City of Plymouth revamps housing system with Fujitsu’s latest Genero solution
London, England – July 29, 2008 — City of Plymouth Council has just finished deployingConsol-ePlus – a building services solution developed by Fujitsu in Genero. City of Plymouth Council selected Consol-ePlus from a list of strong contenders, but Fujitsu’s cutting edge development and its long term relationship won the day. Fujitsu has been a trusted partner to the UK’s local government for over forty years (formerly through ICL, which it acquired in 1990) and works with over half of the local authorities in the UK. This experience means they understand the every day challenges local government face in serving their citizens.
“We first installed ConSol in 1994 and found it very responsive, but there were many limitations – not least ergonomically – due to its character based user interface.” said Mr. Martin E. Thomas, Commercial Support Manager, City of Plymouth Council. “The council’s drive to ‘mobile working’ forced us to a more modern graphical user interface and Consol-ePlus certainly takes us back to the cutting edge.”
“We looked at other systems but felt that Consol-ePlus would provide the best way forward.” said Mr. Thomas. “The process was started in June 2007, the system was being tested by November 2007 and we went live this Spring 2008.”
ConSol-ePlus enables the Building Services Division to control the areas of job receipt, job progression, job costing, and some sub-contractor control, as well as providing stock control and purchase order management. The ConSol-ePlus’ mobile data module enables operatives to receive works orders and notify completion of works over a radio data network, using hand-held devices.
Since Genero based Consol-ePlus has been installed, the staff have found that the system is far easier to navigate, provides more concurrent applications and most of all, user adoption is quicker as staff are familiar with Microsoft Windows.
There are enhanced facilites with Consol-ePlus that make job progression and job completion far quicker and easier. The stores module is now fully deployed and when full job costing comes on-line with everyone using hand-held PDAs, Plymouth will find itself in the forefront of a modern, effective and efficient organization that provides a customer focused value for money service to its Customers.
Plymouth aim to provide a range of good quality, affordable housing to meet the needs of Plymouth people, in partnership with other providers including housing associations. The housing department manages allocations, tenancy management, repairs and improvements, vacant properties and revenue collection for all their housing stock. It also provides housing information services to all residents in partnership with other agencies.
