Here is our latest update on our Back Office Benchmarking service for the Social Housing sector with over 40+ members its a unique service and part of our VFM solution suite

1. www.bakertilly.co.uk/bob
Back Office
Benchmarking (BOB Plus)
Helping you meet the Value For Money Standard

2. Social housing
Back Office Benchmarking (BOB Plus)
Contents
Introduction 3
Why back office and why benchmarking? 4
Our approach 5
Benefits to members 6
How we deliver the service 7
BOB is unique 8
Case study 9
In summary 10
Contact us 11
BOB has allowed One Vision Housing to inform and shape our Value for Money and Procurement Strategies and priorities in the last few years. Membership of the club has also opened up our organisation to an invaluable network of friends and colleagues, who support and assist each other as we strive for continuing improvement.
Gaynor Robinson
Operational Director, One Vision Housing
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3. Introduction
Baker Tilly’s Back Office Benchmarking Plus programme (BOB Plus) has been designed to help you assess the VfM of your corporate services.
BOB is committed to helping housing associations run their back offices more cost effectively.
Three quarters of our members estimate to have saved £100,000 in the first year as a direct result of being in the programme, with a significant number expecting to make even larger savings in the future.
BOB is a national database of all back office costs that housing associations incur, supported by a regional network of facilitated discussion groups who identify and share best practice. Since launching seven years ago we now have nearly 50 members, ranging from 3,000 to 50,000 units.
We recently added additional modules to data we collect. We now have a:
• Welfare Reform Module that enables you to match your tenants benefits profile as well as benchmark your Income Collection cost both staff and non- staff cost together with the potential consequencies, i.e. voids, rent arrears;
• ICT Benchmarking – we have developed a specific set of ICT benchmarks that will enable our members to verify whether their ICT function and spend is delivering VfM.
We have had our challenges in dealing with the economic climate and the need to be more efficient. Benchmarking with the help of Baker Tilly’s BOB programme has been at the heart of our approach to value for money.
Steve Dungworth
Head of Management Services, Accent Group
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Back Office Benchmarking (BOB Plus)
Helping you meet the Value For Money Standard

4. Why back office and why benchmarking?
Back office functions form a key part of the corporate organisational framework of housing associations, but our work in the BOB Plus programme has revealed that:
• Social housing associations corporate services are often fragmented, with most individual organisations having their own back office operations and IT systems.
• There can be a lack of robust and consistent management information on back office operational spending, making it hard to identify whether functions are delivering VfM.
• Limited mechanisms exist for reviewing operational effectiveness in respect of back office. This means that operational costs and processes get limited independent scrutiny and review.
• As a result of this lack of standardisation, simplification and sharing of back office operations the sector is paying a significant premium in delivering its corporate services.
Whilst performance indicators give a pointer to the level of performance, it is benchmarking that can pinpoint areas of good or poor performance, including comparing your performance to peer organisations and learning from what others have done.
Our benchmarking programme, together with our private sector experience, indicates that the social housing sector should be able to achieve a reduction in annual back office costs of around 20-25% by the end of the three years. We have estimated that the sector could save around £600 million from the estimated £3.2 billion current spend on back office services.
This is the most focussed and valuable benchmarking exercise I’ve been involved with.
Nick Horne
Group CEO,
Arcadia Housing Group
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5. 5
Our approach
In our experience it is important when benchmarking a function review that key aspects of effectiveness as well as efficiency are reviewed. In addition to an efficiency dimension, we have developed three separate facets of effectiveness that we measured:
1. Impact: in terms of how the output of the function contributes to or influences corporate performance as a whole.
2. Satisfaction of users and senior managers: looking at how the function is regarded by staff who use these services and also by the senior management who commission them.
3. Modernisation: to consider the extent to which a function has adopted management practices regarded as being innovative and forward looking. Clearly, having been benchmarking corporate services for the past 7 years, we already have a set of key indicators for the major back office functions, ie Finance, HR, ICT, estates, procurement, legal and marketing and communications. The benefits of using these indicators enable us to:
•
provide our clients with a small number of high level indicators capturing those aspects of performance that are vital for the effective management of the service by senior managers;
•
identity and focus on better outcomes for corporate service users;
•
reflect best practice - thereby aiding innovation and effectiveness;
•
use indicators that are simple and easy to measure and predefined;
•
the indicators we have developed are not meant to cover all aspects of performance but instead have been chosen for their capacity to motivate changes in behaviour and support improvement;
•
complement any existing performance management frameworks and benchmarking initiatives, and also provide the facility to benchmarking with other public/private sector bodies.
Internal user
Satisfaction
Modernising
organising
and innovation
Impact on
organisational
performance
and outcomes
Economy and
efficiency
of major
processes
Rating based on
the perception of
those receiving
the service
Cost and
productivity
indicators
Organisational
metric heavily
influenced by
service
Extent to which
organisation has
adopted the best
management
practices
Effectiveness KPIs
Efficiency KPIs
Back Office Benchmarking (BOB Plus)
Helping you meet the Value For Money Standard

