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Project Overview
By mobilising its maintenance operations, Unite Students, the UK’s largest developer and operator of purpose built student accommodation, has seen a 30% increase in the number of jobs being completed since 2011. By working with enterprise mobility firm Mubaloo, Unite Students has been able to vastly improve the way they respond and report on maintenance issues. In 2014, following the success of their first app, Unite Students launched a second app, MyUNITE, aimed at students, creating a truly mobile first experience for logging and dealing with maintenance requests.
Nomination Commissioner
UNITE Group
Nomination Creator
Mubaloo
Team
Founded in Spring 2009, Mubaloo is an award-winning enterprise mobility firm specialising in mobile consultancy and mobile app development. Mubaloo's team delivers end-to-end enterprise and consumer solutions.
Mubaloo focuses on business process re-engineering, helping businesses plan, develop and deploy apps within a wider mobile ecosystem, providing inspiration and building intelligent business solutions. These app solutions help drive new opportunities to improve the way business is done, reduce costs, improve field maintenance operations and create powerful tools for employees, consumers, investors and other key stakeholders.
Working at a strategic and operational level, the in-house team delivers iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone and HTML apps that embrace the power of mobile.
Mubaloo has worked with a number of organisations worldwide to produce apps across many different verticals. Clients include: Aviva, Canon, Eircom, The Met Office, RAC, EE, Scania, William Hill, UNITE, Experian, Laing O’Rourke, Schroders, and Hargreaves Lansdown.
Working at both a strategic & tactical level, Mubaloo has seen a shift from requests for an individual app, to the exploration of the wider mobile ecosystem.
From the creative concepting & development of an app or website, to commercial roadmapping & system integration, the team delivers high quality user centered solutions.
Mubaloo is well recognised for delivering intelligent, engaging solutions for large enterprise clients, many of whom are looking to transform their internal processes & communications for both internal & external audiences.
Over the last 12 months, Mubaloo has received international recognition through SourcingLine, after being selected as the top consumer and enterprise app developer outside of the US, in both 2013 and 2014. In 2014, Mubaloo was recognised as a Red Herring top 100 European firms, in addition to receiving a SMARTA Breakthrough 50 award.
Project Brief
By mobilising its maintenance team, Unite Students has seen a 30% increase in the amount of jobs being completed since 2011. By working with enterprise mobility firm Mubaloo, Unite Students has been able to vastly improve the way they respond and report maintenance issues across their portfolio of 120 properties.
Unite Students appointed Mubaloo to build a mobile app that would support its maintenance operations. The aim was to provide the maintenance team with a tool that would help them manage their allocated jobs on a day to day basis, that would provide real time updates on job progress, and communicate to students living in the properties.
Unite Students is the UK’s leading operator of purpose built student accommodation providing a home for 41,000 students in over 120 properties, across 23 of the UK’s strongest university cities. Unite Students work in partnership with over 30 higher education providers, as well as renting rooms directly to students. They employ a dedicated national workforce of 100 skilled professionals to maintain their properties.
The objectives of the app were simple; improve the efficiency of the maintenance team; reduce the number of complaints; improve the reporting of work done and help better track and assign jobs. In 2014, Unite Students launched a separate app aimed at students called MyUNITE that enabled students to log maintenance issues, submit pictures of faults and deliver updates on when jobs will be completed.
Project Need
The use of real time information allows Unite Students to drive productivity improvements, enabling the Estates and Maintenance team to plan the workforce more efficiently increasing efficiency.
The simplicity of the app has allowed Unite Students to widen the user base to include non-maintenance staff, who can attend and fix non-technical faults. Since launch the user base has grown from 80 to 125 and the wider use has supported closer working relationships within Unite Students city teams.
Using fault categories for each job completion, allows the engineer at site level to record accurate information on the type of fault. This means Unite Students can capture and analyse high frequency faults, such as light bulb replacement, to enable improvements to processes and work allocation, e.g. increasing the resource base to include non-technical staff.
Through launching MyUNITE, Unite Students has taken a mobile first approach to its maintenance procedures. By doing so, Unite Students recognises that mobile is the primary way that students access information. By creating tools for both maintenance employees and students, Unite Students are empowering two of its key stakeholders on the move.
User Experience
Mubaloo provided Unite Students with market knowledge and insight enabling a clear mobile app strategy to be developed. When creating the app, a lot of thought went into how to design it for a user group that had limited access to computing for their day-to-day job. The app needed to be intuitive for any user, required minimum disturbance to day to day activity and require virtually no training.
Due to the nature of the work being carried out, it was important that the maintenance team could quickly launch into the app to get the information they need for any job. Unite Students maintenance was created to make it easy to enter information about work completed, and provide the ability to document faults with pictures.
With maintenance staff working on location, mobile reception is not often guaranteed, and the app features the ability to store information and input information offline. It is only once the device has connectivity again that the data gets sent, helping to ensure that the app continues working even if there is a network outage, or the maintenance team are out of mobile reception.
Both apps are designed for their target user with an emphasis on simplicity and clarity on being able to focus on tasks; whether it is logging a maintenance request or responding to one.
Project Marketing
MyUNITE is being promoted to students via posters in communal areas across Unite Students properties, in addition to email campaigns and social media groups created for those living in Unite properties. Only people living in a UNITE property are able to get access to the app.
In the case of both apps, the target market was very clearly defined and there is enough value for people to use them when they need to.
Project Privacy
For the Unite Students maintenance app, one big change was introduced between the paper process and moving to mobile; for the first time, maintenance employees wouldn’t be able to see the phone number of the student they were due to meet with. Instead, the app knows the student’s contact details and displays a ‘call’ button to ring the student. The privacy of the students was an important consideration for the project.
To ensure the data in the app is secure, the user needs to enter their password each time they log into the app. Each maintenance employee has their own login and password. Encryption helps to keep information temporarily stored on the device securely. As soon as the device has connectivity, the app is able to transfer the information and remove it from its temporary storage.
In the case of MyUNITE, each student has their own secure login that they can use to access the app. This provides information about their maintenance requests, package deliveries and access to emergency contact numbers.
In Field Services
This category relates to applications developed in order to aid and facilitate organisations requiring mobility whilst out of the office.
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