Who is Sovini

The Sovini Group provides unique end-to-end construction, property and facilities services to the public, not-for-profit and private sectors.

They are a thriving, growing business that strives to create a better future for their customers, colleagues and the communities in which they work. Their mantra: Creating a better future.

The Sovini Group includes two registered providers – One Vision Housing and Pine Court Housing Association. Based predominantly in the North-West of England, they jointly own, manage and maintain more than 14,000 homes, and employ over 800 people.

Sovini's Challenge

The Sovini Group had two independent portals which were built in-house to support their social housing customers at One Vision Housing and Pine Court Housing.

Both portals handled a large number of customer payments, integrating directly with their chosen financial technology, Worldpay. The contract with Worldpay was coming to an end, and they had to make a decision. The choice had to be made on whether they should update the existing portals or procure a new portal which would integrate with the new payment provider. Due to the Worldpay contract details, the project had to be live within 3 months. A challenging deadline by anyone’s standards.

Active Housing had been providing a repairs diagnostics solution, Active Diagnostics, to Sovini’s property services arm, Sovini Property Services, since 2017. The positive and impactful relationship led to Sovini reviewing the Active Housing customer portal offering, Active Portal, when deciding which approach to take.

Sovini decided to progress with the implementation of Active Portal, with an initial launch focused on replacing the current portals’ functionality and the hope to unlock a number of quick wins through the out-of-the-box Active Portal functionality.

Overcoming the challenge with Active Housing

Active Housing have focused on delivering the project in an agile fashion, using fortnightly sprints to closely manage the project effectively and mitigate risks. Active Housing and Sovini have collaborated both on site, and through virtual stand-ups, on a weekly basis to ensure the sprints were delivered on time and met the acceptance criteria. This has enabled us to deliver the project successfully, and just as importantly, within the desired timeframe.

When starting the project, the Active Housing delivery team did not know who the new payment provider was going to be. Even after Sovini selected Allpay, the team was still unaware of the version of Allpay. It wasn’t until just one month before the portal was scheduled to launch, that the version was determined.

Nevertheless, the Active Housing delivery team worked very closely with Allpay and Sovini to recommend the version of Allpay to implement best. As we had worked with Allpay on several projects in the past, we were able to quickly integrate it with the new portal.

The Active Portal integrates with:

• Allpay

• Oneserve

• Sovini’s bespoke HMS

Customer Benefits:

🔒 Tenants can self-register with secure MFA

💰 Tenants receive a 360 view of their tenancy financials: including charge breakdown, sub-accounts and a statement facility

🎨 Dual-branding support meaning that tenants get a tailored look & feel based on each individual resident’s housing provider

🛠️ Tenants can log property issues and schedule repair appointments, taking on average only 99 seconds

💬 A powerful case management / messaging facility with customisable forms, to improve communication

🔔 Customisable and targeted alerts and notifications, which can be generated by predetermined logic or ad-hoc CMS created notifications

The Results (so far)

Getting an integrated solution live so quickly is a big achievement, but the key metric for success is whether Sovini and their customers are getting real world benefits. We are delighted to say that in a short couple of months the new portal already has 15,000 logins from over 4,500 registered users.

To learn more about Active Housing’s Active Portal and how we work with social landlords to deliver transformational online services for their tenants and leaseholders, please get in touch on 0800 023 9024 or email sales@activehousing.co.uk