ANS bags £1.75m social housing IT deal

Reseller to migrate Oldham social housing firm to cloud-based managed infrastructure

Manchester reseller ANS Group has won a £1.75m deal to install and manage the IT infrastructure of a local social housing firm.

First Choice Homes Oldham (FCHO) – which manages 12,000 homes, making it the town's largest social housing landlord – has signed up the firm on a multi-year contract.

The deal will see ANS help the organisation offer online customer self-service systems for tasks such as applying for a house, logging repair requests and checking rent balances. ANS said it will increase flexibility for FCHO employees by allowing them to access corporate information on remote devices.

ANS' managing director of managed services Paul Shannon said the project reflects the growing demand among customers to free up IT staff's time.

"Our service will deliver cutting-edge IT which is fully managed by ANS, meaning the team at FCHO can focus on developing its customer services rather than maintaining uptime," he said.

"This is a trend we're seeing across the board. Organisations are recognising that IT departments' time is better spent supporting wider business objectives rather than on back-office management."

Stephen Repton, head of ICT at FCHO, said the deal will also boost its environmental credentials.

"It will enable us to open up new lines of communication with our customers, allowing quicker responses to enquiries from tenants, and make significant long-term energy savings in line with our green initiatives," he said.