of Amazon type Obsession of being customer obsessed and then working backwards and inwards from there next slide please and we r
epeated this detailed research more recently particularly with a view to understanding our customers lived experiences in our homes and again I found this hugely insightful it introduced two things for me one while some people may feel that questions about what led to customers um being in Raven may feel intrusive and we should respect that for other people they really wanted us to know so that we could offer them great support from the outset and it also introduced so what the so what factor in
to our thinking so it's no good just asking people you know do you have a protective characteristic do you have a disability what you need to understand is what this means for them in how they live their life the true human element and some of our researchers were surprised just how hard it was to get consistent contact with some of our customer customers even to pay them for their time but those working in your customer service teams probably wouldn't be so surprised so it's so important to con
nect your repair service redesign around your no access procedure with all the wasted money of repeated visits with information from a customer telling you that they struggle to fulfill appointment commitments if you don't you'll be wasting money and also not meeting the needs of the human in the home so for me it really seems like a win-win understand meet the human need and potentially save money in doing so uh moving on um at a more granular level we did some great work with C gr for everythi
ng I've said about customer service design and Maps we did do a lot of those things and Clive gr is from the Royal Academy on service design and it really again showed the importance of getting alongside and involving the human in the service design to avoid making assumptions and he uses a brilliant example of being in an airport and seeing a huge number of people using the toilets and without customer research you could easily make the assumption that you just need more toilets but Insight fro
m speaking to customers showed that people actually went in there because it was quieter and they could hear the tan noise so what you actually needed to address in service design was the location and volume of the Tano and um we also partnered with the excellent Tracy Allen who helped us to achieve really good quality service design in quite short Sprints um and this slide actually shows how in just four days you can not only do service design but include customer research because sometimes it
can feel like service design is this kind of huge Beast that you need to get right um and honestly the process was very good and if you look at the um Vision on the next slide uh this really hasn't changed a great deal throughout our transformation so our vision was to put the customer in control of our service design whether that was a repairs or a compliance visit and if you move to the next slide um that led to Concepts you know really not life-changing concepts are they but you know being ab
le to book when it suits you to an appointment slot when you you need it to be able to guess online and get a response and Confirmation um outside of the customer contact hours and things like that um but having a blueprint like this says this is how we want to be able to respond to what our customers have told us and then you can assess it against that reasonableness tight RPP of what it's feasible and affordable to deliver and when you can Flex to respond to um individual needs and I just want
to move on to the final example of putting the human customer at the center and this was about the build of our websites with an organization called connect um where we used card sorts and this reflects on the notion that human beings follow what are called desire lines and in the book The Universal principles of design this means that you it talks about use or wear that indicates preferred methods of interaction with an object or an environment and we did this during the pandemic so we could d
o it online with our customers and online cards represented the website buttons and customers could move them around where they expected them to be and we could go with a majority preference so again you're not making the human work hard to find the things they want you're putting it straight into their desire line that's putting the human at the center and we did a lot of other things making sure that images reflected our users um making sure there's really good accessibility making sure langua
ge reflected every type of um tendency type um all of it about trying to make the human feel included so just moving on to my final uh couple of slides what about staff because in transformation staff are humans too and I think it's really unlikely that if you asked our staff what they wanted they would say Adar there's a good chance may not have even heard of it and along the lines of sort of no Sherlock the answer to finding out what people really want is by listening to them and so we did a b
ig piece of work at the beginning of transformation talking to a colleagues in workshops listening to and trying to understand what they wanted to be different what their goals and aspirations were was what wasn't working for them in order to design our Target operating model but it's important and I think um Jacob said you know I'm quite open with sharing mistakes at this point we made our biggest mistake in our desire to get communication right and get people excited and engaged in this progra
m go better connected we over promised um we gave people the impression that their life was going to be better and happier and shinier in every way post transformation um and probably the most overblown statement would be that it would be easier and I think don't get me wrong some things are infinitely better our staff can access systems anywhere anytime depending on network connectivity um they have access to all sorts of transparent information but it doesn't necessarily mean things are easier
sometimes there are more fields to complete more information to fill in because this gives better data a more complete picture of the customer but it doesn't make it easier for the staff member and that why is that so important why does that matter um because in the field of human psychology if you make promises that you break it affects trust and trust is one of the most fundamentally important Concepts in the employment relationship so if you're delivering human Center transformation try and
