Living South

Living South: predictive data increases customer and employee satisfaction

Housing corporation Wonen Zuid believes that data-driven work helps increase efficiency and decisiveness, and improve tenant and employee satisfaction. It was therefore important to modernize the housing corporation's Business Intelligence (BI) environment in order to also better utilize the predictive power of data. An extensive project, which required additional expertise. Thanks to Valid, major steps were taken quickly. 

Challenge: getting more value from data

Wonen Zuid recognizes the value of insights gained from data. These help with better strategic and operational decisions, monitoring the financial position, planning maintenance and smooth cooperation with maintenance partners. For example, if you can predict when a property will become available for a new tenant, it is possible to signal maintenance teams and the rental department in time to be on standby. Based on this, processes can be set up more efficiently. 

Sandra Vestjens-Ortmans is a Business Intelligence Specialist and Information Advisor at Wonen Zuid. She explains that with reports from the existing BI environment, you were mainly looking in the rearview mirror. "Whereas we mainly want to look through the forward to get more value out of our data." 

Living South
Vaid consultation - woman man

Solution: revamping the BI environment

To look ahead, modernization and expansion of the BI environment was needed. Valid's expertise was used in the transition to Power BI. A solution that offers an integral overview. All kinds of available business information was scattered, in various reports. The choice of Valid for additional support was mainly because of its familiarity with the housing corporation sector. 

Benefit of collaboration: making quick strides

Vestjens: "It is of added value for us if someone helps us who already has branch and subject matter knowledge. It is also an advantage that Valid operates from southern Netherlands. That makes it easier to work together on location." 

Vestjens himself took the director's role, leaning on the expertise of Joost Wijdeven, Senior Business Intelligence Consultant at Valid. He introduced the agile development method to ensure that building new reports is fast, flexible and effective. Thus, great strides were made. 

"Valid provides ideal support on our path to becoming a data-driven organization."

Sandra Vestjens-Ortmans Advisor Information Provision Wonen Zuid
Managed Services Valid
Valid - business2

The result: insights quickly and widely available

The old BI environment has been phased out. And the authorization structure within Power BI is well established. Moreover, helping users to work with this new tool worked well. Employees received Power BI basic training to learn how to use the tool. In addition, twenty people received additional training to create their own reports, or to modify existing reports for their own use. If desired, it will be made available company-wide in Wonen Zuid's house style. 

Working from one system, in a uniform way, saves a lot of operations. Manually maintaining Excel sheets, for example, is now a thing of the past. An employee now generates information about vacant properties where change maintenance is needed at the push of a button. This saves at least two to three hours of work per week. Moreover, the information is also accessible to others in the organization. 

In addition, the reports also contribute to customer satisfaction. For example, Joost has created a report on interactions with a customer - via counter, phone or the Web site - from which a task arises, such as a maintenance request that someone needs to take action on. This gives managers better insight into open tasks, so they are picked up faster. 

Future: adding more resources

Now that the foundation has been laid, forecasting based on the data and unlocking more data sources are on the agenda. For this too, Wonen Zuid wants to engage Valid. "We experience Valid as a very reliable party to enjoy working with and we want to continue that," Vestjens said. According to Vestjens, Valid provides ideal support on the road to a more data-driven organization enabling it to improve and flourish its services. 

About Living South

Wonen Zuid is a housing corporation with a long history, founded in 1909. With some 14,000 social housing units in ten municipalities in Central and South Limburg, it offers affordable housing to thousands of people. Approximately 160 employees are committed daily to good maintenance, livable neighborhoods and satisfied tenants.