One Vision Housing has recently reached full compliance over 57 elements in an external assessment by Customer Service Excellence. On top of the excellent achievement, OVH have also been awarded ‘Compliance Plus’ for six key projects, where they have taken an innovative or unique approach. These projects included the ‘Covalent Week’ project previously featured in Covalent’s Customer News; click here for further details.

Customer Service Excellence is a government initiative, working to ensure that services for all are efficient, effective, excellent, equitable and empowering – with the citizen always and everywhere at the heart of service provision. To this end Customer Service Excellence was developed to offer services a practical tool for driving customer-focused change within their organisation. The standard tests in great depth those areas that research has indicated are a priority for customers, with particular focus on delivery, timeliness, information, professionalism and staff attitude. There is also emphasis placed on developing customer insight, understanding the user’s experience and robust measurement of service satisfaction.

Speaking of OVH’s achievement, Hugh Keachie, the Assessor from Centre for Assessment said;

“There is a real commitment as an organisation to go beyond what is expected of them enabling the customers’ individual needs to be met with positive results”.

The award from Customer Service Excellence for OVH comes hot on the heels of confirmed retention of the Tenant Participatory Advisory Service (TPAS) accreditation for excellence in customer involvement received in March 2013.

One Vision Housing have been avid users of the Covalent’s Performance Management solution since mid-2008, utilising a range of Covalent applications including PI, Action & Project Planning, Risk Management, Staff Appraisals and Integration, to monitor and report on the organisations activities and the services provided to their customers.

Speaking on behalf of OVH Louise Ndukwe, Performance Team Leader said:

“This is the first time we have entered the accreditation for ‘Compliance Plus’, and is a fantastic achievement to have Covalent Week as one of the six key projects. We were able to show how this week was truly innovative having a real impact on employee’s performance by demystifying Covalent and showing the linkage with our Corporate Values and Golden Thread. This in turn has led to measureable improved outcomes. We were thrilled that all the hard work our Internal Covalent User Group had put into organising and delivering this week had such a positive outcome”.

Click here to learn more about Covalent for Social Housing

Mersey Care NHS Trust has selected Covalent Enterprise Risk Management to manage its corporate risk programme.  This follows a robust testing and evaluation process using the Trust’s live data during which a Covalent consultant worked with the Trust’s Risk Management Team to scope, design and build a solution that fully met the Trust’s requirements.  The solution encompasses the Trust’s Board Assurance Framework, Corporate and Departmental Risk Registers and Project Risk Logs.  The Trust now intends to roll out the solution across the organisation and anticipates a quick return on its investment in terms of efficiency and improved quality of its management of risks.

Steve Bradbury, Head of Quality & Risk at NHS Mersey Care NHS Trusts commented: “The flexibility of Covalent ERM allowed us to quickly develop a solution that surpassed our expectations.  Not only did it complement and improve our current processes, but added a number of additional benefits that we hadn’t fully considered.  The simplicity of the solution makes updating easy and reports and dashboards are available at the press of a button”.  

To learn more about Covalent Risk for the NHS click here

The initiative, launched in 2012, is designed to give small UK-owned software businesses a helping hand by providing additional profile in the IT sector. Candidates are given the opportunity to meet with the TechMarketView research team, to demonstrate and discuss their solutions and services one-to-one. Each company will then receive valuable constructive feedback from the team and get a review in TechMarketView UKHotViews, a most highly regarded source of daily commentary on the UK IT scene, and a profile in a special research report which will be distributed to ‘movers and shakers’ in the industry.

About TechMarketView

TechMarketView is the leading independent industry analyst firm specialising in the UK software and IT services market.

One Vision Housing’s ‘Covalent Week’ event is now over. The event successfully engaged staff at the housing association in maintaining their high levels of user engagement, communicating a number of important messages to all staff and helping to culturally embed the system even further through the organisation.

Reporting on the success of the event, Louise Ndukwe, OVH Performance Team Leader and system administrator for the Covalent solution said;

“ OVH’s Internal Covalent User Group were challenged with making Covalent IT software fun and exciting by delivering a  week of  events and activities with various communications to build awareness of the covalent application, what it can deliver and how it helps us support our corporate values of Success, Passion, Authenticity, Enterprise and Courage.

