Member Info for Aphrodite

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/climatising-to-the-cloud-seminar-registration-60030641264

We know about Dumfries and Galloway, that's set out here https://www.castletonplc.com/news/castleton-supporting-the-transformation-of-dghps-it-systems/

But Grand Union Housing is a new name to me in relation to Castleton and I don't know but presume is a customer representing new significant business worth presenting to attendees.

Just read in Social Housing blog that the sector is forecasting 21% rise in repairs and maintenance spend. Castleton Maintain with integrated Localz will help in the administration of that all the way through the process.

Yes, you can only sell once and then they start again. We've been holding this price for 7 weeks now. Time coming for a move up! I hope. Certainly be an interesting blurb to read when it comes, and see how FinnCap review it as they said they would and maybe how the other commentators see it.

just changed hands at 105.

I see Localz are sharing a stand with Castleton at the Repairs Conference. Keen to promote that partnership.

Day too early with those - thought it was 22nd.today. They're tomorrow and next day. But tomorrow is today in Australia. Weird, isn't it.

CIH Repairs and Maintenance and Castleton Australia conferences over 2 days start today.
So it'll be Castleton Maintain with integrated Localz for the former. Last we heard about the latter was this:-

https://www.castletonplc.com/news/castleton-australia-goes-from-strength-to-strength/

Getting traction in Australia. I suspect mobile ( no more licence fees payable to 365 Agile ) and EDRM will be big sellers ( it's a big place too)

Housing Technology would like to thank Castleton Technology’s CEO, Dean Dickinson, for taking part in this interview.

Got there eventually. Not much cop on computers and stuff.

In fact, some customers use us
for all of their IT, from Microsoft Office and rewalls to voice IP and Skype.
“Castleton is the only company that can provide fully-integrated systems using all our own so ware, and we’re certainly leading the eld on self-service, facilitated in the cloud.”
We don’t fear bold investments. We opened Castleton India last year, bringing 16 new developers to the Castleton team. This strategic scalability provides our customers with enhanced services, enabling us to bring solutions to market aster and more cost-e ectively. We also invested over £750,000 in the latest hardware for our datacentre.
What about integration and APIs?
Yes, this is an important point. We know that legacy systems and supplier lock-in are perceived as barriers to the introduction of new products and systems’ integration. However, Castleton has open APIs that can plug into any other systems, and vice versa. This means we can provide an integrated solution, whether that solution includes just Castleton software or a mix of our software with customers’ existing systems, which gives them much more exibility.
How do housing providers realistically move to a new supplier when they are already using multiple applications? We recently completed a move for a leading housing provider; they wanted to add mobile technology to an incumbent system, so we used API technology to integrate the solution. Open APIs enable us to take a phased approach rather than a ‘ flick of a switch’ type changeover. In this case, the housing officers used our ‘Agile’ technology for a year, so when we replaced the entire housing system, it was a seamless and pain-free process because users were already familiar with the Castleton front-end.
What are Castleton’s biggest achievements and what of the future? Our biggest achievement is to have
created an organisation that can consistently and repeatedly deliver?to customers’ requirements. We have established ourselves as innovators?and are sector leaders in AI, facilitating tenant self-service. We’ve turned around our poor support performance and we are beginning to achieve positive brand recognition.
Finally, we have attained double-digit growth year-on-year, with a 15 per cent revenue increase in the past 12 months despite the at market. This has enabled us to continue our journey, investing in ever better services, the latest equipment and new products for our customers.
For the future, there’s still a long way for us to go, but we recognise there’s great potential for Castleton. We need to improve our service and support delivery further still, and better explain to customers and potential customers the breadth and depth of our offering.
Our next move is to improve our account management structure in order to provide a single point of contact for customers, regardless of whether the need is for software or managed services. This is what we refer to internally as truly becoming ‘one Castleton’.
Housing Techno