keep that trust at the heart and try not to overpromise as you go through and whilst just touching on Adar I think it's a really helpful model for planning change I think we possibly missed a little bit of the human hear as well one of our project managers reflected in the team he was supporting that whilst the Adar scores of team members were broadly similar the team behaviors were quite different from those who are actively disengaged to highly positive and engaged and we think our use of adca
r perhaps Focus too much on the assessment of the change itself rather than how colleagues were dealing with change as human beings and just moving on to the penultimate slide um I think another part part of being human is recognizing that being a change leader is phenomenally difficult um and there will be times that you have your own crisis and see some problems is completely intractable I 100% did um and I was actually having coaching and I wanted to understand you why does some people seem s
o negative and so reluctant to accept the Improvement we're trying to make despite what we're trying to do and I think I was forgetting the human and I was seeing transformation almost as like battle lines between the good people who wanted to move forward and the people on the other side who wanted to stay there and I just didn't know how to address that and my coach introduced me to William Bridges and this model really resonated with me I'm not an expert but the way she described it was that
resistance and commitment are close together both of them have energy in undertaking change you need to understand resistance energy and stay curious to it if you take a common area like assets or health and safety there is a reason that people resist moving on from their spreadsheets or from Bob the head of assets who has all the information that you need and who provides that reassurance and certainty the William Bridges model describes loss and New Beginnings in any change there are endings a
nd there are new beginnings and in the change you're going to lose something it might be your spreadsheet or your Bob and you have to face New Beginnings which might be your new system and people will be worried about whether they're going to be competent in the new system they care so they want the comfort blanket of the spreadsheet they've used for 20 years and in the middle of change it feels like stepping off a pavement stepping into traffic with cars coming at you from all sides before you
get safely to the other side so in planning change spend time thinking about who might be losing something what they fear they're losing and how we can help them adjust to the new world people don't want to lose their Turf their power their staff whatever it is if you push someone too quickly they may well push back and they might look like they're going along with a change but agreeing and Ting are two really different things because functional words can come with really dysfunctional behavior
um people going back to Old systems or just doing workarounds so it's really important to spend time facing into and having conversations about the things being lost to help people cross that road safely um and stay on the other side and not step back so finally um I've created a a sort of totally forgotten the acronym whatever is around the word human you don't have to be a psychologist to design and deliver good change um but you do have to have a genuine desire to understand people um underst
and what people really want below the surface level to take time to focus on those really deep andhuman needs particularly when we work in a sector that has such a profound impact on people's lives I think delivering trusted Services caring about the people who deliver those services and putting humans right at the center of that change is probably the very least that we all and our customers and staff deserve thank you brilliant thank you thank you very much for that Julia that was that was exc
ellent um kind of as expected I suppose from from the throughout that and the sort of the thread that you put put all the way through it it's quite a nice quite an inspiring reminder really of kind of what we're doing here in terms of the the purpose of not only the space but the sort of transformational change that we all talk a lot about because I think going back to start it is easy to focus on certain other elements but yeah I think it's it is it has to be focused around how this how this ch
ange impacts people's lives whether that be customers at the Forefront or also um sort of internal colleagues as well um I know you've got some questions Rob but just just one that spring to my head as you as you were talking and Julia um and yeah it is great that you are you're really open to talk about sort of challenges and things along along the journey with Raven and and the sort of the process you've been through but one you mentioned around where you felt like potentially it was uh it was
to sort of overpromise but then you sort of followed that with you know there there always is that sort of resistance isn't there to change because people are quite comfortable and and knows that certain processes incumbent processes work for them and therefore it kind of feels right at that point doesn't it to talk about things like making things easier or making things quicker or better so on that on that basis of of having that resistance but also in hindsight possibly over promising from th
e language there is is there is there ways that you would have may maybe addressed that differently because it feels like a difficult sort of balance that to me from from what you said yeah I mean I I absolutely don't have a perfect answer to that one because you really do you know at the beginning of change if anyone said to you you're still going to be there four years down the line you know limping across the line with with system change you might go Li I'm never going to even get started in
the first place and you want people to be excited and enthusiastic but I genuinely believe it's it's getting a healthy balance between um clear aspirations and goals and saying you know we will certainly work as hard as we possibly can to meet those expectations but not absolutely promising that transformation is going to deliver everything and it's very easy as you said to get caught up in the shiny sales pitch um you know when I if you asked me five years ago I would be like oh my God Dynamics