We also celebrated our Journey with Covalent which has been rolled out over the last 3 years, delivered a programme of training and looked at the future Covalent Strategy which will influence our development and future adoption of more modules. The future driver will be the needs of the business and how Covalent software can support this.

One of the highlights of the week was the attendance by our Covalent Account Manager to talk about the Covalent Strategy to our management team and new developments coming along”

Speaking specifically about the benefits and support OVH has experienced from Covalent over the past three years, Louise said;

“Covalent Software has provided OVH with an excellent product which has supported well the business helping us to deliver top quartile performance, support our action planning providing a clear golden thread from individual appraisal performance right through to the corporate objects. Covalent also has the added advantage that it is extremely easy to use by all staff throughout the organisation at whatever level”

“In terms of general customer care Covalent, has provided OVH with excellent customer service which at times has gone above and beyond the general service we would normally expect from a software company. Their help desk is really quick and efficient for day-to –day support but also with development and support for the business through new modules this has been excellent”

Initial feedback and evaluation from staff at One Vision Housing concluded that;

“Delivery of the week has already provided us with insights into better communication with the software, areas where we will need to target more training on the back of rolling out Employee Performance Management to the group and new initiatives we are planning to implement going forward.

The impacts and outcomes will be measured over the course of the next 6 months to ascertain whether we fully achieved what we set out to in the beginning, five months ago. However, while we are still undertaking the evaluation the feedback so far has indicated that we have been successful in raising the general awareness of the application across the Sovini Group and those who attended events are now more confident in using the application.”

Following a post project review the event has now acted as a catalyst to new initiatives and projects going forward which include communications, future training, and focusing on business activities to see how the Internal Covalent User Group members can better support OVH staff in utilising Covalent to its full potential.

Click here to learn more about Covalent for Social Housing

Next week will be Covalent Week at customer One Vision Housing. The Internal Covalent User Group at OVH decided to run a Covalent Week to help ensure they maintain their high level of user engagement, have an opportunity to communicate a number of important messages to all staff and to culturally embed the system even further through the organisation.

The Merseyside based housing association have recently completed set-up of the EPM solution across the entire organisation, allowing 400+ users to access the system. The event also provides an opportunity for OVH users to celebrate their journey with Covalent and take a look at how far they have come together in the last 3 years.

Throughout the week One Vision Housing staff will be running a number of Covalent Master Class training sessions, Covalent Webinars, drop in sessions (workshops), and other tailored training sessions.  A Quiz, Raffle, and Covalent Staff Suggestion scheme with prizes will be included to help promote user involvement and messages will be communicated out the event on screens and via the intranet.  One Vision’s Covalent Account Manager will be attending to run though the Strategy with the senior management team and the launch venue will be decorated with Covalent balloons and a range of branded merchandise supplied by Covalent to support the event.

The Week has been planned with clear business objectives and measurable outcomes in mind.  We look forward to sharing the outcomes of this week of celebrations in words and pictures after the event and would like to take this opportunity to wish OVH every success for their Covalent Week and into the future.

Nottm City purchased the Covalent solution in early 2012, joining the existing 8 Council customers in Nottinghamshire, to manage their corporate performance, risk and action planning. In addition, Nottm City selected the optional Feedback/Complaints and Integration modules from Covalent to help support their Citizen First (customer care) transformation programme.

Citizens in Nottingham City will now be able to log details of any comments, compliments and complaints relating to the councils services via a web form at: https://secure.nottinghamcity.gov.uk/haveyoursay/

The feedback information from the councils web-form will be automatically routed via Covalent’s Integration functionality, to the relevant department and responsible officer at the council, to respond appropriately. Details of all of the feedback received by Nottm City will then be held within Covalent, allowing the council to monitor and analyse results to ensure the best possible service is being provided to citizens.

