Housing corporation Stadlander works better and easier thanks to OpenText

For years, Stadlander employees had been using different applications to store, view and edit information. Types of contact they use are for example contracts with contractors and rental agreements, but also of privacy-sensitive information. " We stored Different types of information in different systems," says Henk Stoutjesdijk, manager ICT and facilities at Stadlander. "That is why information became fragmented and data sometimes differed per system, because one system contained newer information than another. You never knew which version was the right one."

This led to frustrating situations for both customers and employees. "For a simple question from a tenant, a customer contact centre employee sometimes had to consult between five and seven systems. And then he would have to wonder whether he could find it. At that point, customer satisfaction was not sufficient." The starting point was therefore to let employees work in one system. The employees who are in contact with tenants in Salesforce, the financial department in the ERP system.

From fragmented to centralised data storage

The reason for this change was the housing corporation's new vision. The tenant took centre stage and had to be served via the channels they themselves find most convenient. "That requires a completely different dynamic and organisation of our IT," says Henk Stoutjesdijk. "We asked ourselves: how can we facilitate this omnichannel strategy with the systems we have? That turned out not to be possible. The system could not work as the flexible shell that we had in mind  in order to serve customers optimally."

Stadlander wants to monitor all processes and offer its tenants the same handling and quality through all channels. To be able to realise this, adjustments had to be made at the back end of the system. "We wanted a central storage location that is linked to all existing applications. We also wanted to make documents easier to find in the system, make it easier to search the documents and improve the version management of documents. And all this in the cloud, so that documents can be accessed anytime, anywhere."

OpenText as a suitable solution

In eleven months, Delaware implemented the OpenText Extended ECM Platform at Stadlander. All information that had been collected in the old system since 2006 was filtered, cleaned and transferred to the new document management solution. We’re talking about 1.4 million documents. This new central archive of the housing association was integrated with Salesforce, the financial system Dynamics AX (Tobias) and other applications.

Jos Linden, Solution Owner OpenText at delaware, explains that the choice for OpenText was obvious: "Within delaware, we have a lot of experience with the integration between systems such as Salesforce and the solutions of OpenText. When Stadlander came to us with this question, we immediately knew that this would be the most suitable solution."

New environment as a fresh start

Meanwhile, all employees of the housing corporation use the OpenText platform. They work with the application they use most frequently for their tasks and know for sure that the information they use is correct and the same across all systems.

Documents are now easier to find through the use of tags. "We analysed and enriched all documents during the transfer to increase their quality. For example, during the migration we immediately looked at whether we could link documents to a tenant file or a residential building. Also, the individual documents, such as PDFs, are now searchable with a search function," Jos explains.

Thanks to structural version management, there is only one version of each document. And Stadlander regularly removes or cleans up documents, which improves the searchability. Jos: "OpenText makes suggestions about which documents Stadlander can remove. In doing so, the software takes into account the conditions that you enter. That is convenient, for example because you are obliged to keep financial documents for seven years and then you have to delete them. When the mandatory retention period is over, the software asks if you want to delete the information."

Tenant records linked to Salesforce

All tenant files of Stadlander are now directly linked to the CRM-system of Salesforce. This means that tenants are helped better and faster. "When contacting a tenant, the customer service immediately has the right file in front of them, containing all information of the concerning tenant. So when a tenant calls, the employee doesn't have to click through various applications, but knows immediately what the situation is. This allows us to speak to people very personally. So a tenant doesn't have to share the same information over and over again," says Henk.

Thanks to the integration with Salesforce, all tenant information is also bundled, which results in a considerable improvement of efficiency and an increase of tenant satisfaction. Stoutjesdijk: "With the new vision and IT structure, our employee and tenant satisfaction has increased and we are well on our way to achieving our ambition of an 8+.

Collaboration with a future

Due to the integration of several software packages, many different (supplier) parties were involved in the migration, in addition to the IT department and the business of Stadlander. "This means that there must be good cooperation and a clear consultation structure to inform and involve everyone in time. I am very satisfied with how the cooperation with delaware went. Of course, it was intens at times. But thanks to delaware's knowledge, complex problems were solved quickly. I look back on a successful project," says Henk Stoutjesdijk.

Jos Linden: "We are not there yet. This was the first phase of the project. In phase two, we are looking at other applications with which Stadlander wants to make the link to OpenText. Such as the application for making 3D drawings and the application for meeting reports. The manager ICT and facility management at Stadlander responds: "There is a good foundation for further improvements and innovations. We will now look at what our wishes are and whether these have changed in the past year. Then we will move forward together. So our cooperation with Delaware has plenty of future prospects!"