Covalent's strong momentum in the Social Housing sector continued apace in 2009, with no fewer than 16 new RSL and ALMO customers selecting Covalent to drive better corporate performance.

Dudley based Black Country Housing set the ball rolling in January, with Mid-Wales Housing following suit the following month, becoming Covalent's fourth Welsh Housing customer.

High Peak Community Housing was next to join, with Corporate Excellence Manager Louise Pearce explaining, "We were searching for a tool to assist in the improvements to our existing performance management framework. Whilst we had achieved a certain level of linking all performance information to key actions against the delivery plan and improvement projects, this was achieved with a lot of manual input and was reliant on data being collated once a month.

The aim was to have a transparent system to assist service managers in seeing exactly how their business areas were performing and delivering, with all that information being fed into a strategic view for Board. Covalent addressed these issues and also gave the added bonus of being able to link all actions and performance indicators to a self-assessment framework against the Key Lines of Enquiry. I would definitely recommend Covalent to other potential users. The ability to link all performance measures, actions and risks is an amazing business monitoring tool and it is simple to use and very easy on the eye.”

Surrey duo Hastoe Group and Paragon Community Housing Group were next to adopt Covalent, with Hertfordshire based Broxbourne HA also joining the Covalent community.

July saw Preston's Community Gateway Association elect to implement the majority of the Covalent Performance Management suite, including PIs, Actions, Risks, Self Assessments and Inspection Management, Tenant Feedback, Web Publishing, Strategy Maps and the integration module. Speaking on its decision to adopt Covalent, CGA's Nigel Mawdsley, Business Improvement Officer said, "Community Gateway Association had been trying out and testing corporate performance management systems over the last year. We viewed a number of management systems and did thorough research on them including site visits so that we could see if they were fit for CGA's purpose. The more our project team viewed and looked at, Covalent in action, the more impressed we became. Covalent has the potential to do what CGA requires and more."

East North East Homes (Leeds) and Colchester Borough Homes became the latest ALMOs to opt for Covalent, with the former recently achieving the coveted two stars from the Audit Commission following inspection (click here for earlier story).

Liverpool Mutual Homes became Covalent's 150th customer in August 2009, joining a growing number of Social Housing organisations in the Merseyside area who have implemented Covalent to manage corporate performance, including One Vision Housing, Plus Dane Group, Venture Housing, Knowsley Housing Trust, South Liverpool Housing Group and Helena Partnerships.

A month later and another Liverpool based RSL chose Covalent in the form of Cosmopolitan Housing Association. Emma Hartley, Continuous Improvement Manager for Cosmopolitan Housing Group said, "We were looking for an IT based solution that could streamline our performance management processes and free up valuable staff time to focus more on business analysis and continuous improvement.

After a review of the market and the products that are currently available, Covalent appeared to be the only option that could cater for all our needs… and much more besides! Covalent will provide a complete performance management environment that will allow us to monitor our real-time performance and action plan progress, as well as providing a host of other functionality such as assisting us with our business planning processes; monitoring risk and compliance; managing our service improvement plans and even overseeing our complaints handling procedures. The introduction of Covalent is going to revolutionise the way that the organisation operates and ultimately assist us to deliver even higher quality services to our customers."

September and October saw Trent and Dove Housing and Salford based City West Housing Trust sign up.

2009 was rounded off with another pair of ALMOs choosing Covalent: South Tyneside Homes and St George's Community Housing, Covalent's eighth and ninth ALMO customers to date, together with Sedgefield Borough Homes.

January 2010 has seen Manchester based Parkway Green Housing Trust elect to use Covalent.

For more information on Covalent Performance Management for RSLs and ALMOs, click here.