As a social housing provider, you’ll deal with enormous volumes of documents, both physical and digital. You’ll also be bound by stringent regulations that require you to have an auditable document management process which effectively indexes and stores all documentation related to your tenants and properties.
What is an electronic document management system?

- A tool to manage important documents generated by your housing management system, including tenancy agreements
- The ability to manage corporate documents generated internally, including health and safety or HR policies
- Providing controlled access to all of these documents available to everyone who needs them, including employees, partners or tenants via a portal
- Bring together documents under one roof and provide easy access to important documentation
On top of your categorising, indexing and archiving requirements, your solution also needs to have the highest level of security and governance. This has always been non-negotiable for social housing providers, but it’s even more critical in the wake of GDPR and the eye-watering fines for non-compliance; British Airways has recently been fined £183m for experiencing its 2018 data breach.
How can you bring all of these requirements together into one solution that is affordable, easy to use and even has multiple use cases?
Enter SharePoint
For years, housing associations have been turning to TSG for an electronic document management solution (EDMS) which meets the requirements of the strict regulations their organisations are subject to.

“GreenSquare Group and TSG have worked very closely together and the partnership with TSG was central to our decision to adopt SharePoint Online as our enterprise document management and records management solution.”
- Rob Fletcher, Head of ICT, GreenSquare Group

Why choose a SharePoint EDMS?
- It will never become a legacy application – SharePoint is at the heart of the Office 365 ecosystem and Microsoft will continue to develop it
- Out-of-the-box functionality, which limits bespoke coding and makes upgrades easy
- Third-party enhancements which allow you to customise your solution
- Straightforward usability which allows staff to easily adopt your new EDMS solution
- Access documents from multiple applications, devices and locations
- A single repository for all of your documents with a powerful in-built search engine
Key SharePoint features
Unrivalled ‘findability’ – indexing and tagging means no time wasted searching
In-built data loss prevention – so you know you’re migrating to a secure environment
Index files based on useful criteria, including modified by, date and category
Add permission controls to documents to ensure only the relevant people have access
Set up additional compliance policies, like preventing emailing docs with financial info
Work on only one version of the truth with version history and rollback functionalities
Easily co-author documents without the worry of overwriting or losing someone’s work
Receive notifications for important tasks, such as users reading or signing agreements
Implement process improvements with workflows
Take your EDMS to the next level
By combining SharePoint with its supporting business applications PowerApps, Flow, Power BI and Forms, you can achieve functionality that would have previously been out of reach.
Tenant onboarding
We know tenants are at the heart of everything housing associations do and the quality of their experience is paramount. Our tenant onboarding solution brings together your housing management system (HMS), SharePoint EDMS, Outlook calendar and PowerApps to create a revolutionary process designed to automate the task of onboarding new tenants with auto-generated documents and a step-by-step walkthrough.
Read about the solution we implemented for Trafford Housing Trust
Field engineer task management
Your people are your most valuable assets. By taking away manual, paper-based tasks, you can enable them to add value only they can add. To manage the jobs of engineers, auditors and housing officers, many organisations still use inefficient, paper-based systems that are prone to errors and difficult to track. By using a combination of PowerApps, Flow and your EDMS, you can digitise this essential process to improve efficiency and accuracy.
Read about the solution we implemented for H. Malone and the Byker Community Trust
Board of governance
Working with housing associations across the UK, from Glasgow to Wales and the South West, our experts have a solid knowledge of your sector. We know that your housing association is subject to board governance. This essential but time-consuming and often complex requirement can be streamlined to ensure efficiency and compliance. Combining SharePoint, Flow and Planner, you can automate board member tasks and track them to completion.
Read about the solution we put in place for GreenSquare Group
Declaration of interest
Another essential task that you can likely improve on is your declaration of interest process. Instead of tracking this via email correspondence, which is prone to error and unstructured, you can use a solution combining SharePoint, Flow and PowerApps to effectively collect, store and automate your data.
Read about the solution we implemented for GreenSquare Group