6. Benefits to members
As a member you can use the BOB Plus programme to:
Analyse the full range of back office services, including finance, HR ICT and six other functions
• Understand how your organisation performs year-on-year
• Make accurate comparisons with peers
• Help your Board identify how cost effective your back office is
• Assess whether your back office delivers true value for money
• Prove to Regulators that you are taking the new VfM standard seriously
• Discover opportunities for back office monies to be redistributed to more tenant facing activities
• Join one of the regional facilitated BOB Performance Improvement Groups (held a minimum five times a year in each region), giving you the opportunity to network with like-minded peers and discuss the results generated by participating organisations.
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7. How we deliver the service
Membership is open to all social housing organisations via an annual subscription. This fee covers documentation, online database access, data collection, telephone helpline, reports and a place at regular regional group meetings.
Members of the programme have defined the benchmarking criteria with the main costs being grouped initially into staff cost and operational costs and then into 12 areas including legal costs, IT costs, insurance, training and utilities and rates.
Your data is inputted via our bespoke secure website accessible only to members. After being validated both online and by one of our specialist Baker Tilly consultants, it is added to the overall database. Members are then able to use the online reporting tool to compare their performance.
1.11.00.90.80.70.60.50.40.30.20.10.0Normalised back office costStaff CostOperational Cost £/Unit
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Back Office Benchmarking (BOB Plus)
Helping you meet the Value For Money Standard

