The housing sector faces a unique set of challenges. From managing vast portfolios of properties to ensuring tenant safety and meeting ever-evolving compliance requirements, the ability to understand and act on data is becoming increasingly critical.
Yet for many housing associations and local authorities, data remains fragmented, unstructured, and underutilised. That’s where infoboss (or as 3C call it “Data Logic”) is stepping in – offering a smart, secure, and scalable solution to help housing providers unlock the true potential of their information.
By enabling housing providers to discover, classify, and act on data across their entire organisation, Data Logic is transforming how information is used to drive real-world outcomes.
We chat with Nicky Hawkins, Director at 3C Consulting – an infoboss partner and specialist in supporting housing providers with digital and data transformation.
Why do people come to you?
“Typically, people come to us with data quality issues and the need to automate and maintain their data quality. Data compliance – GDPR – is a common driver, particularly around where personal information is stored and when it needs to be removed.
Data migration is another area. Clients often need a place to store data from legacy systems. We can point to both the source and target systems to run reconciliation, but we can also retain source data in Data Logic, allowing them to cancel the license for the old system.
One of the key benefits is managing data storage costs – especially with unstructured data like old files, duplicate files, and large files. This is particularly important for Boards and executive teams, as it reduces risk and provides assurance that the data they’re basing decisions on is of good quality.”
Is there market demand?
“The sector, on the whole, has a relatively low level of data maturity. Data doesn’t have a clear home – it’s not treated as a distinct function within the business. There’s often a lack of awareness around the importance of data as an asset.
At the same time, it’s a tightly regulated sector. The housing regulator conducts inspections, and housing organisations are assessed across three areas: governance, viability, and customer experience. Take governance, for example – it’s graded G1, G2, and G3, with G1 being the highest. A downgrade in governance is a major red flag.
If you look at governance downgrades, almost without exception, they can be traced back to poor-quality data. It might not be obvious at first – for instance, a downgrade might be due to missed servicing of gas appliances. That’s the headline. But if you dig deeper and ask how that happened, it’s often because the gas appliance wasn’t listed in the property system – a data issue at its core.”
How is it changing?
“Consider Awaab’s Law, introduced through the Social Housing (Regulation) Act 2023, following the tragic death of young Awaab Ishak due to prolonged exposure to mould in his home. This legislation now requires social landlords to address damp and mould issues within strict timeframes.
Then there are cases like Grenfell, where unsafe cladding on buildings still hasn’t been replaced in some instances.
These events have driven mandatory regulatory action. As a result, having accurate, up-to-date data is now essential – it’s the only way to properly identify risks, take timely action, and protect both tenants and landlords.”
Where do your clients see the benefit most?
“As part of the proof of concept, we encourage clients to assign a value to a record that’s incorrect. What is a bad record worth to the business? For example, if the rule is that a date of birth must be sensible – what’s that worth? Does it matter?
It might mean they’re not targeting tenants properly. In one case, several tenants were listed as under the legal age of 16.
Take gas appliances – every one must be serviced at least every 12 months and have a valid gas safety certificate. If some are missed, does it matter? Absolutely – it’s a compliance risk.
Another example might be a rule that every property must have rent assigned to it. If that’s missing, how much could that cost the organisation? Potentially thousands.
We get clients to think about these kinds of scenarios. As we build the rules, we help them assign a value to each one. So by the end of the proof of concept, they not only understand the data quality issues – they also see the financial risk they’re exposing themselves to.”
Housing organisations are sitting on mountains of data, but without the tools to make sense of it. Data Logic gives them the visibility and control to turn that data into actionable insight – securely, quickly, and without huge disruption.
- Identify vulnerable tenants through intelligent analysis of notes, histories, and external data.
- Improve asset management by bringing together siloed systems to provide a single, accurate view of property data.
- Accelerate compliance and reporting by automating the discovery and preparation of required information.
- Enhance operational efficiency by removing the manual burden of data quality and reconciliation.
Secure, scalable, and sector-specific
infoboss works within your existing infrastructure – whether on-premise or in the cloud – while keeping data security and governance at the forefront. Its intelligent engine automates previously time-consuming tasks, enabling staff to focus on value-added activities and better outcomes for tenants.
Whether you’re preparing for regulatory inspections, aiming to provide more targeted support, or simply trying to get control of sprawling datasets, infoboss is a trusted partner in that journey.
We’re working with housing providers and sector specialists like 3C Consulting to bring clarity and confidence to data management.
3C consulting are a business IT consultancy focused on the I in IT. An information-first consultancy with more than 150 Social Housing organisations whom they advise and support on their digital transformation journey. 3C have white-labelled the infoboss product as Data Logic for the UK social housing sector.
Discover how infoboss can unlock the huge potential of data management. Maximising its value and driving your business forward.
Sample data assessment.
infoboss can undertake a data assessment to determine the impact of data quality issues on your operations and revenue streams. Request a demo.
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Meet Infoboss
Infoboss can transform businesses through the power of data.
This innovative, enterprise-wide software solution makes it simple to find, clean and enhance structured and unstructured data.
Right now, businesses have data across different sources. Not to mention outdated platforms, expensive storage, and unknown numbers of duplicate records. Infoboss solves all these data issues, easily.
Ideal for organisations with large numbers of assets – from customer records to contracts – it takes away the clutter and confusion. All with a single, integrated data management platform. Streamlining decades of data and putting millions of files at your fingertips. Saving time and money. Making data work harder and smarter for business.
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