Our Articles and White Papers
NEC Housing is fast becoming the ‘GoTo’ Housing Management System (HMS) for local authorities and housing associations across the UK.
However, implementing or upgrading NEC Housing can be a complex and time-consuming process and so you may be wondering whether to seek additional professional support. The reality is that getting the right help can save time, reduce risk, and ensure your system meets compliance and operational needs.
Setting up NEC Housing is more than just installing new software, it’s about making life easier for your teams, improving workflow efficiency, and improving tenant satisfaction.
Here are some common challenges organisations face:
Complex Data Migration
Your current system holds years of tenancy, rent, and asset data. Moving this data into NEC Housing requires careful planning to ensure accuracy. Poor data migration can lead to lost records, NEC Housing functions not working, incorrect rent balances, and tenant service disruptions.
Getting The Configuration Right
NEC Housing is so powerful because it is highly configurable, but to harness that power it must be set up correctly to match your organisation’s policies and workflows. From rent calculations to void management and arrears processes, the system needs to work seamlessly with your existing operations.
Training Staff To Use The System Effectively
Even the best system is useless if staff don’t know how to use it. Without proper training, your team may struggle with everyday tasks, leading to inefficiencies, frustration, resistance and errors. Expert guidance ensures that staff are confident and capable.
Integrating With Other Systems
NEC Housing needs to connect with finance systems, asset management tools, document storage, and tenant portals. Without proper integration, staff may face duplication of work, data inconsistencies, and operational bottlenecks.
Given the challenges, it’s no surprise that many organisations bring in consultants to help with NEC Housing implementations and upgrades.
Here’s how expert support can benefit you:
Accurate and Secure Data Migration
Specialists enhance data migration as they have specialist data mapping and transformation tools to ensure data integrity during migration. They understand the NEC Housing data structure and can ensure that rent accounts, tenancy histories, and maintenance records transfer correctly.
Faster Implementation with Minimal Disruption
Experienced consultants understand the NEC Housing framework and can anticipate challenges, and suggest optimum configuration, helping you avoid delays and ensuring a smooth transition.
Staff Training and Long-Term Support
A well-implemented system is only as good as the people using it. Professional trainers enable your team make the most of NEC Housing. NEC Housing training experts bring quick start training materials and Quick Reference Guides to ensure that the training can quickly be
A System Tailored to Your Needs
NEC Housing is not a one-size-fits-all system. Your organisation will have a unique set of systems and interfaces that need to be woven into the NEC Housing solution. Consultants bring a mix of business and technical skills to customise workflows, dashboards, API’s and interfaces.
If you’re considering external support, here’s what to look for:
NEC Housing expertise
Look for specialists with hands-on experience, ideally across the full range of NEC Housing Modules.
Proven track record
Look for specialists that have seen more than one project go live having met the agreed acceptance criteria
Transferable Resources
Look for specialists that can provide editable templates, model configurations, and NEC Housing specific data tools so that you can proceed at a faster pace and not have to ‘re-invent the wheel’.
Final Thoughts
A successful NEC Housing implementation can transform the way your organisation operates, improving efficiency and tenant services. However, without expert support, it can become a complex and time-consuming process that risks costly mistakes.
Bringing in NEC Housing specialists, such as Quality Led Projects. ensures that your system is implemented correctly, integrated with other platforms, has the correct data and aligned with your business needs
To find out how Our team can make your NEC Housing upgrade or implementation a success, cheaper and faster, email us at Hello@qualityledprojects.co.uk.
When Swindon Borough Council embarked on a two-year journey to replace its aging 'Open Housing' system with the new NEC Housing platform, the stakes were high.
Budget constraints, a small team, and tight deadlines meant there was little room for error. Many housing management system (HMS) implementations historically failed to deliver full functionality on "Day 1," resulting in costly fixes.
To sidestep these pitfalls, Swindon collaborated with Quality Led Projects (QLP) and turned to an unexpected ally—Artificial Intelligence (AI)—to streamline the project and ensure success.
With an ambitious "big bang" go-live approach, Swindon's project team needed to minimize manual workload while ensuring high accuracy.
The primary objective?
Delivering a fully functional system “Right First Time.” AI became the key to achieving this, particularly in automating acceptance criteria and test case generation.
A proof of concept (PoC) was conducted to evaluate AI’s potential in three key areas:
The results were striking—AI proved to be most effective in automating the creation of acceptance criteria and test scripts, leading to significant efficiency gains.
To make the most of AI, the project team adopted a structured approach, incorporating best practices to ensure accuracy and reliability.