Describe some of the strategies you’ve implemented since joining Castleton and the results of them.?Our twin strategies have been to focus on improving customer support services while continuing to innovate with new products designed to deliver an integrated solution.
From a support point of view, customer feedback con rmed that once they were actually reached, our technicians were knowledgeable and provided high-quality advice. The frustration lay in our poor response performance. Accordingly, our strategy has been to expand the size of our support team substantially, invest in training (including cross-team training), foster morale and improve team spirit. By the beginning of this year the impact was clear; our response rates were up to 96.3 per cent against our SLAs, with ticket backlogs reduced by 80 per cent and internally?our employee ‘net promoter score’ has improved by 60 per cent in the last year.
On the software front, our strategy has been to integrate our entire solutions and services suite. We have innovated to help housing providers drive e ciency and provide better services to tenants. In particular, introducing 24/7 self-service technology such as our con gurable Castleton.Digital web portal reduces
the pressure on call centres by driving engagement digitally and more cost- e ectively.
A number of customers have now gone live with our fully-integrated solution suite which demonstrates a positive impact and we’ve also seen customers signing long- term contracts of up to 10 years, which I believe underlines customer con dence in our integrated digital solutions. They know we’ll adopt emerging technologies, continue to innovate and keep them ahead of the curve.
How does Castleton compare with its competitors’ offerings??Well, we’re the only company that can provide fully-integrated systems using?all our own software, and we’re certainly leading the eld on self-service, facilitated in the cloud.
Castleton is the first software provider to have harnessed emerging technology to develop and deliver an AI app, with help from our customer Housing Solutions. AI Manager enables tenants to communicate with their housing provider at any time via an Alexa or Google Home device, whether to check their balance, raise an enquiry or request a repair.
We’re specialists in social housing too. Unlike some of the big players, who also provide software for healthcare, police and other sectors, social housing is our sole, 100 per cent focus. We have over 600 customers in the housing sector, which I believe is more than any of our competitors.
The other thing that sets Castleton apart is the range of services we offer. As well as being software developers, we also provide managed services. So, we can truly offer
a full service, including private, public or hybrid cloud hosting – and as agnostics, we can advise on the best and most secure options. In fact, some customers use us
for all of their IT, from Microsoft Office and rewalls to v

Bringing IT together
– An interview with
Castleton Technology
Dean Dickinson, CEO, Castleton Technology

Castleton Technology is one of the fastest-growing technology providers in the social housing sector and is arguably one of the largest. Yet, its rapid growth has not been without problems, and despite an impressive track record for innovation, the company remains widely misunderstood. Housing Technology puts Castleton CEO’s Dean Dickinson under the spotlight and discovers why.


“We’re specialists in social housing; unlike some of the big players, social housing is our sole, 100 per cent focus.”
Castleton Technology’s growth through multiple acquisitions has left some confusion around what the company stands for, so why the huge acquisition programme?
You’re right – at the point when I came on board two and a half years ago, Castleton had already made six software acquisitions and two managed services acquisitions in just two years. The rationale was to bring together best-in-class software to provide the first fully-integrated ERP system for social housing, delivered in the cloud.
Currently, much of the market is using a collection of siloed legacy solutions; we wanted to change that by providing a cohesive, cloud-delivered approach to facilitate mobile working, self-service tenant platforms and more.
Has Castleton just re-skinned old architecture through acquiring lots of companies??No, we have redeveloped what were already best-in-class solutions to create the APIs that facilitate integration, then added new functionality incrementally based on market response and emerging technologies.
What have been the challenges for Castleton along the way??We inherited eight small businesses with individual cultures, all operating separately, with their own management and support teams, systems and processes, and with no real cohesion between any of them.
My challenge was to create a holistic view, integrating these diverse businesses into a single entity with common values, a consolidated back office, standard processes, consistent procedures and a single support system. Unsurprisingly, this has proved to be a challenging process, leading to high sta churn and, regrettably, a poor support experience for some of our customers.
None of this helped Castleton’s reputation in the market in the short term, but ultimately it was necessary and, more importantly, it helped us to get absolutely the right people in place at Castleton.

