Housing Partnership Overhauls Its Asset Management with Ram Software

London, United Kingdom, July 08, 2007 --(PR.com)-- Brent Housing Partnership (BHP), a management company looking after 13,000 council properties within the Brent borough, has selected Real Asset Management’s (RAM) Series4000 software to ramp up the efficiency and accuracy of its asset tracking and management.

Patricia Gbomedo, accountant at BHP, was instrumental in the decision to update the asset management with RAM’s Asset4000 and Track4000. Discussing her choice, she comments, “We wanted something that would be easier to use than our old spreadsheets. We liked the fact that we could track our assets so easily with this system and always know where they are and whether they’ve been moved. We chose RAM’s Series4000 over similar products because of its wide ranging features. In addition because we use Oracle we wanted a high level of integration, RAM, who is an Oracle Network Partner, demonstrated how easy this was for us.”

Brent Housing Partnership was specially created in 2002 to look after communal areas and gardens, carry out repairs, service gas installations, collect rent and manage problems between neighbours on behalf of Brent borough council. It also provides customer services, and oversees void management and tenant participation.

Although owned by Brent Council, BHP is run as a standalone organisation and recently relocated to a separate building. Prior to its relocation, BHP used assets owned and managed by Brent Council. Since the two bodies ceased to share premises, BHP became solely responsible for the purchase and management of its own assets. It was at this point that it sought a dedicated system, which could provide a more business-like approach to asset management. Gbomedo explains, “We liked the fact that we could do away with sticky labels on assets and replace them with professional bar-codes. It’s made tracking and auditing our assets so much easier and a lot more accurate.”

In 2003, BHP was awarded the highest possible accolade, an ‘excellent service three star rating’ by the Audit Commission. BHP must continue to deliver against a very high set of standards agreed with its customers, the council and the government in order to maintain this status. Gbomedo is certain that the newly acquired Series4000 software will help them in this goal once implementation is complete in June 2007.

Looking forward, Gbomedo adds, “It will be an ongoing management process. RAM’s software will maintain our asset register and also accurately calculate any depreciation. Details of all our assets go into our financial reports, and there is enormous pressure on us to get things right first time. I need a system that will ensure we have the most up to date figures available at all times.”