Defining business requirements through structured user stories helped train AI to generate relevant and high-quality outputs. This ensured:
Several key steps were taken to integrate AI effectively:
The impact of AI on the NEC Housing implementation was transformative.
Before AI Implementation:
After AI Implementation:
AI has not only streamlined Swindon’s NEC Housing rollout but has also set a precedent for future projects. The next phase involves integrating specialist test automation tools to execute AI-generated test cases, ensuring:
Swindon’s success story is a blueprint for other social landlords looking to optimize their own HMS implementations.
By strategically using AI, councils and housing providers can save thousands of pounds, accelerate delivery timelines, and improve service quality.
"Our partnership with QLP, built on trust and innovation, enabled us to navigate a complex implementation effectively. By breaking down challenges into manageable tasks, we ensured a high-performing project team achieving the right outcomes."
— Arlene Griffin, Head of Housing Commissioning and Strategy
A robust HMS is the backbone of effective housing services. Swindon Borough Council’s innovative approach has shown that AI isn’t just a futuristic concept—it’s a practical tool that can drive real-world transformation today. By leveraging AI, councils can achieve greater efficiency, better compliance, and higher customer satisfaction, setting new standards in public sector digital transformation.
Interested in learning how AI can accelerate your NEC Housing project?
Contact QLP at Hello@qualityledprojects.co.uk.
Shifting the Focus: From 'How' to 'What'
With modern Housing Management Systems, collecting data has never been easier.
Features such as surveys, feedback forms, mobile reports, and contact portals streamline the data-gathering process.
As a result, when it comes to Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSMs), the real challenge is no longer how to collect the data, but rather what data should be collected—and more importantly, how to use it effectively.
When designed and executed well, TSMs can drive meaningful improvements in tenant well-being, service quality, and long-term organisational performance.
However, to unlock these benefits, organisations must ensure that TSMs collect relevant information that enables staff to allocate time, effort, and budget towards the areas that matter most to tenants.
The Challenge of Getting It Right
Many housing providers struggle to implement effective TSMs due to three primary challenges:
1. Misalignment of Priorities
Management priorities can sometimes overshadow the real concerns of tenants. Without a robust feedback mechanism, TSMs risk measuring what the organisation thinks matters rather than what actually matters to tenants.
2. Lack of Effective Stakeholder Engagement
If frontline staff, operational teams, and tenants are not consulted during the design of TSMs, critical insights and practical considerations may be overlooked.
3. Ineffective Requirements Gathering
Poorly defined requirements often lead to the collection of large volumes of data without delivering clear benefits to the organisation or tenants. For example, if requirements are too broad, data might be collected in a way that provides no actionable insights, leaving both staff and tenants frustrated.
Developing a Quality-Led Approach
A quality-led approach ensures that every TSM objective, question, and data point is clearly linked to priorities that tenants and staff genuinely care about. The key elements of this approach include:
1. Define Clear Objectives
Start by defining why tenant satisfaction is being measured in the first place.
Is the goal to improve repair times, enhance community engagement, or increase digital accessibility?
Clearly articulated objectives create a framework that guides every subsequent decision.
2. Develop a Standardised Yet Flexible Framework
While different departments may have specific needs, it is essential to establish a standardised framework of questions and measures that is accessible across all departments. Without such a framework, organisations risk duplicating efforts or alienating tenants with inconsistent or repetitive questions.
A well-structured framework maintains consistency in data collection while allowing flexibility to address department-specific requirements.
3. Pilot and Validate
Once the measures are designed, test them with a small tenant group. Gather feedback on clarity, relevance, and comprehensiveness. The pilot phase allows for necessary adjustments and ensures that TSMs genuinely align with tenant priorities before a full rollout.
4. Consistent Review and Continuous Improvement
A quality-led approach is not static—it is iterative. As tenants’ needs evolve, so should your TSMs. Establish a schedule for periodic reviews (quarterly or annually) to refine questions, scoring mechanisms, and feedback channels.
5. Ongoing Feedback Loops
Keep tenants informed about changes. If data highlights a common dissatisfaction (e.g., poor repair communication), let tenants know their feedback has been heard and corrective actions are underway.
Why a Quality-Led Approach Matters
Getting TSMs right from the outset creates a virtuous cycle of feedback and improvement, ensuring that services genuinely align with tenant needs.
This not only strengthens regulatory compliance but, more importantly, delivering tangible benefits:
Improved tenant trust.
Enhanced service quality.
A stronger, more responsive.
By embedding quality principles into the design, execution, and review of TSMs, housing providers can turn tenant feedback into meaningful action—not just data points on a report.