HARVEST HOUSING GROUP SELECTS VALID’S ELECTRONIC DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM TO IMPROVE ITS CUSTOMER RELATIONS

Tight integration with specialist solutions brings electronic information management benefits to the housing sector

London, England – October 7, 2003 – Valid Information Systems Limited, a Hummingbird Ltd. company, today announced that Harvest Housing Group, a north-west based group of housing companies and housing associations, has invested in R/KYV EDM client, Valid’s electronic document management (EDM) solution. Valid’s EDM solution is part of Harvest’s work to improve overall services and efficiencies. The EDM solution is integrated into a contact management system (CM) to manage queries from Harvest’s 15,000 tenants living across 25 local authorities.

The solution was chosen because of the tight integration that will enable staff to access data stored in the Valid comprehensive document management solution through the familiar CM interface, arcCentre, from housing specialist, Orchard Information Systems. Key to the project is the ability for Harvest’s call-handling staff in its Response Centre to be able to access electronically-held tenant and property records and associated documentation.

Harvest Response operates across two sites in Preston and Workington. It is staffed by 35 Customer Service Assistants (CSAs) devoted to responding to calls from tenants, and a team of case managers and local neighbourhood offices dealing with more complex enquiries, referred to them by the CSAs using electronic workflows.

The systems have been designed so that tenants will contact Harvest Response on an 0845 Lo-call number. All calls are routed to Preston, and then automatically distributed between the two sites, depending upon CSA availability. If the caller’s telephone number is known to arcCentre, then the caller’s details are displayed on the CSA’s screen, plus a chronological list of any previous contacts made with that tenant, and the outcomes. Most importantly, included in the contact list is any correspondence (e.g. application forms etc.) that have been scanned in via the Valid system. With CSAs on both sites needing to have immediate access to these documents the only solution was EDM.

During a call, the CSA can support their own knowledge with script prompts and hyperlinks to detailed information on numerous subjects. As the processes for dealing with issues are developed they are stored within the corporate knowledge bank. This makes it easier for new workers to progress faster and for others to benefit from established rules and behaviour. The overall result is improved, standardised and effective working procedures where customers’ issues are resolved faster and more efficiently, while all staff are confident that their advice is both correct and part of an established practice.

“Having spent 12 months researching this project and then carrying out a full tender exercise, we are confident that our selection of products will ensure that our customers will receive the best possible service while our staff will have access to the most up to date tools to deliver the service,” said Mike Brown, Head of ICT at Harvest Housing Group. “The combination of Orchard, a major supplier to the housing market and Valid, a leading e-Government supplier, assured us that the solution would be both appropriate for our current needs, scalable, flexible, secure and robust alongside providing a value for money option. We look forward to being able to extend the solution to other areas, including finance over the next year.”

The solution increases the confidence of staff and as a by-product produces a corporate knowledge base, which, over time develops into a very valuable corporate tool. The introduction of streamlined technical infrastructures is just part of Harvest Housing Group’s constant striving to meet the highest standards in the property and regeneration market.

About Harvest Housing Group
Harvest Housing Group is a group of housing companies and housing associations that work together to achieve excellence in the housing property and regeneration markets, in addition to meeting a large variety of specialist housing and related services needs. This non-profit organisation manages over 14,000 value for money homes in Affordable housing, Shared Ownership and Market Rent Accommodation, as well as delivering management services for other landlords both commercial and residential.

Harvest Housing Group communicates with over 15,000 tenants across 25 different Local Authorities in addition to a growing number of business customers and partners. The Group employs 400 staff and has three main offices in Manchester, Preston, and Workington in Cumbria with another dozen smaller neighbourhood offices across the North West. See www.harvesthousing.org.uk.

About Valid Information Systems (A Hummingbird Company)
Valid Information Systems Ltd., established in 1988 is the UK’s leading supplier of e-Government solutions with a broad presence in the public sector with installations in local and central government, police, housing and the NHS. Valid is one a handful of companies to boast UK National Archives 2002 approval. Headquartered in Barking, Essex, with offices in Coventry and Monmouth, Valid specialises in the supply of electronic document and records management solutions (EDRMS). Valid currently employs 102 staff. Apart from its core business the company also offers in-house scanning and an ASP service for global access to documentation over the Internet.

On July 1, 2003, Valid was acquired by Hummingbird Ltd. (NASDAQ: HUMC, TSX: HUM). Headquartered in Toronto, Canada, Hummingbird Ltd. is a global enterprise software company employing over 1450 people in nearly 40 offices around the world. Hummingbird Enterprise™, an integrated information and knowledge management solution suite, creates a 360º View of Enterprise Content™ to manage the lifecycle of information and knowledge assets. Today, five million users rely on Hummingbird to connect, manage, access, publish and search their enterprise content. Valid now operates as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hummingbird. For more information, please visit: http://www.hummingbird.com.

While Valid products offer compliance with the UK National Archives (Public Record Office), e-GIF and WfXML standards, Hummingbird's Microsoft-centric and Java/J2EE-based offerings extend the choice of platforms to customers.

For more details on this or any other products, please see www.valinf.com or call +44 (0) 20 8215 1414.

For details on the Hummingbird suite of products, see www.hummingbird.com or call + 44 (0) 118 978 2800.