Launch from zero to 100% engagement

A huge leap forward that didn't bleed a tight budget.

There were a number of factors behind Launch Housing’s decision to partner with Sope, admits Howard, but the important ones were the technology and people insights.

In terms of the technological aspects, Launch placed considerable weight on Sope's ability to keep things within the Office 365 environment, respecting existing points of integration and, ultimately, offering a solution that would work comfortably with their existing IT.

“I also liked that Sope didn’t try to over-sell us with a solution that was beyond our means or too grand for our purposes,” continues Howard. “They understood our brief and the size of our organisation, and they could come up with a solution that matched.”

As a result, Launch Housing now has a more contemporary intranet which, among many things, has enabled greater communication across their 14 sites, and extra functionality that has enabled a much-welcome focus on methodology as well.

“We have a knowledge hub,” says Howard. “There’s an updated one-stop-shop for staff to find key documentation, and Sope also created a nice app launcher for all our main tools. We also worked collaboratively to create and develop forms that help us manage specific things, like access to funds that staff need.”

“There’s a little bit of functionality that’s bespoke to us, but not massively so. It’s a nice, clean design. There was a little bit of training for us but there's nothing we can't manage on our own. It’s a really nice solution.”

Sope’s project management team excelled in the listening department, really taking note of what Launch said and making sure they didn't talk themselves into circles.

As Howard admits, "Sope were very good at pragmatically pushing us forward, having a solution that we would then tweak. I was impressed by their pragmatism and stoicism to keep us pushing towards the deadline that we had set for ourselves.”