Quality Control

The MIS Active Management Systems commitment to total quality

Quality built in to everything we do

At all levels during all aspects of ActiveH, quality is paramount in the minds of all our staff. It runs through what we do like letters in a stick of rock. Each MIS Group company is regulated by an ISO 9000 quality standard development environment and has been for the last eleven years. It is often revealing to look at a suppliers methods and techniques. Having confidence with those can help give confidence in how your organisation may work together with that supplier as a committed partner.

Quality during design

The luxury of having the resources to take a blank piece of paper four years ago and design the best 'what if' complete housing system has certainly enabled our team to scale new hieghts of rich functionality and user convenience.

Because our solution is a real time, full windows product too, developed using core Microsoft technologies, it is fast, has easy to use on-line help and seamless links to everything else on your desktop. This makes everyone more productive, costs are reduced, quality time can be spent with customers, not correcting a crashed debit, stalled waiting for a large report to finish or waiting for the IT department to pass you that text file report you have to use for your stats. Of course, from the start and continuously ActiveH is legislative compliant, functionality rich and practitioner driven. The realisation of higher Performance Indicator scores and maximising rating under best value was a key driver from the start.

Purposely during design we took on board over two hundred gripes and problems from our own help desk calls and anacdotal evidence from users and staff who had worked with a range of other housing systems in general use. From this bleak starting point we all aimed to build a system to rise above the mediocrity of a great range of systems that were rooted more in the 1990's rather than the twenty first century.

From the start, ActiveH was designed to deal with & ease:

• Period end run crash issues (just starting off exactly where it left off, when the system is switched back on)
• Voids (we use a seperate entity, not a fake or pseudo tenancy),
• Sub-accounts (as many as you like and flexibility to use them as you wish)
• Multiple frequencies (start any charge or tenancy when you need to & have all all retros calculated automatically for you everytime - that desktop calculator can be retired!)
• Workflow (not sitting down the bottom right of your screen doing nothing, but working at every move on your behalf, tasking & controlling staff, bonding your business processes to our application)
• Mis-Use of wizards (screens were cut down so information was entered once & only once)
• Searching (many options provided, configurable by user, work group or site)
• Un-needed data entry (rather than ask you to re-enter your initials on diary or transaction entry, just default the current user in)
• Difficulty getting data out of the system (we just made it routinely possible everywhere, no need to involve IT)
• Hard to record any additional info apart from dates & comments (ActiveH is happy with any attachment that can be opened in windows, eg Wave files from a phone system, video etc)
• Reliable Generation of letters (Moved to any currently installed version of MS-Word, use any formatting you need, store letter on completion)
• lack of telephony links (CTI designed in from the start together with SMS Text)
• Response Repairs often poorly diagnosed (strong links with diagnostic tools such as Omfax created to cut time & costs, while maximising accuracy)
• Support needed for street level staff (integrated mobile solutions available from day one)
• NROSH, Target Rents/Rent restructuring, CORE Digital enabled
• and 197 other areas....

To widen access to a maturing internet, all modules allow links to RSL websites where customers & key service users can have access 24/7 365 days a year toinformation, and at the same time staff overhead can be reduced. These areas are constantly being improved and expanded.

Test and Quality Assurance Procedures

All requests for change, support calls and development is rigourously controlled by our ISO 9000 procedures.

Extensive use is made of automated testing scripts to verify manual system testing. All of our developers are UK based and also on a rota are involved with support calls. this brings them so much closer to our customers than can ever be possible in a much larger company or PLC. Test plans and detailed QA sheets are recorded for each improvement to our solution, however small. We do share skills and experience with our sister MIS group companies though and colaboration has helped accelerate mobile and SMS developments that we have completed.

Quality during implementation and training

Our standards are the highest in the industy. Each training and implementation day is rated and monitored. Continual improvement is our goal and that of every one of our staff, from directors down. For our customers, our commitment does not stop at nine 'til five. Projects can be managed to Prince II standards if required. All product help is in the windows style on-line searchable style that follows the product releases. This is presented so it can be used by customers to learn as they go if appropriate, complimenting more formal training.

When you deal with MIS Active Management Systems you deal in the context of one joined up team. Our implementers work with our development teams and the customer when converting your data and bonding your business processes with our leading edge solutions. Speak to our customers, they will tell you that we are with them every step of the way, guiding, adding value, supplying answers and options. Can you say that you had that experience with your current supplier?

All our products are designed to be easily implemented in stages or phases and expanded effortlessly when mergers occur. For example two stages of implementation could be:

• Rent Accounting, Rent Arrears, Allocations, Voids and Homelessness

followed by

• Repairs, Stores, Appointments, Internal Contractor, Estate Management and Right to Buy

followed by

• Planned Maintenance

We do not believe in custom versions of our products and all customers big or small benefit from a single version with all features potentially available. Major upgrades are available bi-annually. There are no extra charges for new versions or revisions and the upgrade process is relatively painless and hassle free. All of our ActiveH customers are generally on a product version no later than six months old. this ensures everyone benefits from new innovations, savings and efficiency improvements. Support for older versions is naturally provided, without limitations. All our customers have can rely on on-going commitment to ensure that the new system and all of our products in this open system are used to its fullest potential.

Quality in seeing and interpretting future trends

We take housing very seriously indeed. Our staff, who on average have over seven years service or more with us, are encouraged to take an interest in trends and developments and back it up with academic study where possible. A number of our staff are CIH members and take active part in regional meetings, forums, formulation and the execution of housing best practice. At MIS Active Management Systems, we are fortunate that our product is the most recent and modern HMS in the marketplace today. Trends such as community cohesion, containment, managing of ASB, the importance of green issues, mergers and the development of larger groups as well as the recent staples of target rents, decent homes etc are all enabled from day one in our solutions. We are not afraid to share our long term strategy with our customers at every opportunity.

To see more detail on any of our comprehensive range of solutions, please click on the product list on the left.

Contact Us | Book a demonstration | Telephone 0845-330-2325