Absolutely! Clearview enables all staff to understand what the organisation is striving for, where it is going and how it will get there. All staff members can see at a glance their own tasks and understand how they are contributing to the organisational goals. There are screens and reports that can be used at staff 1-2-1's and team meetings through to board level and customer involvement workshops to bring your organisation's performance to life.

Everyone associated with the organisation, from the Chief Executive, Board, Strategic Management Team, Senior Managers, Managers, Front-Line Staff and ultimately your customers.

The Strategy suite is based upon your organisational strategy, projects, risks and service excellence outcomes. Data for this is largely entered by staff in the course of their everyday activity and rolls up to give the organisational strategic performance indicators.

In contrast, the customer service improvement suite does utilise data derived from the housing management and other back office systems within the organisation to populate the data mart used to supply data to the software. Optionally, the performance scorecard module can (if required) take automatic data feeds from systems to populate its database.

Yes. Clearview has an enthusiastic user community and the user group is run by Clearview users for the user community. They supply chairman, speakers and agenda for all events. Meetings are held every six-months and representatives from all Clearview users are welcome. The user group levy a small annual fee to cover room hire and catering at events.

The Clearview Strategy and performance suite addresses all the performance reporting requirements of Social landlords, and provides natural connectivity between the different plans and initiatives that need to be managed. This means that information only needs to be entered once, and the “golden thread” is never broken.

The system enables easy viewing of an individual's "Golden thread" via reports and screens within the system.

The system allows for the setting up of organisational objectives, goals, SWOT/STEP analysis, KPIs, projects and tasks. The thread continues with support for linked risks, the TSA and other standards’ outcomes. All employees are able to see how their activities help deliver the corporate strategic objectives. Where appropriate, lines of responsibility and accountability can be easily viewed and understood.

Clearview provides comprehensive support for the support of simple to complex organisational structures. Testament to this are the growing number of larger organisations now recognising Clearview as the product of choice to meet this requirement. Objectives and in turn Goals are broken down into Projects and Action plans and all can be linked to child or group parent organisations. Outcomes (for TSA and other excellence standards) can be associated with an organisation and viewed collectively to fully understand at many levels how the organisation is performing.

Clearview enables you to match your corporate projects and action plans to service excellence outcomes, so that you can demonstrate how you are moving towards an excellent performance, and where performance gaps still remain. Furthermore, the system is supplied with other service excellence standard frameworks maintained by Clearview and allows you to build your own localised standard frameworks and monitor your performance against these outcomes.

The TSA standard has been incorporated within the Service Excellence module and is now available for clients at no extra charge.

The Clearview Strategy and Performance suite stores current and historic goal, project and task information. Historic risk and service excellence assessments are also held by the system. Performance scorecard stores historic KPI data for as long as it is required within the system.

The customer service improvement suite (Process management and Intelligence) extract data from existing systems, such as a housing management system, into the Clearview data mart. The amount of historic data extracted is controlled by users.

All modules including the performance scorecard have a wide range of standard reports that have been developed through working with our client users from all over the housing sector to cover the majority of requirements. In addition, the Clearview system is extensible in that reports developed by the customer can also be integrated as menu items into the software.

The Clearview Strategy and Performance suite, Performance scorecard, Process management and Intelligence modules are all accessed through a web browser interface, typically Internet Explorer 7 as a base. Performance scorecard and Process management import and administration tools are Windows.Net applications.

Yes this is a powerful and flexible feature of the system. The Clearview Strategy and Performance suite provides audits of user actions within the system to help identify who changed what and when. This can be filtered by user, entity or change event type and exported to excel for comprehensive offline analysis as required.

This can be supported in a number of ways. There is one dedicated screen for reviewing an individual’s tasks. Review of this screen can be triggered via receipt of an email alert advising of outstanding task activity or reviewed as part of a 1-2-1 or appraisal process with line manager. The interface is very intuitive for non technical users and designed to be very easy to use. Furthermore it displays at a glance the "golden thread" allowing the user to see exactly what they are contributing to by completing their tasks.

Clearview already supports RSL organisations where “systems thinking” is being applied through external support. Indeed the customer service improvement suite enables analysis of your core processes to measure how lean the organisation is becoming.

The Service excellence module provides a framework that enables clients to record assessments against a Standard's framework, including the TSA’s “National Standards” and generate action plans. Historically changes to the KLOE framework have been made available to customers before they become live. This level of service will continue.

Each project can be linked to VFM efficiency categories and calculations captured and reported upon. The system is shipped pre-populated with all the Gershon VFM categories.

