
Gentoo turned to 365Tribe to establish and manage a network of Digital Champions in November 2021. Throughout the first 12 months of the managed programme, Champions learnt how to create automation and apps with the Microsoft Power Platform, leading to some impressive results!
Gentoo has over 30,000 properties across the north east of England. Their vision is to provide great homes, strong communities and inspired people. To help reduce the UK housing shortage, they are building 1,200 new homes for rent by 2026.
The Gentoo Challenge
The team that manages empty properties at Gentoo were using multiple spreadsheets to monitor their areas. This presented frustrations in terms of wasted time and resources as only one user could access with users being locked out and data being deleted in error.
Information was reaching the team via multiple channels such as email and phone calls. Data could be missed or duplicated depending on who was monitoring the inbox or taking calls on any particular day.
Once the information was received the process of creating jobs for repairs or compliance was a manual task done via email and took considerable time for both their field workers and head office staff.
The Solution
Step up David Harvey! A System Analyst in the Corporate Services team, and a 365Tribe Digital Champion at Gentoo. Through the Digital Champions Programme, David had seen the potential time and cost savings that creating business solutions in the Power Platform could create.
David set to work on creating a PowerApp that Gentoo housing staff could use when visiting a recently vacated property. The app would allow staff once inside a vacant property to take pictures and upload data to a central SharePoint list. The housing team would use the data to arrange for the property to be available to rent again.

“365Tribe’s Digital Champion Programme really opened my eyes to what can be achieved with M365, especially in the Power Platform space. The 365Tribe knowledge library & learning paths helped me to create solutions that are saving the business time and money”
David Harvey, System Analyst & Digital Champion, Gentoo

Results
The app is being used to submit over 200 cases a month which is saving the need to create at least 450 emails a month, Saving in excess of 250 hours a year for the housing association, coupled with huge improvements to data accuracy and eliminating lost information cases. This is just one example of how motivated and knowledgeable Digital Champions can drive digital transformation.
For David, recognition came in the form of a Through and Through award. Well done David, great work!!