The business decision
Your decision on a management system – whatever it is – will have a profound impact on every aspect of your organisation.
It’s not just the system itself you have to consider, but the across-the-board results of implementing it.
We know from the experience of hundreds of installations that implementing SMS can enable significant gains four key areas:
If you already have another system installed but it’s not delivering everything you want, then there is a solid business case for you to change to SMS (click for more).
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Management gains: information and control
Trying to manage without good information is frustrating, stressful, inefficient and potentially dangerous.
Only on-demand access to accurate, detailed information enables you to:
- see exactly the position your organisation is in
- identify problems before they get out of hand
- explore ways of improving efficiency
- test the results of management changes
- manage your financial position
- correctly attach cost and income outcomes to specific areas of your operation
- achieve high standards of corporate governance, reporting and transparency.
SMS is an information-rich management system. It generate over 100 reports and graphs at the touch of a button.
Every one of these reports has been created and refined to meet the expressed needs of organisations like yours, working in similar fields. So you won’t be drowned in junk information; you’ll get just what you need.
SMS maintains detailed historical records of clients, staff and volunteers including all activities and services. If a question is asked later, you’ll have the answer. If you want to explore patterns of service or outcome, you have the data.
Control
Information means control. SMS tames the beast of funding body reports. Instead of being driven by the reporting imperative, you can focus on driving your organization towards the goals you choose.
With SMS control also includes the daily detail of operation in the real world.
When an appointment gets rescheduled at the last minute, SMS handles it easily, allowing you to re-schedule the day to make maximum use of your resources.
When you have staff in the field, you can stay in touch with them, including live changes to schedules and synching of updated client data to your main computer.
Conclusion
SMS can reduce your management stress, improve management efficiency and enable high standards of corporate governance.
The control you’ll achieve from better information will allow you to focus beyond daily crises to the long term sustainability and development of your organisation.
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Productivity gains
Time saved
Today, everyone is under pressure to do more in less time.“The really big thing is how much time we save.” Front line managers and staff who use SMS tell us that time saved is the most important outcome for them. They save time on record keeping, data entry, reporting and through better, more flexible rostering.
Time saved means lower costs per service.
And that’s the enhanced productivity every organisation is seeking.
Staff and volunteer morale
SMS improves staff and volunteer morale by:
- reducing stress and frustration
- reducing wasted time and time spent in monotonous and repetitive tasks
- increasing the rewards of client satisfaction
Staff morale is a powerful contributor to productivity. It’s perhaps even more important with volunteers.
Getting it right
One of the greatest drains on productivity is having to redo completed tasks to find errors or track anomalies. Manual data recording and double entry inevitably create these errors. SMS reduces them, and that is a direct productivity gain.
Conclusion
SMS will save your organization time at the front line, reducing your cost per service.
It will boost staff and volunteer morale and reduce time lost correcting recording errors, making further contributions to productivity.
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Quality of care gains
Most people working in our sector have a deep underlying motivation to care for others.
Achievement of quality care outcomes will decide their work satisfaction and the level of organisational morale they contribute to.
Quality of care is also a fundamental measure of the organisation’s success, whether it be community based, local government or for profit.
No longer can we rely solely on the good will and skills of care-givers to ensure quality care: today we must also have reporting and measurement systems in place, to enable effective management oversight.
SMS makes a strong contribution to quality of care outcomes through:
- Comprehensive, accurate client record keeping including all special requirements, case history and contacts.
- Tracks and responds to individual requirements including treatments, medications and meals.
- Client information can be accessed offsite via mobile SMS
- Updates to client information can be entered in the client’s home
- Flexibility to deal with changes in client circumstances including rescheduling appointments.
- Multiple automated reports make it easy to measure and report on client care standards.
Safeguards
Unfortunately, if an organisation operates for long enough and services enough clients, one day there may be an incident which could be interpreted adversely by the media, with serious consequences to image, community support and funding.
The only effective safeguard against such negative publicity is to have, immediately available for official scrutiny:
- Comprehensive documentation of appropriate service delivery in accordance with program and other standards
- Proof of continuing management control
- Evidence of fulfillment of duty of care
- Demonstration of complete transparency
- In an emergency, SMS can deliver on these needs, immediately.
Conclusion
SMS makes it easy to maintain comprehensive, accurate records of all clients and client related activity; to maintain responsible management oversight, to comply with duty of care requirements, to meet reporting guidelines and to quickly demonstrate and document this compliance.
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Financial gains
We know from practical experience that SMS can save your organisation far more than the cost of purchase and implementation, on an ongoing basis .
SMS saves you money by:
- Saving you time in the front line where more efficient management can reduce the average cost per client service and translate directly into financial gains.
- Ensuring full collection of chargeable events including accurate service and travel times, so you are able to claim your full entitlements.
- Saving you time in reporting to funding bodies, by automating what can be a very time consuming process (especially if you have multiple funding sources), so your cost of servicing funding sources is reduced.
- Saving you administrative time, especially in avoiding double entry of data, interfacing with accounting programs, reducing time lost tracking errors and automatically generating vital reports.
- Increasing management efficiency, by easily generating the information management needs to be in control and make effective decisions.
Conclusion
SMS delivers significant time saving across the board including service delivery, administration, accounting and management, that will translate directly into financial gains.
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Why change?
Today every organisation that deals with the public – whether it is community based, government or for profit – is expected to operate more efficiently, with higher standards of service and greater transparency and accountability.
These are imperatives that cannot be achieved by asking people to work ever harder.
Further gains in productivity can only be achieved through:
- more efficient management systems, especially in information and reporting
- automating monotonous and repetitive tasks
- reducing time lost redoing tasks
- improving morale
- freeing people up for more important goals, especially delivering client services.
SMS is proven in the field to deliver these results, across a wide range of organisations and situations.
SMS is easy to implement. It’s easy, intuitive interface means immediate productivity with minimal ongoing training requirements. Data from existing systems can usually be transferred.
Our experience is that the ongoing savings you’ll make in time saved will easily pay for the program; the gains in efficiency, information, control, data accuracy and organisation-wide morale will be ongoing dividends.
Contact us to discuss your needs and we’ll help you draw up an effective change strategy to ensure you get maximum benefits.
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Download business case
Click here to download a summary of the SMS business case.
The download is a pdf document you can print or email as an attachment.
 Don’t have the latest version of Acrobat Reader? Click here to download it for free, direct from the Adobe site.
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Guarantee
We guarantee to add new statistical government funding reports to SMS whenever programs are changed or funding for major new programs is received, effectively future-proofing your management via SMS and ensuring you are always positioned to take full advantage of current programs and new program opportunities.
SMS currently enables organisations to record services from any source. If the only difference is a new Reporting Structure, then it will be added as a part of ongoing software maintenance.
If the funding requires specific reporting requirements (for example, Home and Community Care have an electronic Minimum Data Set return) then we will fund the development cost. The only charge will be the standard cost of a Reporting Module plus ongoing Software Maintenance.
If we cannot deliver the module to you within three months of receiving the complete written requirements from you we will discount the licence cost by 10% per month.
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