Demystifying Dataverse: FAQs for Housing Association

Your housing management system holds tenancy records, rent payments, repair workflows, property data. Everything runs through it. When something goes wrong, services grind to a halt.

Here's the problem: that system was built for a different era. Before mobile working became standard. Before tenants expected self-service portals. Before the Tenant Satisfaction Measures made data accessibility non-negotiable.

Most housing associations face the same bind. Your legacy system can't deliver modern digital services, but replacing it costs millions and takes years. One false move and you're stuck with an expensive disaster instead of an expensive old system.

Microsoft Dataverse offers a different path. It sits alongside your existing housing management system, letting you build modern applications without ripping everything out.

What Dataverse Actually Does

Dataverse is a platform for building business applications without extensive coding. It unifies data from different systems into one accessible structure. Housing associations use it to create tenant portals, complaints management systems, repairs tracking, anti-social behaviour workflows.

The platform comes with Dynamics 365, so if you've already invested in Microsoft's ecosystem, you've got the foundation. It handles business logic, data quality rules, security, and integration with other Microsoft tools.

Think of it as the connective tissue between your legacy systems and modern digital services. Your housing management system keeps doing what it does well. Dataverse handles everything else.

The Data Problem in Housing

Data sprawl costs money and destroys service quality. Most housing associations run five, ten, maybe fifteen separate systems that don't talk to each other. Each one maintains its own version of tenant records, property information, repair histories.

Someone updates a tenancy in your housing management system. Finance still shows the old rent amount. The repairs team books an appointment at the wrong address. Your customer service team can't tell angry tenants why the information doesn't match.

Keeping these systems synchronised takes constant manual effort. Staff copy data between platforms. Reconciliation eats hours every week. Excel becomes the glue holding everything together, which means you're managing critical housing services through spreadsheets.

Is your gas servicing programme running from your asset management system or from someone's carefully maintained Excel file? You might be surprised by the answer.

The compliance risk alone should worry you. When the Regulator asks for accurate data on damp and mould cases, can you actually provide it? Or does someone need two weeks to manually compile reports from four different systems?

Your Data Isn't Where You Need It

Legacy housing management systems keep data locked in back-office databases. Your housing officers in the field can't access it. Neither can your repairs team, maintenance surveyors, or construction colleagues.

COVID-19 exposed this weakness. Housing associations scrambled to enable remote working, only to discover their core systems assumed everyone worked from the office. Staff couldn't serve tenants from home because the data simply wasn't accessible.

Tenants expect digital services now. They want to report repairs through a portal, not by calling your office during working hours. They want to check rent balances at midnight, update contact details without filling in forms, track complaint progress online.

Your data only supports service delivery when the right people can access it at the right time. Accuracy, relevance, and availability determine whether data drives operational performance or just sits in a database gathering dust.

From Reactive to Predictive Services

Housing services run on failure. Tenants wait for boilers to break, report the problem, then wait for repairs. The relationship starts with frustration rather than value.

Reactive repairs cost five times more than preventive maintenance. Emergency call-outs at -10 degrees charge premium rates. If you multiply those failure costs across all your housing services, the economic argument for change becomes obvious.

Data-driven transformation means shifting from reactive to predictive service models. IoT sensors detect boiler performance issues before failures occur. Predictive analytics identify damp and mould risks before they become compliance incidents. Scheduled maintenance prevents emergency repairs.

This approach requires accessible data. Your housing management system might record every repair, but if that data can't trigger proactive interventions, you're still running services based on failure.

What Dataverse Delivers for Housing Associations

So what does this actually look like in practice? Four fundamental changes that address the problems most housing associations face.

Federated data architecture. Dataverse pulls information from your housing management system, finance platform, repairs scheduling, tenant feedback tools into one unified structure. Staff access complete information without jumping between systems.

Automated data quality. You establish rules governing data standards. Dataverse enforces them automatically. Missing tenant phone numbers? System prompts for completion. Duplicate property records? Flags them immediately. Data quality becomes systematic rather than occasional.

Liberation for field staff. Housing officers, repairs teams, surveyors get mobile access to accurate data when they need it. They update records in real-time. Your back-office systems stay current without manual data entry.

Tenant-facing services. Build self-service portals using Power Pages, letting tenants manage rent payments, report repairs, track complaints, update personal details. Contact centre volumes drop. Tenant satisfaction improves. You meet digital service expectations without replacing your entire system.

How Dataverse Works with Your Existing Systems

You don't replace your housing management system. It remains your authoritative source for tenancy data, property records, financial information, rent collection.

Dataverse handles everything your legacy system struggles with: complaints management, garage and parking allocation, anti-social behaviour cases, new build sales, service request tracking, compliance monitoring, contract management, property inspections.

Your application landscape might look like this:

Legacy Housing Management System: Tenancy data, property records, asset information, financial transactions, rent collection

Dataverse Applications: Complaints, garages and parking, ASB, new build sales, case management, service management, compliance, contract management, property inspections

This approach avoids the massive disruption and expense of system replacement. You build capability incrementally, proving value before expanding scope.

Housing Associations Making This Work

Honeycomb Group discovered their traditional infrastructure couldn't support growth ambitions. Legacy systems made remote working difficult. Security was patchy. Staff couldn't access the data they needed from the field.

Complete cloud migration to Azure and Microsoft 365 fixed these problems. Remote working that actually works. Modern, secure infrastructure. Predictable costs. Better service delivery across housing operations.

mhs homes, Kent's largest independent social landlord managing over 9,500 homes, took a different approach. They needed to meet the Tenant Satisfaction Measures but manual telephone surveys restricted response volumes.

We implemented Dynamics 365 Customer Voice backed by Dataverse, integrated with their Capita OpenHousing system and data warehouse. Survey distribution automated after repair completions. Response volumes doubled. Regulatory requirements met without additional staffing costs, whilst maximising return on existing Microsoft 365 licences.

Why This Matters Now

The Tenant Satisfaction Measures aren't optional. Housing associations must track and report tenant feedback, complaint handling, repairs performance, safety across 12 mandatory metrics. You need systems that capture this data automatically and report it reliably.

The Regulator of Social Housing expects digital capability. Housing associations that can't demonstrate data-driven service improvements will face increased scrutiny. Your legacy systems weren't designed for this level of transparency and reporting.

Building Modern Applications Without Custom Development Costs

Dataverse connects to the wider Microsoft Power Platform. Power Apps for custom applications. Power Automate for workflow automation. Power BI for reporting and analytics.

This democratises software development. Your teams build solutions addressing specific housing challenges without commissioning expensive custom development. You deploy minimum viable products quickly, gather feedback, iterate based on actual usage.

Compare that to traditional housing system replacement projects. Three-year timelines. Multi-million pound budgets. Significant implementation risk. Disruption across your entire organisation.

Dataverse lets you commit resources to building future digital capability rather than maintaining legacy systems built for a different era. Lower risk, lower cost, faster delivery of working solutions that solve actual problems.

Getting Started

Most housing associations already have access to Dataverse through Microsoft 365 or Dynamics 365 licences. The platform exists. The question is whether you're using it.

Start with one high-value problem. Complaints management. Tenant satisfaction surveys. Repairs tracking. Build a working solution. Demonstrate value. Expand from there.

This approach requires understanding both housing operations and platform capabilities. You need partners who've implemented similar solutions for other housing associations, who understand the regulatory environment, who can integrate with your existing systems without breaking them.

The alternative is continuing with systems that can't meet modern expectations, whilst manually compensating for their limitations through spreadsheets and workarounds. That approach drains resources and won't satisfy the Regulator.