Yes. The system dispatches email alerts to notify users of significant events on the system such as tasks becoming due in a period, risk assessments due etc... This functionality is configurable as to whether it is used or not and the frequency.

Help is fully supported at System, Module and screen/report level throughout the system accessed via pressing F1 key or via the help icon on every page.

Three alternative approaches to implementing the strategy and performance suite are open to you that largely depend on what you would like to achieve, your available resource, and the timescale required:

• Simple - a “train the trainer” approach
• Fast-track – an individual working with a Clearview "Best Practice" consultant
• Workshop cascade - full Management Team working with Clearview "Best Practice" consultants

You may even decide to use a combination of the above.

In addition to these approaches, you may choose to use the expertise of Clearview consultants to carry out a strategy and performance framework review, independently of any software solution.

The Strategic Suite implementation can be “fast-tracked” over a two to three week period. A full “workshop” implementation usually ensures a fully populated system in around three to four months.

The Performance Scorecard and customer service improvement suite can be implemented concurrently with the Strategy Suite or implemented standalone at a time to suit.

The customer service improvement suite typically takes around 1 month to get up and running per process, which can facilitate a rapid business payback, as demonstrated by clients' previous deployments of this suite of products.

It takes approximately 1 minute to update a task or action progress. The new Clearview system has been designed to greatly simplify this process to enable all staff to contribute to the upkeep of the system.  Task updates are often carried out just before or even during 1-2-1 sessions by users, often in conjunction with their managers.

Risk maps are typically reviewed quarterly or half-yearly, as are service excellence self-assessments and Gap analysis, and again the process for update has been designed to be as simple as possible.

The Performance Scorecard is populated each month, either from core system feeds or input forms, typically taking about 30 minutes per month per department for those indicators requiring input forms.

The customer service improvement data mart is fed from overnight batch updates from central systems, and so has no impact on people’s time.

So far, Clearview has or is about to interface with systems from Orchard/QLx, Civica, Universal Housing, Northgate, Academy. In practice, an interface to virtually any system can be made and Clearview's staff have a broad range of experience in this area.

Minimal. Clearview is really a business solution driven by its users. The user interface is Internet Explorer 7 and the database is MS SQL Server 2005.

Yes. The Strategy suite can optionally be deployed as a hosted option by Clearview. This option provides a cost-effective alternative to hosting the software within your own organisation. A number of Clearview's clients have adopted this deployment method.

The system is structured into a number of modules, each consisting of a number of screens. Access can be granted on a module-by-module basis, and further, on a screen-by-screen basis, different levels of access can be defined (e.g. read only, update etc). Each user can be assigned one or more ‘roles’ which define how they use the system, e.g. project user, strategy user. Furthermore, customers are able to define their own user roles.

Access to the system can be achieved as required. Pass through login is an optional feature of the software. Once logged in, security is firstly checked at a modular level – i.e. to which Clearview modules does this user have access? For example risk, strategy, project, balanced scorecard etc.

Secondly, each user can be designated the ability (or not) to be a project sponsor or project manager within the system. In order to be able to assume these roles, a user must have first been given permission.

Thirdly, a number of security roles can be associated with each user. The system is shipped pre-populated with a number of roles - for example, read-only user; risk manager; project manager; etc. Customised roles can also be created by the client. By default, when a new user is created, they have read-only access to the modules selected for them.

Therefore, in order to be able to update a project (including allocating tasks to individuals) the logged-in user must (1) have access to the project module; (2) have been granted permission to assume the project sponsor/project manager role for projects; (3) their username must match the project sponsor or project manager field of the particular project they wish to update; and (4) they must have been allocated a role which contains ‘Edit’ permission on the project screen.

The Clearview Strategy and Performance suite updates in real time to reflect internal changes. Performance scorecard reflects KPI data following an import from external sources. Customer service improvement suite Process Management and Intelligence modules are based on data extracted from other systems such as a housing management system. This is held in the Clearview data mart which is refreshed nightly.

All Clearview products are compatible with a Terminal Services or Citrix environment.

No. You just select the modules that are right for you now and then implement them at your own pace. Further modules can easily be added later if appropriate.

Either. We have examples of both.

From one to unlimited. Our unlimited licence level is set at a low price point to fully support rollout of the software within the whole organisation which greatly supports the establishment of an excellent performance culture. It is possible to start with a small number of user licences and then increase later as required to a greater number or unlimited.

Not necessarily. Clients have the option of a five year rental subscription to software licences and support which makes it even easier to acquire Clearview.

No. While we will be able to accurately assess how many implementation days are necessary to implement your solution, they would only get invoiced on an “as used” basis.