Dumfries & Galloway’s unified comms with Castleton

Dumfries and Galloway Housing Partnership has awarded a unified communications contract to Castleton Technology as part of an ongoing digital transformation programme.
As part of a seven-year contract, Castleton is providing an end-to-end managed service, with the foundations of the project involving the migration of DGHP’s everyday ICT operations away from its legacy on-premise systems to a private cloud, as well as a desktop refresh (including Microsoft Office 365), new telephony software with unifiedcommunications and an omni-channel contact centre.
Hugh Carr, director of finance, HR andIT, Dumfries and Galloway Housing Partnership, said, “This exciting development marks the next stage in our journey to become the best landlord in Scotland. Our programme is ambitious but it will confirm DGHP as a progressive housing association of the future, enabling us to continue to provide excellent services to our customers and create a great place to work for our 200 staff."
Castleton’s managed service will include ongoing application hosting, business continuity, information governance, network management and cyber-security management, as well as continual service improvements through service-desk management, device management and technical support.
Hugh Carr, Director of Finance, HR & IT, Dumfries & Galloway Housing Partnership
Castleton was chosen following a rigorous assessment carried out with help from Alysium Consulting, DGHP’s independent advisors, who helped identify which tools were needed to achieve the housing provider’s digital ambitions.
Phil Riley, lead technical consultant, Alysium Consulting, said, “Castleton demonstrated throughout the tender and implementation process not only that it has innovative services but also a good understanding of the needs of housing providers.”

Housing Technology Mag, out today and from which this is taken, also contains a 'warts and all ' interview with Mr. Dickinson, commenting particularly on the poor perception of the company which existed in the market, and which is yet to be fully overcome. I shall post it later this morning. I view it as very positive from an investors standpoint, taking into account Castleton's past and current progress and performance

I think they've got all bases covered now, and firing on all cylinders. ( mixed metaphor, but I left it ) Fully integrated acquisitions ( Deeplake can't be much ) and integrated products and in house developers for new and updates in UK and India, and gone so far as a new training facility for customers buying their products.
Price wise, 106 held for a month apart from one little dip. Maybe room now for the bid to move up and make ground before June.

This is what they said with final results in June last year. They've done it on both scores.
"Given the strong cash generation of the business, the Group has the confidence to increasingly invest in customer related capex and infrastructure in the coming year as we seek to win new hosted and managed service deals. The Group will also look to continue the investment in software development."

Today's announcement also said,
"As well as upgrading our equipment and establishing new and highly secure data centres, we are expanding and strengthening our technical support team on-shore and off-shore to provide 24/7 service."

I take it that means business is such as requires more staff in Australia too ( and maybe India ) And they can see their way clear to providing a 24 hour a day service. Staff needs to be paid, but that's the nature of growth and expansion. Must be indicative of success and future prospects. Quite exciting all this, on the face of it.

Castleton at the investors event tomorrow and Friday.

Forgot the link.

https://www.castletonplc.com/events/castleton-australia-customer-conference/

And they're off to Australia for the first customer conference there to liven up the cross selling and potential new customer interest with all the recent and enhanced stuff.

We had hoped for more managed services contracts, and we knew they were looking for growth there by migration of existing customers to the cloud and of course new ones. Indications are they are experiencing growing success arising from the recent referenceability of their full suite on a fully managed basis.

In new hosting technology, in response to increased demand!

https://www.castletonplc.com/news/major-investment-by-castleton-in-a-new-purpose-built-hosting-environment/

Things are moving apace.

They've pulled all the recent technology together under Castleton Maintain, making it the first and only end to end solution in their market. And ahead of the Repairs and Maintenance Conference and Exhibition on 22nd. May.

https://www.castletonplc.com/news/castleton-rolls-out-first-end-to-end-integrated-maintenance-solution/