Housing options configuration management overview
The process of housing options management has a number of contributory factors that need to be configured at the outset in order to inform daily activities, operations and functions. These configuration components enable the housing organisation to define specific parameters in line with their own procedures and advisory service standards. Additional values and attributes can be appended to the records at any time, as required, although maintaining comprehensive information from the start will reap its own rewards. There are several key areas that fall under the category of housing options configuration management: advice maintenance, escalation rule maintenance, task maintenance and workflow maintenance.
Housing Options Advice Maintenance - All the information available through the housing options advisory service can be captured within a series of statements, presenting all the housing opportunities that will be relevant to a customer based on their responses to a customised enquiry form. Some advice statements might be considered generic, and relevant to all housing enquiries, whereas others will be specific to a particular housing option type (or workflow). Each individual advice statement might comprise a sequence of instructions, guidance notes, or perhaps links to other related agencies, and these will then be combined to form a comprehensive customer information pack, detailing the housing options available to meet their needs.
Housing Options Escalation Rule Maintenance - All activities focused on progressing a housing options enquiry can be service level driven and form an integral part of a wider Service Level Agreement (SLA). Escalation rules define the automatic events to be triggered in the instance where a task exceeds the SLA target, or reaches a predefined warning period. The escalation process would typically notify the case or task owner, and potentially members of a stakeholder group using customised communication templates. The escalation process is not just a one-off exercise but rather subsequent follow-on rules can be defined and triggered in the event that a task has stagnated beyond a defined period. Open tasks can therefore be continually tracked and actively progressed through to a successful outcome.
Housing Options Task Maintenance - A housing options task is a specific activity to be conducted following a customer enquiry into their housing opportunities, from which a case has been generated. A discrete task could be, say, to telephone the customer, send an acknowledgement letter, liaise with an external agency or arrange a follow-up interview; indeed any single event that will help to structure and define the workflow of a case. All housing options tasks activated as a consequence of raising a new case can be service level driven and linked to escalation rules, such that a defined process is initiated in the event that their progression falls behind agreed targets. Within each housing options task, there are three key components of SLA compliance tracking: amber warning period, follow-on escalation and target completion exceeded.
Housing Options Workflow Maintenance - Each advice stream covered by a local authority's housing options service can be configured within a separate workflow definition, and linked to a customised question template - the enquiry form - the responses from which are used to trigger relevant advice statements. The allocation of tasks to a housing option workflow defines how the resulting case will be progressed, and these can either be activated manually at the point of need, or included within the workflow path, with automatic activation triggered when a new case is first launched.
Separate help articles have been created for each key aspect of housing options configuration management, including: