Exploring Current Thinking In Remote Management & Monitoring
“What do you think are the biggest benefits from using remote access, management or monitoring?” Base: All answering (136)
preferences, to ‘self-service’ options that can allow tenants to access the information necessary themselves and engage with providers online (reducing workloads), to the ability to provide staff with data on housing in the field or at home, in real time. Past the benefits of direct action to data, such as logging client complaints
online, the benefits of data from more all-encompassing, interconnected adoptions of remote technologies across an entire housing stock can provide ‘big data analytics’ through which housing providers can identify patterns, trends and needs in order to make more accurate, data-driven decisions. While only 18 per cent of respondents who already use remote technologies
said they started doing so in order to gather data, 28 per cent of all respondents listed data gathering as one of the biggest benefits of remote technologies in housing, 86 per cent agreed that data is essential in enabling housing providers to communicate with their tenants more effectively, and 78 per cent agreed that remote and self service technologies make the collection of data easier and more effective.
REMOTE WORKING It was not only access to tenants' properties that was hampered by the Pandemic, but each lockdown has prevented many housing professionals from even accessing their offices. Before Covid, the Government reports that only around 5 per cent of the
country worked from home. During lockdown, this reportedly increased to almost half of all workers. Much of this would have been impossible without remote technologies. In
order to perform their jobs from home, workers need to access the data necessary over the cloud. 82 per cent of our respondents who use remote technologies currently work
from home to some extent, and 52 per cent of all respondents believe that the opportunity to work remotely is one of the biggest benefits of such technologies. With 80 per cent of all respondents foreseeing that Covid has increased the need for remote practices, respondents’ comments on the reasons why included
that the “new normal will inevitably change the way we do things,” that the “world will never be the same again, but these changes will be for the better,” and that they “don't want to lose the benefits that [they] have experienced during the last year.”
CONCLUDING SUMMARY With 82 per cent of our respondents believing that remote technologies will be widespread in the next five years, and 10 per cent more in the next 10 years, its adoption across the sector seems all but inevitable. Despite this, 33 per cent of respondents are yet to take up any forms of
remote technology in their work. Many of those who already do use the technologies appear to have had their hands forced by Covid, with 80 per cent saying it has increased the need for remote practices. Takeup of many of the other solutions, however, remained relatively low in
comparison. Costs, unwilling tenants and reliability were among the causes of this, yet cost savings and the reduction of physical access to tenants’ homes were two of the largest benefits of the technology reported by those who have adopted it. 42 per cent of respondents believe there is not enough information available on such practices, which perhaps explains this dissonance to some degree. Though its uptake has been relatively slow, the wider benefits that the
technology brings have been shown in the data. Whether it’s improving ecology, safety or convenience, the easing servicing of data gathering, the identification of ageing tenants, or preventative intervention, remote technologies can not only solve issues across the housing spectrum, but increase the quality and efficiency of many of the tasks it faces on a daily basis. While much of the industry has already adopted these solutions to some
extent, there are many remote technologies that the majority of housing professionals are still missing out on. Any housing providers who do not already understand remote management and monitoring, its benefits, and how much the sector is likely to rely on it in the near future, should action this now, or be left behind.
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30 | HMM April/May 2021 |
www.housingmmonline.co.uk
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