Raúl Poblador, Head of Data Engineering at Plentific, highlights how AI and automation are transforming the UK housing sector by streamlining property management and enhancing efficiency for landlords and residents
Whilst many sectors have rapidly adopted AI and automation solutions, the UK housing sector has been slower to embrace AI, with many social landlords missing out on AI-driven efficiencies and improved service delivery.
Housing providers understandably have concerns about cost, implementation complexity and disruption of existing digital transformation programmes, as well as integration with current processes and legacy systems.
There is also a skills gap in terms of expertise to fully leverage AI and automation to create responsive and personalised services, which is limiting resident expectations, hindering the challenges of delivering seamless, high-quality levels of service.
AI has the power to positively influence data sets and analytics, creating smarter, more secure and sustainable asset management.
Ethical AI frameworks
In a recent survey of Plentific’s 56,000 LinkedIn followers, conducted by Cremarc, 60% considered AI would assist the automation of processes in property management. In terms of benefits to residents, these include the dynamic scheduling of repairs, processing housing applications and managing payments.
Secure data handling and privacy are fundamental foundations for building trust between property managers and residents; 41% of those polled have data privacy concerns with 78% voting for data privacy as the most critical ethical consideration with AI.
Safeguarding of data is key, with top-tier security measures such as data encryption required; transparency and accountability of AI models are of prime importance to stakeholders.
In the UK and beyond, it is important the use of AI in social housing adheres to ethical guidelines and frameworks, complying with GDPR and other data protection regulations, as well as ethical AI principles.
Supercharge productivity and efficiency with AI and automation
Plentific has been at the forefront of the UK housing sector’s experimentation with AI-powered features, whilst putting AI to work to transform property operations.
Over the last year, Plentific has stepped up to innovate and create an ever-more deeply integrated AI-powered platform. This provides wraparound solutions for social landlords, delivering a best-in-class service for residents. Plentific is supporting the UK housing sector to grow, with fully automated solutions.
Plentific’s machine learning algorithms improve workflows creating significant cost savings from learning from data sets. For example, AI tools guide contractors on how best to price their quotes around client expectations. Plentific’s AI-powered writing assistant enables property managers to craft communications within the platform, improving diagnostic descriptions. This adds clarity for the housing provider, contributing to more first-time-fixes and an enhanced service for residents. Duplicate work orders can also be detected in the system, saving time and money.
Furthermore, the platform offers smart suggestion tips for more accurate work order descriptions, sends automatic action reminders as well as tailored, automatic quote guidance for contractors. This eliminates manual processes, such as reviewing quotes. The AI-powered work order summary tool provides a concise overview of activities.
Recently, further automations have been launched to streamline processes, including the option to auto-accept the best AI-highlighted quote and the auto-setting of the priority of a work order. The automation selects the best highlighted quote at the point of receiving enough quality quotes, alleviating the need for a manual selection process and decision point. Work order priorities, which define the SLAs for delivery, can now be automatically set based on the type of work being sent, further streamlining and standardising client processes.
There is flexibility with setting up the automation of rules for contractors when they win work utilising Plentific’s marketplace and a different set of rules for when the same contractor is appointed works directly.
Meeting evolving housing needs with AI
Processes are being sped up utilising the power of AI, such as document validation, including checking contractor insurances for onboarding, ensuring that insurance documents meet platform standards.
Data APIs, which enable the seamless exchange of data, have also had improved configuration with automating pipelines, enabling AI-powered functionality and optimising costs for data storage.
AI-driven automation can free up time for property managers to focus on more strategic value-added tasks, enhancing property operations for residents.
The power of AI is helping to meet evolving needs from housing providers as well as supporting resident expectations of high-quality services with fewer resources and budget constraints.
Rather than threaten the relationship between property managers, contractors and residents, AI can support the optimisation of property operations, assisting clear and efficient communication between stakeholders in real-time.
Housing Digital Stakeholder Plentific’s award-winning software and contractor marketplace offer a complete solution for repairs, maintenance, voids and compliance works in a single platform.
Image: The KonG/Shutterstock
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