How Housing Associations Can Become Frontier Firms with AI

How to turn “Doing More with Less” from a slogan into a strategy using Microsoft Copilot and Power Platform

Customer Service Directors and IT leaders in UK housing associations face a crucial dilemma: The demand for high-quality, empathetic service has never been higher. At the same time, resources are tighter than ever.

Your teams are stretched thin, caught between the cost of living crisis and new regulatory pressures (like TSMs). Worse, they are forced to rely on rigid, expensive, and outdated systems that actively prevent excellent service.

AI is no longer a luxury; it is the vital lever for organisations looking to reclaim their mission.

The Critical Problem: Linear Income, Legacy Systems

Relying on legacy monolithic systems traps housing associations in a low-leverage, high-effort model. This results in two critical consequences:

• The “Swivel-Chair” Effect: Your staff are stuck jumping between multiple systems, spreadsheets, and sticky notes to complete simple tasks. This wastes time and frustrates tenants who must repeat their story every time they call—killing your TSM scores.

• Fund Diversion: Funds should be dedicated to your core mission. Building new homes and communities. However, they are diverted to managing overpriced suppliers. They are also used for keeping the lights on for complex legacy IT.

The Practical Solution: Becoming a “Frontier Firm”

Microsoft research identifies “Frontier Firms” as organisations that adopt AI not just as a tool. They adopt it as electricity—scalable, reliable, and value-generating.

For Social Housing, this doesn’t mean ripping and replacing your core systems tomorrow. It means wrapping them in agile layers of intelligence using the Microsoft Power Platform and Copilot.

By deploying Low-Code Copilots, you create a “Translator” layer. You allow the AI to handle the data retrieval and processing, freeing your staff to handle the human connection.

A Streamlined 3-Step Methodology for Immediate Results

For leaders short on time and budget, success requires a disciplined methodology focused on marginal, continuous gains. We focus on elevating your team from functional data processors to vital problem solvers.

Here is the roadmap for high-impact wins:

1. Define Purpose

Core Objective: Establish the “Why” and secure executive buy-in.

Immediate Action: Map one specific customer journey (e.g., Arrears Management or Repair Diagnosis) to identify the “time thieves.”

Why It Works: It ensures your AI initiative isn’t just “tech for tech’s sake,” but is directly aligned with improving specific TSM outcomes.

2. Prioritise & Build (The Product)

Core Objective: Convert operational needs into functional system design.

Immediate Action: Utilize Process Mapping to make work visible. Then, deploy specific Copilots or Power Automate flows for routine, high-volume tasks (like drafting tenant letters, categorizing complaints, or logging repairs).

Why It Works: This turns functional staff into “super-enhanced superstars.” By automating the “steps 2-9” of a process (the administrative middle), humans can focus on the start (empathy) and the finish (resolution).

3. Sustain and Scale (The Partnership)

Core Objective: Ensure long-term agility and ROI.

Immediate Action: Adopt a “fusion team” approach. IT and Customer Service should work together on marginal gains. This includes moving fields on a form, tweaking a workflow, or updating a chatbot response.

Why It Works: It prevents the “Black Box” problem where only IT understands the system. It builds internal capability, ensuring your investment is self-funding through delivered efficiencies.

The Vital Outcomes for Leaders

By shifting functional work to AI, you gain economic leverage and deliver measurable benefits:

• For Customer Service Directors: AI reduces the administrative burden. Your staff spends less time typing and more time listening. This amplifies human connection, directly impacting tenant satisfaction and trust.
• For IT Directors: You gain a scalable path to modernise without the massive upfront CAPEX of a full ERP replacement. By leveraging the Microsoft stack, you ensure security, governance, and compliance are baked in, not bolted on.

The Goal: Fund Liberation

By reducing the cost to serve through efficiency, you free up capital to reinvest where it belongs: building communities and safe homes.

Ready to break the cycle? Don’t try to boil the ocean. Start by mapping one tenant journey. Ask yourself: Where could AI save us 10 minutes per interaction?

What’s the main challenge you’re facing?

We need a quick proof of concept to help back our business case: Struggling to secure funding for your #Dynamics or #Powerapps implementation? Need to show what they can do? then this is for you

Our business case has been approved but we need help to get going: We know that it can be overwhelming. Where do you start, how do you bring your business case to life? Our #D365ForHousing package can help you get going

We’ve started our Dynamics/Power Apps project but struggling to find the time to gather some serious momentum: This is a tough one, the will is there and everyone is up for it but you just struggle to find the time to get things moving while you do the ‘day job’. Our project support service can help lighten the load

We just need a bit of training or access to some handy templates: Then this Business Analysis 101: A Simple and Effective Course for Non-BAs course may be of use or perhaps visit our store to access some handy templates

Hi, I’m Chris Roberts Director at E&F Solutions. 

I’m a Dynamics consultant helping UK housing associations escape rigid legacy CRM systems and overpriced suppliers. 

With over 20 years in housing operations, I specialise in translating complex user needs into precise plans. This ensures we deliver a system your teams genuinely love, freeing up funds to be reinvested into building new homes & communities. 

Original Post https://deliveringcrm.net/2025/11/29/how-housing-associations-can-become-frontier-firms-with-ai/