is going to be the answer to absolutely everything and we're going to go from these awful Legacy systems that are really difficult to change and takes you know months of cons spend to do anything and we're going to have this system that we can change on a dime and and you know make work perfectly for everyone and of course that's not reality but it's quite easy to be sold that pitch when you're at the early stages of transformation so yeah just keeping a healthy skepticism I think it's probably
the best advice I've got the thing with that though is it in one sense it the pitch is right isn't it but actually you're moving effort or data entry essentially data entry always drives the process but you're moving that further up the business process aren't you so typically the people in the call center or salese or the doers who are actually on the front line typically trying to solve a problem are then expected to do more because that Insight or that extra data point drivve better value fo
r the business as a whole but it's typically been entered by somebody in finance because that's the end of the process and they had to enter that to get the invoice out the door or whatever the back end is and getting that across to the people in the call Center is always the challenge cuz they don't necessarily care about the bigger picture they're just focused on they need to do their job and their job is now harder than it was before you did this and really that sort of hearts and Minds is qu
ite it's always the challenging part I always find yeah yeah yes I think you could flip that and say actually in the contact center again you probably are asking them to do more but if you get your transformation right the transparent because a lot of it the frustration is often when they're trying to chase the answer to something that they're not in control of being able to answer or they can't get access to information or the information that's been put in is incorrect information and I think
if you can move to the point which Raven fortunately now has of having one system from customer contact all the way through sort of repairs compliance all the way into sort of invoicing and finance that ability to just see transparently across the whole customer Journey can actually allow your staff to feel much more in control and much more able to you know we all want to feel useful we you back to to that sense of purpose we want to feel useful to our customers and and to be able to answer the
ir question as best as you can and I think that's what transformation can over in terms of positive outcome absolutely when it when it comes to because um I know when we discussed this recently we kind of talk about this three pieces don't we of people technology data when it when it comes to having you know the uh the right sort of goals in mind to sort of benefit the people from a transformational change perspective but also other um other pressures of organizational Ambitions and organization
al based change and requirements how would you say um that's best sort of aligned I know I know um both of you sort of discussed this with with one another recently on that sort of alignment of organizational and people requirements for sort of change as well um I'm happy to go first unless you want to Rob than for it um yeah one one thing I never wanted to have was a transformation strategy as such I mean we did end up with one to try and just make it tidy but the transformation strategy very d
eliberately is simply there to deliver the business outcomes if you have a transformation strategy sitting off to the side that's no good if you have Financial outcomes that are not embedded in your budget and business plan that's pointless because no one will really care because they're still looking at the budget and business plan so embeding your transformation as just a fundamental way of how you're going to change how you do business and recognizing that the point of transformation is to op
timize the delivery of strategic outcomes is probably the most important thing you can do because the second you stop doing that you start to deliver projects that are pointless and and you're just doing it because you've said you're going to do this release at this date and in this time what you've got to constantly do is use that connection to strategic outcome to sense Check and Go Right is this still going to deliver this or have things moved on and changed and actually do we now need need t
o take a decision to pause and we actually ourselves took that decision to pause the very final release of our program because actually we didn't necessarily think it was going to be the quickest and best way to get to the Strategic outcomes we wanted to achieve so truly embedding transformation into the way you do business is absolutely essential I mean speaking from a sort of prodo perspective what we find is that organizations are struggling to get to that strategic outcome because they're st
ruggling with how to sort of bring the systems together and understand the data and what we're really trying to help the sector do is sort of step back and look at it more from a the person which is the whole point of this conversation isn't it rather than just the asset because actually managing the person through that process right the way through from sort of finding their first home and that might be a B&B and facilitating them going into that house or helping them apply for benefits helping
them apply for a bank account through that sort of workflow that's where we're going to start to see those bigger strategic outcomes rather than focusing on how do we manage the repair in this property because it's affecting this tenant it's taking that holistic view which is which is what we probably need to do as a sector to start to realize there's bigger the bigger outcomes otherwise we're still on that same tread M yeah yeah we had a really good conversation before didn't we about this Rob
in and and it gets right to the heart of what a Housing Association here to do and you know I'm certainly not standing here as an an an expert but are just a really interesting provocation because you're going to have some boards and housing associations who see themselves you know the importance of their role as being fantastic house developers and people who are looking after an asset and making it as good a you know I'm going to call it asset but you know home as it possibly can be and it is
net zero carbon and it's efficient and it's cheap or free to run and all of those things that's the number one most important thing you'll have others where you know preventing homelessness is the most important thing and others that see the social side of delivery as the most important thing so it's to what extent can we see ourselves as a sector with a aim um and we talked about you know what what's the HK because uh I think we talking about supermarkets and they wanted to Harve the sustainabi
