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What IT can do for you

Being able to press a button to produce reports that provide a complete picture of your clients, the services they receive and how they change/progress during the time they are with your organisation is often seen as the holy grail of IT-based outcomes management.

There is no doubt that without using IT, many organisations find it extremely difficult to join up these different pieces of information and report on them for different purposes eg:

• to produce reports for funders
• to gather information to support fundraising for new or existing work
• to produce management information to support internal planning and development
• to review individual client progress for use in key-working sessions.

Using effective IT and information management systems, reports can be tailored to enable you to select specific clients (eg within a certain project or a particular time-frame) or types of client (eg by age, gender or ethnic origin).

When to think about using IT for outcomes

However, developing an IT system, or adapting your existing system, to report on your clients’ outcomes should not be undertaken before your organisation has thoroughly worked out:

• what outcomes it wants to report on
• how it is going to gather this information from clients, staff or others
• considered its resources, strategic IT plans and overall IT infrastructure and the IT skills and confidence of the system’s users.

What are the options?

The choice of how to proceed with computerising the process will be influenced by a number of factors, for instance:

• the way you have chosen to gather your outcomes data
• your existing information management system - whether this can be adapted, whether you want to invest in it further or whether you want to start afresh
• your resources and support available
• your capacity as an organisation to adapt to and develop new systems and processes
• how your organisation currently manages and resources IT.

Organisations looking to develop their IT for outcomes can consider five different routes:

1. Tweaking your existing system
2. Taking the DIY approach and building your own system
3. Buying in an off-the-shelf system which is ready to use
4. Buying in expertise to develop your own system
5. Buying an off-the-shelf system that is customised to your own needs.

Each of these options has advantages and disadvantages and different solutions will be appropriate for different organisations. For further information on these issues and how to move forward with developing IT to support your outcomes management, see 'Putting outcomes into practice: A guide to developing IT-based outcome data management'.
Our research has identified a number of off-the-shelf systems that homeless organisations are using – or could consider using – to manage their outcomes. The following list is by no means comprehensive as new systems are being developed all the time. But it is the result of extensive research and consultation across both the homelessness sector and other related sectors.

In addition, the fact that systems have been listed here does not constitute a recommendation from the London Housing Foundation. Anyone considering acquiring one of these systems will need to undertake their own investigations into the suitability of the system for their particular organisation.

Finally, as we aim to update this section periodically with details of new systems that we learn of, please do feel free to send information to imfo@lhf.org.uk.

Click on the name of the system to download more detailed information.

Name of system	What type is it?	Suitable for?
CharityLog	Ready-to-use	Age Concern Offices
Lamplight	Ready-to-use	Small voluntary sector organisations and CVSs
LINK	Tailored	Larger housing and homelessness organisations
Links CarePath	Tailored	Alcohol and drug agencies
Online Data Management	Tailored	Larger organisations - or could be shared between a number of smaller organisations
SPA	Tailored or ready-to-use	Housing associations and voluntary organisations
SP Provider	Tailored	Larger organisations
Supportfile	Ready-to-use	Foyers, hostels, YMCAs and Housing Associations

Tell us about other IT systems for outcomes

We are keen to hear about other IT systems that are in use for monitoring outcomes, especially from agencies that are using those systems. If you have any experience of using such a system and would like to share it please email imfo@lhf.org.uk.

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