Network Homes provides more than 21,000 affordable homes across London and Hertfordshire. On 1 October 2023, it merged with Sovereign Housing Association to become Sovereign Network Group (SNG), which manages more than 80,000 homes.

A long-standing user of NEC Housing, Network Homes went live with Account Analytics in April 2023, just as the cost of living crisis was having a noticeable affect on arrears. Bhavesh Kotecha was formerly team leader at Network Homes and is now Head of Income Management at SNG:

“Over the last six months, I’ve seen hundreds more accounts fall into arrears as household finances come under pressure. With such a high caseload, income managers need to know what to prioritise, and that’s what Account Analytics does.”

Moving away from static audits

Before going live with Account Analytics, SNG used an external audit service to identify accounts that needed action. Each week, they would receive a spreadsheet with around 200 cases to follow up. However, this process was admin-heavy and sometimes arrears had been cleared by the time contact was made.

To find a more efficient process, the team investigated a separate software solution but opted for Account Analytics so they could keep everything in one place.

Bhavesh explains:

“Our income managers want to identify and resolve priority cases as quickly as they can. The last thing they need is to be switching between systems or cross-checking data. We added Account Analytics to NEC Housing to give us the prioritisation we need without adding to the admin.”

Adding new categories with ease

Previously, if the team wanted its audits to return arrears data on a new category – for example, tenants who had received a Universal Credit payment in the last month – they would need to ask the service provider to change the analysis.

With Account Analytics, Bhavesh’s team can now manage this process themselves.

“Having more control over the categories is great. My team can create them and test them, then just ask our IT team to make them live. It’s quicker for us and it takes the pressure off in-house IT resources too.”