Housing association Eigen Haard improves appraisal process with Mendix

Housing association Eigen Haard has had an application developed to support its property appraisal process. This is an important business process that is carried out every year to determine the value of real estate. The property valuation is important for the annual financial statements and therefore for Eigen Haard's financial headroom. Commissioned by Eigen Haard, E-mergo developed a custom application for this with Mendix. The application replaces outdated software and automates a considerable number of manual steps in the process. In this blog, we describe the bottlenecks in the process, how the new Mendix application removes them and how this has improved the process.

About Eigen Haard

Eigen Haard is one of the largest housing associations in the Netherlands, operating in eight municipalities in the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area. With almost 600 employees, Eigen Haard has been developing, letting and maintaining affordable housing since the early 20th century. Eigen Haard currently manages more than 56,000 homes, more than 1,500 commercial spaces and almost 5,500 parking spaces.

About the appraisal process

Eigen Haard's appraisal process consists of several steps, including generating standard reports, exporting data from source systems and editing data using the SAS DI (Data Integration Studio) tool. All these steps produce multiple datasets in the form of Excel files, which are imported into the TMS (Appraisal Management System). The TMS then performs the calculations to determine the value of the property.

Bottlenecks in the process

In the old situation, SAS DI was used to merge, transform and prepare the various datasets. Because SAS DI was being phased out, Eigen Haard had to look for an alternative solution.

The appraisal process involved a large number of manual steps in which data was modified in Excel. These data transformations were carried out by an Eigen Haard employee. Not only were the modifications made manually, the log of changes made also had to be kept up to date by hand.

Besides preparing datasets, checking the data is also an important aspect of the process. At Eigen Haard, a number of automated data quality checks are supplemented with manual checks. As a result, a lot of time was spent on analyses and on solving problems caused by incorrect or incomplete data.

Choosing Mendix

After thorough preliminary research by Eigen Haard, it turned out that, given the specific nature of the required solution, no usable off-the-shelf software was available on the market. For that reason, a selection process involving several low-code platforms was carried out, and Eigen Haard chose Mendix. Mendix meets all of Eigen Haard's wishes and requirements, which we at E-mergo have implemented in the new application.

• The application runs in the Mendix Cloud (Mendix's SaaS environment), keeping the required resources (infrastructure), dependency on and support from Eigen Haard's IT department to a minimum.
• Large Excel files can be imported into the application. This removes the need for a separate application and infrastructure for SFTP (file transfer).
• Imported datasets can be analysed and modified within the application in a data grid.
• The application provides a workflow that guides the user through the process steps.
• Large datasets can be exported from the application to Excel in a fixed export format.
• The application makes it possible to configure transformation rules and data validations (input checks).
• The configured transformation rules are applied automatically when the Excel files are imported.
• The application has a built-in simulation function for running checks on the data. The configured data validations are used as input when running the simulations.
• The application automatically records every change to the data in an audit trail (log). This applies both to manual changes and to modifications resulting from importing update files.
• The application offers a reporting function for retrieving information from the audit trail. This information can easily be exported to Excel to share it with, for example, auditors.

The benefits for Eigen Haard

The application offers Eigen Haard several benefits in carrying out the appraisal process.

• Various steps in the process that used to be done manually have been automated by the application. This includes running simulations (data checks) and keeping the log in the audit trail. This saves a lot of time and prevents errors.
• The audit trail in the application helps the auditor audit the annual financial statements, as it is used to substantiate the market valuation in the audit file.
• Users can configure the transformation rules and data validations in the application, so the way the application works can be adjusted to a certain extent without needing support from the IT department.
• E-mergo also takes care of the management and further development of the application. This assures Eigen Haard of support and safeguards the continuity of the process. The latter is important because we expect the application will need to be adapted every year due to changes in regulations.

Want to know more?

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