Home Group is a housing association, social enterprise and charity and is one of the UK’s largest providers of high-quality housing and integrated housing, health and social care. Operating for more than 80 years, the organisation aims to build homes, independence and aspirations. Today it supports over 125,000 customers who live in more than 55,000 homes across England and Scotland. In addition, during the last year, the group has worked with over 12,000 vulnerable people in its supported housing and health services.

Service quality forms a large focus for Home Group, which is proud to have been announced as the 7th best place to work in the UK, the 4th best in the Northeast and the 4th best for women.

Despite its high commitment to service quality, Home Group was facing challenges in its contact centre due to its former Workforce Management (WFM) tool reaching the end of its serviceable life. With the contact centre growing to 150 seats, the original solution was no longer fit for purpose, and therefore Gavin Rogerson, Resource Planning Manager, was focused on identifying a solution that would meet the needs of the organisation, both now and in the future.

Home Group selected Business Systems to implement the cloud-based Calabrio ONE Workforce Management (WFM) solution. It was recommended by Business Systems due to its robust forecasting, scheduling, and analytics capabilities, which were essential for optimising resource allocation and enhancing operational performance.

Since the implementation, Calabrio WFM has yielded impressive results, including achieving a return on investment within six months of implementation, surpassing the original two-year target.

• Over £16,000 in savings each month
• ROI in 6 months
• 12% increase in achievement of calls answered
• 20% increase in scheduling efficiencies
• Saved on 5 new hires
• 40 admin hours saved per week

Home Group has not only modernised its resource planning capabilities but also achieved substantial financial and operational benefits, including monthly financial savings of £16,000, and a 12% increase in the number of calls answered and responses to digital channels within the target Service Level Agreement. A 20% increase in scheduling efficiencies has also been recorded, in addition to saving 40 administrative hours per week.

Within six months of implementation, Home Group has achieved a return on investment (ROI), surpassing the two-year target that was originally envisioned with a project of this scale.

The transition to Calabrio ONE has helped to transform Home Group into a data-driven organisation, driving faster and more effective decision-making. Dashboards provide customisable performance metrics, empowering users to monitor and optimise their performance effectively.

With the ability to monitor contact centre activities and resources in one place, it is creating significant efficiencies when compared to the former manual approach used. Real-time data now provides managers with a single, unified view of the contact centre’s operations while workforce planners can create fast, efficient schedules at the click of a button.

Confirms Gavin: “Our goal has always been to provide the best end user experience – it might be a bit of a cliché but happy colleagues equal happy customers. We want our people to be happy, we want them to know where they’re at and this solution, which is so easy to use, helps us achieve this.”

Overnight, Business Systems and the Calabrio solution has given Home Group the power to make changes quickly, removing all manual processes. Adds Gavin: “We went from effectively pen and paper, to a state-of-the-art digital solution. We have seen

our average speed of call answering improve, and now have far greater visibility than before.”