8. BOB Plus is unique
Our service is different than other Benchmarking service
providers in this sector because it:
• Has an internet database that allows easy input and access - 24/7
• Is real time and so up to date
• Data input is phased over an agreed period
• Has an online reporting tool giving ready access to information
• Has facilitated meetings where members can interrogate the results and
discuss them with their peers supported by Baker Tilly efficiency specialists
In relation to data input because we have a set of fixed definitions and the data
input is online most of the effort required be members is to ensure they have the
correct financial and practice data within their own organisations. Most of our
members tell us that their current management reports provide them with the
majority of the data required, but some information needs to be collated outside
of the finance dept who normally take the lead role.
Group members agree to respect the confidentiality of information and all
members agree to the principal of complete transparency of information amongst
the whole of the membership.
Current profile of members
The current profile of members based on units and turnover is as follows
Feedback from a recent survey of our
members showed that:
• 72% of housing associations join
BOB in order to compare their
practices with peer organisations
• 61% use BOB to network with other
housing associations
• Facilitated joint discussions with
competitors were what members
liked most about BOB
40%
35%
30%
25%
20%
15%
10%
5%
0%
0–4999 5000–9999 10000–19999 20000+
% By Units
40%
35%
30%
25%
20%
15%
10%
5%
0%
0-£19m £20m-£49m £50m-£99m £100m+
% By Turnover
40%
35%
30%
25%
20%
15%
10%
5%
0%
0–4999 5000–9999 10000–19999 20000+
% By Units
40%
35%
30%
25%
20%
15%
10%
5%
0%
0-£19m £20m-£49m £50m-£99m £100m+
% By Turnover
As you can see we have a healthy
spread of members across the
spectrum of both units and
turnover and our membership
mirrors the complexity, type and
spread of business interests across
the sector.
When discussing performance levels without
a fact-based benchmark, you are just having
a debate of ideas. Baker Tilly’s information
provides the insight needed to identify your
biggest opportunities and move with speed and
alignment to solve them.
Gary Moreton
Partner and Chairman, Baker Tilly Social Housing Group
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9. Case study -
How to save £1 million
One of our clients - a 12,000 unit traditional housing association - joined our BOB Plus programme in 2006 after identifying that:
• Their own benchmarking indicated lower than average financial performance
• There was a perception that central and back office services seemed resource intensive and relatively expensive
• Other benchmarking was focussed on operational costs and structures
• It required a more detailed look at back office structures and processes, rather than simply costs
As a result of joining BOB, the organisation derived the following benefits:
• They used the BOB data and established a 5 point action plan which enabled them to deliver back office savings of £1.2 million over 4 years
• Savings have facilitated improvements to tenant satisfaction through the creation of dedicated Nuisance Prevention, Leasehold Management, Sheltered Housing
• Pre-BOB, the organisation aspired to make changes. Using BOB, they set challenging but achievable targets, and have an insight into the changes to processes and systems needed to really deliver change.
A large proportion of organisations cutting costs may not wish to contemplate structural cost cutting strategies. Although restructuring and outsourcing can cause disruption to an organisation it can make a company more flexible and responsive to sector change.
Peter Lunio
Baker Tilly Social Housing Group
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Back Office Benchmarking (BOB) Plus
Helping you meet the Value For Money Standard

10. In summary
Launched in 2005, Baker Tilly’s Back Office Benchmarking Programme Plus (BOB Plus) offers a unique service currently delivered to over 45 Social Housing organisations. We continue to have high levels of customer satisfaction and high re-join rates. The strengths that make Baker Tilly’s BOB groups so successful are:
• A large and proactive membership
• A strong focus on improvement
• Consistency through common and robust definitions
• Careful validation of data supplied by members
• Dedicated website and database
• Phased data input
• Confidential comparisons with a wide range of similar organisations as well as with comparators chosen by the member
• Detailed analysis showing not just how members compare in terms of headline cost benchmarks, but also some of the reasons why their performance differs from others
• Exchanges of experience between members e.g. IT systems
• The opportunity to learn from other organisations successes and failures
• Learning from ‘good practice’
• Savings in time and cost, as the effort of defining and collecting benchmarks is spread over all club members
• A dedicated team of Benchmarking professionals ensures a successful outcome is delivered for every member.
We look forward to you joining.
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11. Contact us
If you are interested in joining the BOB Plus programme
please contact:
Peter Lunio
Peter Lunio
T: +44 (0)20 3201 8207
peter.lunio@bakertilly.co.uk
Gary Moreton
T: +44 (0)121 214 3100
gary.moreton@bakertilly.co.uk
Keith Ward
T: +44 (0)161 830 4000
keith.ward@bakertilly.co.uk
Peter heads our Social Housing
Consultancy Practice and has worked
extensively in the sector for the past
four years delivering VfM projects for
his clients.
Peter also leads Baker Tilly’s BOB
Plus programme.
Gary Moreton
Gary is an Audit partner with
extensive experience in the social
housing sector. He also heads Baker
Tilly’s Social Housing Group and
co runs the BOB Plus groups both
nationally and in the Midlands.
Keith Ward
Keith is an Audit Director and has been
involved in the social housing sector
for over 20 years, with significant
experience in the public sector.
Keith co runs the Northern BOB
Plus group.
Back Office Benchmarking (BOB Plus) 11
Helping you meet the Value For Money Standard

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