One of the largest social housing providers in the West Midlands, The Wrekin Housing Group, has embarked on a widescale digital transformation programme led by Wrekin’s Executive Director of Strategy, Jan Lycett, and, with finance at the forefront, by adopting Cloud Financials software from Advanced. The move follows the recent group restructure at Wrekin, highlighting the need for a modern, efficient, cost-effective solution to replace a 20 year-old, on-premise system.

With more than 1,200 employees, Wrekin provides over 13,000 homes for affordable rent and low-cost home ownership across Shropshire, Staffordshire, and Telford & Wrekin. It was looking to automate many of its existing processes, with the aim to improve efficiency and provide transparency of information to allow its teams to plan for scenarios more effectively.

As a real-time cloud-based solution, the new budgeting and forecasting system is based on live information, so all changes to data are immediate and reporting processes that once took days can be completed within hours. The group is also introducing a new purchasing system which will be able to highlight cost savings and automatically recalculate budget against spend, providing a far more effective alternative to previous time and labour-intensive processes around data.

Cloud Financials from Advanced enables a new level of agility and ability to react and respond to changes which is essential from an organisational point of view, but also makes life much simpler for employees. They can spend less time on reporting, utilise real-time information that supports better planning, and have more time to contribute to overall strategy decisions that elevate productivity and help the organisation achieve its goals.

Jon Lamb, Executive Director of Finance at Wrekin said: “Most of our finance team are currently working from home and as the past year has proved, the ability to maintain secure and effective working practices remotely has been critical. Implementing Cloud Financials will allow our people to work effectively wherever they are – at home and in different office locations, using the same real-time data. This first move to a cloud-based solution is a key milestone in our journey to continued business success and will be key to our future growth plans.”

Making the decision to upgrade to new software involved a cost modelling process to identify the most appropriate and powerful solution for Wrekin. Jon adds: “We’ve calculated that Cloud Financials will allow us to create a number of efficiencies, while enabling us to make best use of the talent in the team and make the most difference.”

Mark Dewell, Managing Director – ERP and HCM, Advanced, said: “In order to remain competitive and respond to market expectations, operating a cloud-based digital business system is a given these days. Our solutions offer customer-focused automation with an easy-to-use interface and customisable features to help maximise productivity, even in challenging times. We are delighted that The Wrekin Housing Group chose Advanced’s Cloud Financials as the first stage in its digital transformation. It will easily integrate with future digital software solutions for other areas of its business to create a seamless and highly efficient solution that is fit-for-purpose as the Group goes from strength to strength.”