News
IOW based RSL Medina HA migrate to MIS-AMS (29/03/2007)
Isle of Wight Newport based RSL Medina Housing Association have now completely migrated from a previous character based housing system to a true full windows integrated system covering all areas of the business. Data migration was taken from Medina's previous Informix database platform into the open & industry standard Microsoft SQL Server environment.
The conversion and go-live of the MIS-AMS ActiveH Desktop, ActiveH Rents, CRM (Customer Relationship Management), Lettings and Contractors (DLO / Internal contractor management) was carried out over the weekend. Time was allocated for testing, parallel running and catch up of data entry over the Saturday & Sunday.
Andy Bannaghan MIS-AMS Implementation manager was on site during the conversion and migration. Most issues were resolved within minutes as they were reported or flagged up during testing over the weekend. Andy commented, "Planning & testing completed over the last three months by MIS in conjunction with Medina project champions really paid off. Problems were few & far between. This implementation although very involved, being done as a 'big-bang' with just about all modules going live together has been one of the smoothest I have ever known". Training and preparation was a key element of the project.
Much of the experience gained from the installation of ActiveH at Western Challenge in summer 2006 was put to good use during this project. Workflow features inherently designed into the system made it easy to re-use processes where appropriate from WCHA and in other cases tailor the system modules to different needs at Medina. A great deal of workflow was also managed in-house which reduced overall costs.
Martyn Pearl, Medina chief executive commented "We were waiting for a show-stopper to come out of the woodwork but on checking with staff over the weekend, all issues were in hand and there was nothing to worry about. Its gone very well indeed."
Some performance issues were noted at Medina with the DLO Contractors module on the Sunday afternoon before go-live. MIS-AMS staff who were already on standby over the go-live weekend as a matter of course supplied revised components to ensure that the Monday go-live was a success.
Tony Blows, Spinnaker Group IT Manager commented, "The speed that MIS reacted was highly commendable. I was impressed with the fact that MIS were able to diagnose the source of the module's speed issue and within two hours on a Sunday evening we had been issued with a revised component, it was loaded, tested & ready for go-live on Monday morning. The out-of-hours responsiveness of the back-office staff was proof of the high levels of commitment offered by all of the members of the MIS team.”
Applications are deployed within a terminal server, thin client / Citrix environment across a number of sites encompassing the Foyer initiative and area office/internal contractor workforce based at Ryde.
Medina will be retaining their current SunAccount Financial system into which the integrated ActiveH modules all fully integrate.
Medina plan to add the MIS-AMS cash receipting solution in the next few months at its walk in offices.