Year 4 of Hewes Consulting - and busier than ever

Hello All! Yes – just in case you were all wondering whether I was still around, I thought I’d better write another blog! You haven’t missed anything – at least in terms of blogs – it really has been a year since the last one! So, why the 12 month gap? Quite simply, I’ve never been so busy…

Just after last year’s blog, my ‘athletics life’ suddenly took off. Many of you will know that my younger son is a High Jumper – and last summer things really took off (no pun intended!). In a very short period of time he improved his ‘PB’ from 2.05m to 2.15m – and was rewarded by selection for the GB Junior team for the European Junior (U20) Championships in Italy. Obviously my wife and I had to drop everything at very short notice to make the trip to see him in action (thank goodness I have the flexibility that comes with being self-employed!) – and invitations to other high profile competitions, with consequent travelling ensued.

My elder son has spent the past year completing Year 4 of his Masters degree in Chemistry – and delighted us all by achieving a First! He’s now back at home considering his next move – which seems most likely to be a PhD. I always thought it would be good to have a Doctor in the family! Needless to say, I’m beyond proud of both of my sons.

Back in the Keystone world, as I set out, incredibly, on my fourth year of self-employment, it’s been both a busy and rewarding 12 months, getting stuck into much of the kind of work that I quit Civica to be able to focus on – helping organisations get the most out of Keystone.

The projects I’ve worked on have been really varied, and interesting. I’ve helped one customer set up a Keystone database to manage their Corporate properties. Over the years I’ve had lots of conversations with Keystone clients about whether the system could provide a solution outside of housing – and this year I got the chance to prove that it could! The approach was slightly unorthodox compared with housing implementations because, having started with a completely ‘empty’ Keystone database, we built up the config ‘on the fly’ as property surveys were carried out outside of Keystone, and data arrived. Obviously the generally recommended approach is to create a config – and then go out and survey – but a different order of events was already in train for the customer. Ultimately, though, I’m really pleased with the config we arrived at, given how different the data was. It was also a challenge to work out an asset hierarchy for large, complex buildings. We had to think outside of the usual ‘box’ and take some unexpected directions – but the result has been very satisfying.

In a similar vein, I carried out my first data migration for a client! The source data was already in a Keystone database, which made things easier – but the target was a Keystone system with a different stock condition configuration. The KGI, of course, saw plenty of use, and the migration was completed successfully – and well ahead of schedule! I’ve also had opportunities to migrate source data from third party surveyors into Keystone databases. I’m sure my approach was much less ‘techie’, without the tools that the Civica team use, but nonetheless successful!

Of late, I’ve taken on the ‘ultimate’ challenge of migrating energy data from two different sources, into Keystone databases. Brushing the dust off my old Excel automation skills, I was really pleased with the migration tool that I came up with, which translates the data with some ease!

KPM was a huge focus for one client. With a substantial number of contracts being managed through the system, KPM was business critical for them – but with the loss of a key ‘superuser’, extensive help was required to support them through the end of one, and start of the next financial year. It was great to get properly hands-on with KPM, within an organisation who are using it so successfully.

This KPM work morphed into the development of SQL Server ‘SSRS’ reports. Again, use of SSRS to deliver executive reporting suites has always been an option for Keystone users – but it does require SQL skills to be able to put these reports together. It was really pleasing to work with a client that had already made extensive use of this toolset – and to be able to develop new reports for them, using this technology. I’ve always thought that Keystone clients are missing out when they don’t make use of SSRS, and I hope I’ll be doing a lot more of this kind of work. Ultimately, all of the data is in the database somewhere – and SSRS is such a powerful tool for making this available in a form that provides new insights and enhances business processes.

At the turn of the year (hard to imagine all of that snow at the time!), I started work on development of a KSI-contractor interface. Of course, successful KSI data exchange with third parties is a challenge which has proven beyond many organisations, but with my client working with an extremely IT-savvy servicing contractor, the opportunity arose to use the generic KSI interfaces. The most interesting part of the proposed approach was for the contractor to initiate the KSI jobs (as the generic interfaces allow), rather than KSI. Unfortunately we hit an issue with workflow that required the client to upgrade to a later version of Keystone – and upgrade which has yet to be scheduled – but I’m looking forward to getting back to this one, and finally cracking one of Keystone’s more tricky nuts!

Of course, these are only the major pieces of work this year. Alongside these projects, all of my clients regularly send me messages asking for help or advice in the use of Keystone – and this is support that I’m only too pleased to provide too – ask me an interesting question about Keystone, and I just can’t help but answer!

Back to work now…

Rob