Case study | Regenda Housing Group website and Portal
Overview
Using VerseOne's powerful product suite and design expertise, Regenda launched their rebranded online presence.
The Regenda Group employs around 700 people, has assets of around £511 million and a turnover of £65 million, and built over 400 properties in the last three years—including homes for sale, social and private rent and shared ownership—in rural and city-centre locations. The Group is growing—acquiring four new businesses in the last two years.
To support their award-winning innovation and ambition, Regenda choose to make use of VerseOne's powerful product suite, design flair, and integration expertise.
The Challenge
Regenda’s growth and focus on delivering fantastic customer service meant changes to their brand and online offerings across the Group’s portfolio. The challenge was to bring all of these components—a rebrand, multiple new websites, and 2 customer account portals—into a single, rationalised solution that could be managed easily by all of the relevant business teams.
Accordingly, Liverpool-based Regenda Housing has been re-focusing the whole of their online estate with VerseOne, and undertaking back-office systems review and integration with Manifest Software Solutions. VerseOne and Manifest, both of whom are official partners on the HACT UK Housing Data Standards project, previously partnered on the hugely successful Aspire Housing portal project, and Regenda had ambitions to create an even more advanced resident self-service experience.
Regenda Programme Manager, Colin Inkson, led on the portal projects with partners VerseOne and Manifest Software Solutions.
Our aim was to create a self-service portal which was easy to use and ensured our customers received an excellent standard of service, whenever and however they came into contact with us.
We also had to integrate the portal with our various back-office systems; our Orchard HMS and Kirona DRS Contractor Scheduler, as well as bringing other data sources into our master systems.
The Solution
The foundations of the solution needed to indentify the key needs of Regenda's audiences, building up a detailed blueprint of the navigational structure, aesthetic direction and functionality required. Each website and portal was workshopped with stakeholders and customers to undertake content priority analysis, wireframing, navigation, and user journeys.
The end result has been new websites for Petrus, The Learning Foundry, Redwing Living and their flagship development Plaza 1821, and a re-design for the Regenda Group website itself. Working with VerseOne’s project management office and teams of expert designers and front-end developers, Regenda slipstreamed the projects in line with VerseOne’s tried and tested project delivery methodology to ensure on-time launches and superior user experiences.
Manifest Software Solutions has been responsible for deploying their Universal Adaptor to enable the back-office system integrations, as Director Dave Carr explains:
“This has been a complex and demanding project, requiring enormous co-ordination across the teams. Working with VerseOne and Regenda, we believe that, with this project, we have again pushed forward the boundaries of what a self-service portal should deliver. We look forward to the next phase of the project, and to continue demonstrating what can be achieved.”
The programme of work also included customer account portals for Regenda Homes and Redwing Living. Catering to social tenants, private tenants, and leaseholders, the new portals offer registration and automated ID validation, display and updating of personal details, detailed and searchable rent statements, online payments and Direct Debit set-up, ad hoc reporting and self-appointing repairs (both for properties and communal schemes), maintenance schedules, and more.