Agenda

Using an off the shelf vehicle telematic AI to streamline Health and Safety reporting and training within a Direct Services Organisation. Let AI deal with the boring bits of van tracking to highlight the essential and manage critical risk.

Artificial intelligence is transforming industries with speed and efficiency, but it’s not a complete substitute for human expertise. In a fast-moving world, human knowledge, critical thinking and attention to fine details remain essential for accuracy, ethics, and innovation. This presentation explores how AI and human skills complement each other, ensuring technology enhances rather than replaces the nuanced judgement and creativity that only people can provide.

Ian Cresswell and Steve Nichol will talk about Magenta’s ambitious transformation programme supporting its corporate plan ‘The road to 2030’ and its plans for 2026 and beyond. They will outline their approach to organisational design, change management and programme delivery, and showcase some quick wins such as video remote assistance. They will talk about their successes so far and the challenges associated with delivering a multi-faceted transformation programme at pace.

The future of customer and colleague experience across many parts of social housing will be digital. This talk will therefore provide an overview of Places for People's ambitious new digital foundations, incl. cloud migrations and at-pace digital & data transformations. Unsurprisingly, it hasn't been plain sailing so I'll be sharing the pitfalls we encountered and the painful lessons we learned.

With the playfully ironic title of 'Play less golf', Jon Cocker, CIO at Platform Housing Group, explores how artificial intelligence could reshape the housing sector. From enhancing customer experience and strengthening stakeholder trust to supporting colleagues across every role, AI promises both opportunities and challenges. This speculative talk takes a forward-looking view of the digital horizon, asking how housing providers can adapt, innovate and prepare for the significant changes technology will bring.

Without a central authority, we risk 'IT sprawl', a chaotic mix of overlapping systems, duplicated tools and inconsistent designs, and that's what our technical design authority (TDA) is here to prevent. Without our TDA, things stop working well together, costs rise and innovation slows. As AI becomes more prominent, these risks will compound and the need for this authority is greater than ever. We'll also be discussing how our TDA can become an 'AI council' for the organisation.

WCHG’s transformation journey continues along the Salesforce trail with a bold new chapter: a bespoke self-service app co-designed with customers. Rather than relying on an out-of-the-box solution or even Salesforce’s own Experience Cloud, we’ve built something familiar, intuitive and integrated. It’s software that feels more like what people use in their daily lives. This talk explores how customers shaped the direction and what this means for our future housing services.