Adullam Homes was founded in the Birmingham area by Walter Moore MBE in 1972. The name “Adullam” comes from the Old Testament. The cave at Adullam was the refuge for David as he fled from King Saul. It eventually became a shelter for “all those who were in distress or in debt or discontented”.

Following the 1974 Housing Act, Adullam Homes became a registered Housing Association. Since then the Association has developed steadily, and Adullam now accommodates nearly 800 people in shared housing, hostels and single flats, as well as providing support and advice services in the community.

Adullam has seen steady growth in the number of units that it provides over the last 5 years, with a 17% increase since 1999. This has been matched by an increase in income of nearly 50% over the same period. This growth has been a combination of the purchase and development of our own accommodation, and working in partnership with other Housing Associations to take more of their units into our management, and providing support services.

Adullam's Mission Statement expresses these key aspects of its work:

Adullam works in the community providing support to those in need, through a variety of housing, support and advice services.

Adullam's aims are to:

• Provide a range of support services according to individual requirements
• Provide appropriate high quality housing
• Deliver high quality, value for money support services, in line with current best practice
• Develop partnerships with other agencies

The Requirements:

With staff located in small numbers in many different locations much time and efficiency was being lost moving paper forms around the organisation. Adullam needed an electronic solution to improving the efficiency of its business processes. The solution required that data could be captured electronically at source, moved by email for authorisation and/or action and captured in centrally held databases for processing into backend applications such as accounting and housing systems.

Adullam decided to purchase an electronic forms system that would allow them to automate much of the administration. They needed a solution that was quick and simple to use, easy to set up and that they could develop according to their needs. It was essential that the forms could be designed in a user-friendly interface, and that the designer did not need professional level IT skills – having to program each individual form would have been slow and costly.

Forms for conversion included all internal financial forms, from purchase orders to expense claims, personnel forms, housing management and tenant applications forms.

The Solution:

Everyone involved felt it was essential to find a software solution that had the capability to meet the needs of the Association into the foreseeable future. OfficeForms was chosen due to its flexibility, straightforward development interface and functionally rich tool set. OfficeForms incorporates a number of intelligent features such as drop down boxes, radio buttons, mandatory fields and field checks.

Toplevel's OfficeForms was found to be the best product as it fulfilled each of Adullam's requirements and had the potential to be scaled up as necessity dictated. The OfficeForms Form Designer is a simple point and click tool that can be used by anyone with a reasonable level of IT literacy, meaning that the forms could be designed by the very administration staff who would be using them. Workflow can be added to the resulting form in a similar point and click fashion. However, if necessary, an IT professional can easily program additional functions and features, meaning that OfficeForms is an incredibly powerful, flexible solution that can be adapted to any situation requiring electronic forms and workflow.

Adullam Housing found that with OfficeForms they could solve their e-forms needs quickly and easily. They now have 15 complex forms systems up and running – systems that include integration into a database, validations and locked sections as well as workflow and rules systems. All of this was achieved with minimal programming, making OfficeForms a good value system to implement.