Housing Plus Group
Future IT Services Delivery
Client overview
Housing Plus Group (HPG) is a provider of homes and care services across Shropshire and Staffordshire. As one of the largest housing providers in the area, the Group manages 12,000 homes and employs more than 500 people. HPG works closely with customers, partners and the wider community to support thriving neighbourhoods and independent retirement living. The Group has ambitious plans to grow, build more homes and be able to provide an even better choice over the next 5 years.
Key Deliverables
Vision
Strategy
Delivery Management
Multi-supplier Model
The challenge
HPG commenced a programme of work to transform processes, systems and data requirements. This transformation programme was seen as the true enabler of change for how the group delivers IT services to ensure availability, security as well as scalability for future growth.
Challenges included:
Poor IT service delivery.
Lack of blueprint for future mergers and acquisitions.
Engaging the wider HPG business to deliver change.

The work
The programme was carried out in three key phases.
Phase One: Clarity of Purpose, User Research and Analysis.
Phase Two: Procurement of new suppliers and design of the future ICT Team.
Phase Three: Controlled transition.
- Conducted market testing to inform decision making.
- Co-created a sustainable operating model to enable HPG’s ICT vision and support future mergers and acquisitions.
- Enabled HPG to move away from the current in-house provision to a disaggregated multi-supplier delivery set up, managed by an internal team.
- Supported procurement activity through to contract award for the new suppliers.
- Introduced new client-side capabilities to improve control and governance.

“We selected Rainmaker to help drive change in IT Service Delivery, challenge our thinking, design a service delivery model, procure new services and deliver a transition to better ways of working. Rainmaker worked in a very collaborative way, supporting our needs and brought high levels of skills as well as a breadth of experience that enabled HPG to deliver change, quickly.”
Andrew Dale
IT Director
The impact
Within an aggressive 10 month timescale, our team delivered:
A more flexible 24/7, multi-vendor technology ecosystem.
New processes and governance that provide more control.
A reduction in ongoing BAU support costs of £64,000 per year.
An improved average IT response rate of 8 seconds across all channels.
Croydon
Rainmaker kicked-off by running a three-month discovery exercise to help clarify the Council’s vision and translate it into a delivery model, validated by user research, that leveraged market opportunities, as well as accommodating the risks involved.
Crown Commercial Service
In week one, we completed an audit of existing Discovery work. We agreed governance, confirmed working practices, built out a skeleton of the final deliverables and baselined a plan to make it happen.
London Borough of Hackney
Hackney is changing fast. The pace of economic and population growth, Hackney’s booming popularity as a visitor destination, house price acceleration, the shifting demographic, the rising pressure on local infrastructure and services; all these things are moving rapidly.