lity impact of a of a basket of shopping and you say actually that's a really Noble aim that the whole sector can gather around and try and deliver and sometimes it's quite hard to work out what the noble aim of of housing is to do for the customers living in our home and I think that's that's part of the challenge we have when we're doing transformation it's like what is it to achieve is it to you know support the lives of people living in our homes or is it to be better house builders and or i
s it you know any one of those things depending on on your aspirations as a particular ha it's it is absolutely ha's aspirations and where they want to achieve but then people's expectations particularly off the back of covid expecting to do more and more so then it it essentially in terms of transformation we then have to adapt to actually delivering what what their expectations are or managing their expectations that they have to go over here to get that resolution and and is it have a social
housing landord here with one set of goals and aims and another one here and they're sort of postcode right next to each other but actually with two widely different sort of approaches to support but I mean these are Big sector questions I'm sure others far more knowledgeable have debated but that is all about putting the center at the human at the center isn't it of what we're trying to do yeah yeah definitely absolutely um you mentioned before Julia about on the sort of transformation programs
and maybe not necessarily having that transformational strategy but ended up sort of having one to sort keep things keep things on track and keep things tidy and sort of sharable I suppose um but yeah I agree that you know these things have to be completely agile because things do change certainly if it's a you three five eight-year program um so on on that on that basis then with with their things in particular on your experiences at Raven whereby the original sort of aim and ambition included
X requirements in certain areas but as you sort of move through there there's actually some specific CH sort of had to move through to ensure that those strategic objectives were putting the people at the center was were kind of met 100% uh we had scope creep without question uh again I think we had sort of expectations of the system that to the some things we were disappointed by not having and then other things we um just wanted more and more and as soon as we could find out what could be don
e we then you know added to it you know when we started out we hadn't said in our scope we want a portal for our contractors for example but we we ended up with a contractor portal because you know they are another part of how we deliver what we do we ended up with a new website because we wanted to improve um you know how our customers could access information I think data became increasingly important I think chief executive had a very clear view on data right from the outset but I think we ha
d a a a a Dawning realization of just how important it was to get the whole data piece right and have a very clear sort of data architecture and strategy throughout um and again I think getting really good at functional requirements is something that I know a lot of ha potentially struggle with and and I think just saying you know uh we want it to deliver a business plan and your supplier goes yes it can do a business plan plan and then the devil's in the detail when you're sitting in workshops
and going well what do you mean by business plan it's completely different from what we mean by business plan and that's where you can get unstuck between people's expectations and you you have to be quite um robust and blunt you know you have to keep pushing at things and keep digging and keep digging and getting under the skin of what everyone's meaning and not allow because people by Nature want to kind of be agreeable and and nice and you'll sit in meetings and you know you'll kind of go oka
y yeah we think it's okay but actually it's not and you have to keep niggling away at it until you've got a really really aligned understanding because otherwise you do get this constant mismatch of of expectation in the program I think and you me you mentioned when you're talking earlier about introducing the the service design process where you you started the spring with that in the sort of 4 day thing did you find that then added a lot of value in streamlining that to stop some of those conv
ersations yeah we did this chicken and egg thing right at the beginning when we said said um we want you know our our staff our managers to think about the service as they want it to be not as it is and then they said yeah but until we know what the technology can do it's really hard to imagine that so we we went in the end with we'll work it out as we go through and looking back I think doing service design knowing you know actually knowing the services you deliver knowing you know how you want
those services to change and having a blueprint for those Services I would always start at that point because it will particularly if you're on a time and materials contract it will stop you wasting a huge amount of money as well so yeah I would absolutely start there I mean I've seen a lot of Transformations um where people haven't done that service design at the start and as you say then you're on a tnm contract and you're just spending more and more money yeah and it it's not I mean typicall
y you can do them in sort of less than five days as you say so they're not big things but they perceived to be quite boring and need a little bit of effort and thought and planning and consideration that when actually people just want to get stuck in and start doing it but then you never get the outcome you want I think that that's spot on I think you know if you make it a big beast then people go yeah but we've signed the contract we want to get on with it actually if you say no you can do it i
n other ways and it can be great fun you know if you're looking at something like crazy eight is you know you write eight ideas in eight minutes and then you share this you can have a bit of fun with it because you know transformation can be a bit Relentless and actually this is your moment to pause and have a bit of fun with creativity and again if you're not doing the service design then how are you knowing what your customers are wanting you know you have to be testing and validating these id
