Living-South

Wonen Zuid: increased tenant and employee satisfaction thanks to predictive BI

Housing corporation Wonen Zuid is convinced that data-driven working helps increase efficiency, which contributes to greater tenant and employee satisfaction. Because the organization also wants to use the predictive power of data, modernization of the Business Intelligence (BI) environment was needed. An extensive project, which required outside help. Thanks to Valid, big steps were taken quickly.

Challenge: doing more with data

Wonen Zuid recognizes the value of insights you can get from data. They help you make better decisions, both on a strategic and an operational level. Think of monitoring the financial position, property maintenance planning, or cooperation with maintenance partners. For example, if you can predict when a property will become available for a new tenant, you can notify maintenance teams and the leasing department to be on standby in a timely manner.

Sandra Vestjens-Ortmans is a Business Intelligence Specialist and Information Provision Advisor at Wonen Zuid. She explains that when reporting from the existing BI environment, it was mostly like looking in the rearview mirror. "We want to look through the forward to get more value out of our data."

Living South
Vaid consultation - woman man
Solution: renewal of the BI environment

To achieve this, modernization and expansion of the BI environment was required. Valid helped with the transition to Power BI. A solution that offers an integrated overview. Until then, much information was available but scattered, across various reports.

That Valid was chosen for support was mainly because it is well established in the housing sector.

Benefit of collaboration: making quick strides

Vestjens: "It is of added value for us when someone comes to help us who already has branch and subject matter knowledge. It is also an advantage that Valid operates from southern Netherlands. That makes it easier to work together on location."

Vestjens himself picked up the director's role, leaning on the expertise of Joost Wijdeven, senior business intelligence consultant at Valid. He introduced the agile development method, to ensure that building new reports is fast, flexible and effective. This is how great strides were made.

"Valid provides ideal support on our path to becoming a data-driven organization."

Sandra Vestjens-Ortmans Advisor Information Provision Wonen Zuid
Managed Services - Valid
Valid - business2
The result: insights quickly and widely available

The old BI environment has been phased out. The authorization structure within Power BI is well established. Moreover, it has been successful in helping users to work with this new tool.

Employees received basic Power BI training to learn how to use the tool. Twenty people received additional training to create their own reports, or to modify existing reports for their own use. If desired, it is made available company-wide in Wonen Zuid's corporate style.

Working from one system, in a uniform way, saves a lot of operations. The manual maintenance of Excel sheets, for example, is a thing of the past. An employee now generates information about vacant properties requiring changeover maintenance at the push of a button. That saves two to three hours of work per week. Moreover, the information is also accessible to others in the organization.

Reports also contribute to customer satisfaction. For example, Wijdeven has created a report on interactions with a customer - via counter, phone or website - from which a task arises, such as a maintenance request that someone needs to take action on. That gives managers insight into open tasks, among other things.

Future: adding more resources

Now that the foundation has been laid, being able to predict based on the data and unlocking more data sources are on the agenda. For this, too, Wonen-Zuid wants to engage Valid. "We experience Valid as a very reliable party to work pleasantly with and we want to continue that." According to Vestjens, Valid provides ideal support on the road to a more data-driven organizationwhich will enable it to improve and flourish its services.

Living South
  • Founded in 1909
  • Manages some 14,000 social housing units
  • Active in ten municipalities in central and southern Limburg
  • Approximately 160 employees
Project results at a glance
  • Planful and flexible approach thanks to agile methodology
  • High pace in delivery of reports
  • Professional look reports
  • Solid foundation for continued data-driven work in all levels of the organization
  • Adoption of self-service reporting
  • Demonstrably greater efficiency
  • High employee satisfaction
  • Delivery on time and on budget
Added value Valid
  • Great knowledge of and experience in managing complex change projects
  • Great knowledge and experience in the BI and data domain
  • Structured, yet flexible approach and project management
  • Contribution of high-quality capacity
  • Quality-oriented, attention to testing
  • High handling speed
  • Eye on business impact
  • Eye on the long term
  • Result-oriented
  • Teamwork with client and client business partners