Strategic Line Of Business Selection Process

Critical Action is working with an East Anglian Housing Association and their IT provider EACS Limited, to help the Housing Association fully understand their people, process and technology requirements, in order to select a new line of business system. This system is a major investment with a minimum 5-8 year lifecycle for around 250 users and 2000 properties as well as additional support services for tenants.

We held workshops with a range of staff from across the organisation, at all levels, to build a picture rapidly of the major areas of opportunity for improvement and the priority processes to get right and get working. Critical Action operated a Pre-Qualification Questionnaire process to assemble a shortlist of suppliers for more detailed scoring and consideration. This process is now nearing its end, with a decision in sight on the strategic route forward.

Information Process Analysis and Solution Requirements

A national charity engaged Critical Action, again partnering with EACS for detailed IT work, to help them decide how to approach major systems and process change in the near future, in order to streamline processes and improve even further the very high quality of service offered to the people the charity supports.

We carried out a programme of one-to-one interviews focused on understanding the flow of information across the rapidly growing business, to identify not just strategic requirements for any new solution, but also to spot burgeoning “choke points” and opportunities for process and technology changes to make big differences to day-to-day working and efficient, effective provision of timely and meaningful management information. The first phase of this work has been done, presenting a baseline “information catalogue” for the organisation to start to prioritise real fixes and changes, to begin to get incremental benefits for their staff, and of course, supported people.