The Salvation Army Aged Care

"The Professional Advantage consultant was unique in his understanding of our need for simplicity. The last thing we wanted was another complicated system. What Professional Advantage delivered is a convenient one-stop-shop where managers can get all their information, rather than having to hunt around different systems, trying to pull information together themselves."

Paul Berryman, Head of Information Technology

The Company
Aged Care Plus is a division of The Salvation Army Eastern Territory and provides aged care services to over 1,700 older Australians. The Salvation Army Aged Care Plus has 16 residential aged care centres across New South Wales, Queensland and the Australian Capital Territory, six centrally located retirement villages, one respite and day centre in the Australian Capital Territory and a range of Community Home Care and Support packages assisting older Australians in their home.

The Need
Although Aged Care Plus was equipped with a variety of information systems, the organisation had no simple way of bringing all the data together to create a holistic view of the business, without significant manual effort by six different team members, consuming more than one FTE for each month’s report. In particular, there was no easy way to measure activity against the 13 key performance indicators that help to ensure efficient management of people and facilities. What was required was a way of enabling the executive team, area and centre managers to quickly determine whether performance was on track to meet Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). The organisation also wanted to provide users with the means to drill down into the data, so they could better understand the detail behind their results.

Challenges
The solution had to be able to associate, analyse and clearly present KPI-related data from a variety of sources including spreadsheets, payroll, human resources, financial, clinical management and other systems. To ensure there was no additional burden on staff, the system also had to deliver all these analyses, measures and metrics without requiring any additional raw data input. No-one was to change the way they worked to provide any data. Most importantly given the aspects of the system, data privacy had to be respected and confidentially assured during the build and beyond.

“By implementing this solution we have greater aligned our business activities to our strategic plan, improved communications, and monitoring of performance against strategic goals. This solution has provided us with greater insights, access to more data and to drive better business outcomes.”
Karen Noble, Executive Manager - Strategic Governance and Policy The Salvation Army Aged Care Plus

The Solution
Word of mouth recommendation led Aged Care Plus to QlikView. After determining the software could do exactly what the organisation required, another recommendation led the company to implementation partner, Professional Advantage. As development proceeded, the Salvation Army project team and Professional Advantage critically evaluated KPIs along with the available, underlying data. This process provided an invaluable opportunity to review, align and set targets to improve and strengthen measures.

“The Professional Advantage consultant was unique in his understanding of our need for simplicity. The last thing we wanted was another complicated system. What Professional Advantage delivered is a convenient one-stop-shop where managers can get all their information, rather than having to hunt around different systems, trying to pull information together themselves.”
Paul Berryman, Head of Information Technology, The Salvation Army Aged Care Plus

Results

• QlikView is being used to measure and monitor more than a dozen KPIs relating to The Salvation Army’s operation of aged care services.
• Timeliness has improved, with managers receiving daily, rather than monthly performance updates.
• Clear visual design including the use of simple “traffic light” colour coding enables users to quickly identify critical information, such as the top ten variances across financial results.
• Actionable insights provide centre managers with prompts when steps need to be taken, such as when residents are due for assessments regarding their residency duration.
• A dynamic guide offers prompts to improve performance if key metrics fall outside predetermined areas, such as if satisfaction levels fall at a site.
• Saving of one FTE, or more accurately, being able to redeploy up to six team members onto other tasks, where they were previously spending up to a week each month compiling reports manually.
• Comparisons of manually-prepared reports with QlikView data confirm the automated BI system has removed previous duplications and inconsistencies. Reports are now far more accurate and provide an improved basis for decision making.
• The increased insights are helping to improve performance across individual properties, geographic territories and the overall business in areas ranging from financial performance to property occupancy, client satisfaction and human resources.
• Management enthusiasm for QlikView is high and the organisation is now considering how the tool can be applied to drive insights for other teams including human resources, the clinical team, training and more.

“Our centres have never had a quick and easy way of viewing KPIs before. They used to enter information into the finance system or the payroll system, but they got little in the way of information back. Now they still enter the data, but without extending their effort, they have visibility of the results. Not only that, but because the system is updated daily, if anything changes, they can see it and respond immediately. If costs go up, they can do something about it. Our responsiveness to data has been dramatically enhanced.”
Paul Berryman, Head of Information Technology,The Salvation Army Aged Care Plus