Unlocking Efficiency with a Centralised CRM for Housing Providers
- Simon Bellis
- Mar 27
- 2 min read
Updated: Apr 1
In today's fast-paced business environment, customer data is often spread across multiple applications, such as email platforms, CRM tools, marketing software, support ticketing systems, and more. This fragmentation leads to several critical challenges:
· Inefficiency & Wasted Time
· Inconsistent & Incomplete Data
· Poor Customer Experience
· Limited Analytics & Insights
· Scalability Challenges
By centralising customer data within a single CRM, businesses can streamline workflows, improve collaboration, and enhance customer satisfaction through a more unified and informed approach.
F-Tek has encountered and resolved such issues in a number of business environments.
In one such instance, a large housing association was facing an issue with its view of the customer. The data was held in disparate systems, and customer service agents were required to navigate several IT systems to gain an accurate representation of the customer's situation. This led to inaccurate information and frustration from the customers when they potentially needed to reiterate issues already previously explained.
The information held on customers ranged from tenancy details (Northgate NEC) to repairs (DRS), billing, and complaints. In addition, the housing association needed information on the property, which was held in yet another system.
The requirement presented was to bring the data together into a single view, allowing a customer service representative to see a timeline of the customer's interactions in a simple and obvious way.
After workshops and discussions with the client, it was decided that the data would be presented in Microsoft Dynamics. To achieve this, an integration design leveraging Azure data factory and, where required, Azure functions was selected to build the single customer view. This design represented a simple but effective way to build the required integrations in the most cost-effective and efficient way, as these technologies are well-understood by development teams and have low running costs.
As a result, customer frustration and complaints focused on interactions with the client were reduced. In addition, the operational efficiencies it enabled allowed the call centre to achieve a higher throughput of customer calls. Other tools integrated into the process allowed the customer record to be automatically presented to the customer service agent on dialling the customer’s phone number, further improving the efficiency of the customer service function by reducing the time wasted by miss-keying names, addresses etc
Want to see how this works in practice? Head over to our latest case study to see how F-Tek helped a large housing association integrate multiple systems into a centralised CRM. By creating a single view of the customer, they reduced inefficiencies, improved service delivery, and empowered their teams with real-time insights — all through a streamlined, cost-effective solution.
