Based in the North East of England, Thirteen is a housing association that manages 34,000 properties within the North East and Yorkshire, and supports over 70,000 customers. In addition to offering homes for sale or rent, the company provides a range of housing support services, including supported living, employment resources and independent living support.
To build stronger relationships with residents, customers, and staff, Thirteen replaced its ageing, on-premises communications technology. 8x8 provides a cloud-native solution with powerful analytics that help the organization become a more data-driven business.
The Challenge: Resilience and availability
In 2019, Thirteen adopted a new workplace philosophy. “Work is something that you do, and not where you go” was forward-thinking at the time, and also prescient, as only a year later the coronavirus pandemic made that a reality for everyone. “We were lucky as an organisation to have already shifted towards a hybrid workplace model before the pandemic hit,” says Hassan Bahrani, Head of IT at Thirteen.
The motto also had a technology component to it as well. The company was running an on-premises communications system that made it difficult to support remote work. So, Thirteen decided to introduce modern technology that could deliver on this vision.
“We had two main objectives for a new solution,” says Bahrani. “One was to increase network and infrastructure resilience, and another was to support work from anywhere.” To be successful, it also had to be cloud native, provide an open API to integrate with their housing management system, and fast to roll out.
One of Thirteen’s resellers set up a series of 8x8 demos. Bahrani sums up the final decision: “8x8 offered an intelligent communications platform with built-in analytics features that really set it apart from the competition.”
