Artificial intelligence has quickly emerged as one of the definitive terms of the last few years, as the potential of AI has shot to the top of board agendas across the globe regardless of industry. The excitement around the technology has been all-consuming, but the real question, especially in social housing, is what genuine benefits it can deliver?
This was the focus for Beyond the Hype: Practical AI for Resilient Housing Finance, an interactive webinar hosted by Housing Executive that brough together Oliver Wright of Workday and Rob Parkes of Yorkshire Housing to explore how AI could provide social housing providers with tangible benefits in their finance departments, and in turn generate improved outcomes for residents.
A core theme that emerged from the discussion was the necessity and importance of implementation when it comes to AI. Artificial Intelligence is by no means a silver bullet, and investment in AI can only unlock truly positive results if it is following investment into quality data. Rob Parkes shed light on Yorkshire Housing’s increased focus on sourcing quality data ahead of its upcoming AI implementation, engaging with residents to better understand their situations and paint a full picture of Yorkshire Housing’s customer base that can be used to fuel decision-making and unlock services better suited to individual households.
READ MORE: 12 Conversations Shaping the Future of Social Housing – Join us at Future Foundations
Complex data-sets and large amounts of information is an area where AI can deliver serious positive impacts for housing providers. Manual, time-consuming tasks that would of previously taken a dedicated team of analysts a significant amount of time can now be automated. This means finance professionals can take more of an overseer role, freeing up time and allowing their expertise to act as quality-control, assessing any conclusions made by artificial intelligence and streamlining processes whilst still maintaining human oversight and judgement. These analysis capabilities are also particularly relevant to the sector today, as the social housing space looks to shift from retrospective understanding towards predictive insight, identifying patterns and reasoning within data that can help housing teams understand where issues may arise before they do, rather than simply reacting.
This shift from reactive thinking to proactive analysis led on to another key insight from Rob, the importance of the cultural element when it comes to the adoption of AI. Ahead of their implementation of Workday’s technology, Rob discussed how AI acts as a part of Yorkshire Housing’s core working philosophy, introducing the technology not as an additional bolt-on, but as a new tool that will help staff to excel in their already established goals of enhancing customer experience. Staff development and training is key to this process, and Rob spoke about the professionals at Yorkshire Housing having genuine excitement for the technology soon to be at their disposal, presenting an opportunity to not just save them time, but also add additional skills to their own roles within the organisation.
The webinar also demonstrated how this is beginning to translate into practical applications. Oliver Wright showcased Workday’s emerging agentic AI capabilities, including tools designed to identify potential duplicate invoices, verify suppliers and support the preparation of audit information. Rather than replacing finance professionals, these systems are designed to operate alongside them, undertaking specific tasks and flagging issues that require human attention. Social housing is an industry where departments work in tandem, and although the webinar focused on the benefits of artificial intelligence for finance departments, all of these benefits are cohesive to a more streamlined and high-quality experience for residents, working towards the end result of positive resident satisfaction and experience.
Rob Parkes summarised Yorkshire Housing’s approach to their AI journey as “digital first, human always”, an apt summary of the final message to emerge from the discussions between the two. Social housing is a human industry, and that’s not going to change, but artificial intelligence can act as a tool to enable further human understanding and connection for a providers service, even from the finance department. The real question for providers isn’t what can AI do for them, but rather how can they implement AI effectively to unlock the range of benefits it can provide.
Oliver Wright can be contacted at oliver.wrigth@workday.com, and you can reach out to us at Housing Executive if you’d be interested in seeing the full recording of Beyond the Hype: Practical AI for Resilient Housing Finance.