eas with the customers which isn't easy you know we we we tried various different ways of engaging with customers and some were definitely more successful than others were we we spoke with saffron at the house mark theyit back in November and they did a whole piece of work where they the customers really bought into that process because they helped shape it and then actually when it wasn't right I think it was the repairs one we were talking about at the time but it wasn't working the way then e
verybody expected then they because they'd helped shape it then they actually owned it as well and owned that issue and how to get it right so it's absolutely right to get customers on that Journey it makes a right a real difference yeah and I think the um I mean it's such a small win but it felt like a really important one um when someone posted on social media about how to do something and immediately a customer jumped in and said this is how you can do it on the portal and that's when you rea
lly feel like you've achieved something because your customers are advising you know each other on how to do something easily and they're saying it is easy to use that that that feels really good when you've achieved that is a really good outcome on on that sort of on that involvement piece that you you mentioned some some tactics work better than others I I think that's something we hear quite a lot with the programs we we kind of um support or sort of Drive in terms of we know we need to invol
ve customers we know it should be a a sort of a crosssection of the different segmentations of of customer types that we have but you're always going to have those people aren't you where they do just want to sort of live in a home and they just want to be sort of left alone you're going to have people that do want to be very much involved and maybe some of those different customer types will engage better than others um so with that with that particular sort of roots to that that that you did f
ind in terms of specifics work well versus those that that maybe in hindsight didn't on your journey yeah and I think I mean there's others probably much better qualified I think gr ji did a great presentation on this but just from our experience um you know again it's remembering people are humans and that if you try and get people Gather in person to do anything whether it's in social housing or volunteering for local drama groups um the people who turn up will be of a certain demographic you
know often they're people who don't have to be working don't have to be traveling you know long hours either side maybe don't have young children so you have to offer you know multiple different options for how you want people to engage we did try a kind of a p who would be with us throughout transformation and we tried a lot of you know what seemed like good practice at the time of um you know being very engaging and looking at you know providing an iPad so that people could be in regular conta
ct and honestly for the amount of investment of time it was so hard to maintain a group of people who were able and willing to commit through the program um so actually what we found was those those digital engagements were far more effective um where we widened it out to sort of say that whoever wants to be involved in this and and I think the connect card sort was a great example we had a really really good response rate to that um where you just make it as easy as possible quite fun quite eng
aging and and and I think that really opens the doors for a lot more engagement in the process is not going to be for everyone because obviously those people who you're trying to bring into a digital environment who aren't currently digital you you will still have to find ways to engage differently um but yeah it's it's opening the funnel as wide as you can I think yeah excellent okay great I don't think there's been any questions come through the come through teams just yet I know we've covered
off a few that we got had before the session just there um I know we're sort of reaching time at the moment as well so any any further queries from from yourself Rob on this at all no I mean as we did in the prep called Julia and I could talk about this for ages um but no I think it it goes back to what I said at the start it does start and end with people and really bringing the people into that process at whatever Point whether that be design or customers that's the number that's ultimately w
hat be the most successful outcome yeah brilliant okay oh great stuff well um really enjoyed that so thank you very much for your um time and effort Julian also obviously yourself as well Rob sort of um cabor on the Q&A side of things that it was really great to hear and just sort of I suppose reframe the term transformation to some extent as well in terms of really focusing it on the people and sort of the purpose of it and what the potential benefit are for for those individuals and communitie
s rather than you know just focusing on those sort of and sort of C hard stats we quite often end up looking into um so thank you very much for that it was it was excellent um we have sort of reached time now so I suppose it' be a good time to to close off now and talk about quickly about the next session which will be 25th of April um and I know this one today was very much kind of taking a step back and looking at transformation kind of as a whole and particularly Julia's sort of insight from
Raven's journey and very much focusing on the people people um next month we'll be talking specifically about one part of that which is a change that we've seen sort of drive through the sector um probably the last 12 to 18 months or so around specifically CRM Platforms in particular um Julie kind of alluded to uh to Dynamics being one part of the sort of the Ravens Journey as well so we'll be joined by um our sister company who are a CRM implementer and sort of working through CRM implementatio
ns for one of the biggest housing associations of the country at the moment as well so we'll be focusing specific on CRM implementations and how we sort of bring people on on that Journey focus on the customer and colleagues and that sort of specific outcome as well um so we will follow up with information on that shortly um with some promos and things VI email and socials that you sort of typically expect um but yeah I want to thank everyone for taking the time to join us today big thank you to
Julia big thank you to Rob and hopefully we'll uh we'll see you for the next one next month thank you very much Happy Easter enjoy chocolate Easter see we'll do thanks guys take
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