Speaking on behalf of the Council, Gary Dawes, Senior Corporate Performance Specialist said;

‘Covalent will enable us to provide regular and consistent qualitative management information to Councillors and senior managers on all comments, compliments and complaints we receive.  Understanding the patterns of when, how and why citizens contact us and the root causes, will enable us to target interventions and recommend changes in processes or service provision where this is appropriate.  The ability to capture and analyse this information will help us identity lessons learned to share best practice across the organisation to drive improvement.’

To learn more about Covalent Feedback, click here

Aberdeenshire Council becomes the 21st Scottish Council to select the Covalent solution.

Covalent already supply well over half of the 32 Local Government Councils in Scotland with their corporate performance solution. Following a procurement process, Covalent have been selected as the supplier of choice for monitoring, managing and reporting the councils performance indicators, risks, action plans, self assessments and publishing progress of their Single Outcome Agreement to citizens.

Speaking on behalf of the council, Amanda Roe, Performance Manager said “Aberdeenshire Council has been developing its approach to performance management over the last couple of years and needed a solution that could support the maturing framework and enable all staff, elected members and local communities to get the best from the framework. Through an open procurement process, we awarded the contract for the supply and support of a corporate performance management system to Covalent because it met all our requirements, looked easy to use and was good value for money. All officers who saw Covalent demonstrated as part of the procurement process chose it as their preferred solution. A number of officers have used the covalent solution in other councils and the Project Team was impressed at how positive these staff viewed both the solution and the company.”

For more information on Covalent for Councils click here

Covalent welcomes aboard a brand new housing association customer, South Lakes Housing.

South Lakes Housing (SLH) is Cumbria’s newest housing association following a stock transfer of 3,155 homes in Cumbria from South Lakeland District Council in March 2012.

The Board has recently agreed a new vision to become one of the country’s top performing housing associations with a reputation for delivering its promises, for developing high quality new homes and for expanding and adapting services to meet changing demands. Covalent will play an important role in the new organisation, helping to embed action planning, key performance indicators and risk management into its new culture, processes and structure.

Speaking on behalf of SLH, Performance Manager, John Mansergh said “Our Board, tenants, lenders, partners and regulator all want different levels of information and we found Covalent is the right solution. We hope to use Covalent in our management meetings, decision making reports and presentations to stakeholders. We also want to ensure every manager is able to view performance and risks from their PC when they arrive at work in the morning, helping them to prioritise corrective action and in turn, helping SLH to become one of the top performing housing associations”.

To learn more about Covalent for Social Housing Providers, click here

Covalent finalists include;

Large Housing Association of the Year
Helena Partnerships
Liverpool Mutual Homes
Parkway Green Housing Trust

Arms Length Management Organisation of the Year
CityWest Homes

Specialist Housing Provider of the Year
Aspire Housing

Strategic Local Authority of the Year
Elmbridge Borough Council

Partnership of the Year
Doncaster Metropolitan Borough Council

Most Efficient Landlord of the Year
One Vision Housing
Plus Dane Group

Sustainable Landlord of the Year
Monmouthshire Housing

Business Transformation of the Year
Parkway Green Housing Trust

Innovation of the Year
London Borough of Haringey

Development of the Year – Large Schemes
Black Country Housing Association

Covalent wishes all of the finalists the very best of luck in their categories. Winners will be announced at a ceremony to be held on 27 June at Hilton Hotel, Park Lane, London.

To learn more about Covalent for Social Housing providers, click here

Southend-on-Sea Borough Council are named
winner of the landmark title of ‘Council of the Year 2012′ at the prestigious Local Government Chronicle Awards.

Judges said: “The winning Council has shown sustained progress over a number of years, passing clear milestones. It has gone beyond basic service provision, adding significant value and demonstrating visible impact for the community.”

Chief Executive of Southend, Rob Tinlin said: “Strong performance management has been  an essential part of the council’s improvement journey, and Covalent has played an increasingly important role supporting that progression over the last 4 to 5 years.”

Southend-on-Sea Council join the list of Covalent customers who have achieved Council of the Year awards, previous winners include West Lothian, Wychavon and Tunbridge Wells Councils.

For more information on Covalent for Councils, please click here