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Successful software implementation: The AlayaCare implementation approach

5 Ways for your Home Care Agency to Deal with Margin Squeeze

Are you looking for a roadmap to implement software successfully? Well, we’ve got you covered! Discover essential strategies to align new software with your business processes, manage the transition, and drive user adoption. Trust us: the success of software implementation is crucial for the overall efficiency, productivity, and growth of your organization. That’s why it’s important to partner with a software provider who genuinely cares about your success and offers a comprehensive and robust implementation strategy. This ensures seamless integration and maximizes the utility of the software solution. Here at AlayaCare, we’ve got you covered with our implementation strategy built upon our fundamental principles.

The myths of software implementation

Before we start with our implementation strategy at AlayaCare, we realize that in the world of software implementation, there are a few myths that can cause some misconceptions and lead to unrealistic expectations. As our implementation expert, Chase Potter, points out in one of our Home Health 360 podcast episodes, here are some myths or misnomers that home-based care folks actually have about the process and why they’re myths and not fact.

Myth #1: Rapid implementation guarantees success

One of these myths, is the belief that rapid implementation guarantees success. While we definitely value getting results quickly, it’s important to recognize that, especially for larger-scale implementations, a more deliberate approach might be necessary. Taking the time to understand your business thoroughly, align the project with your objectives, and conduct a proper discovery process is critical. Rushing through these steps could cost you more time down the road when you have to fix issues that could have been avoided.

Myth #2: Software implementation is only an IT project

Another common misconception is that software implementation is only an IT project. But that’s not true at all! To succeed in implementing software, it’s crucial to get buy-in and active engagement from business leaders, not just the IT department. The goal is to have your staff embrace the product enthusiastically and see it as a helpful tool for their roles, rather than just an IT project being forced upon them.

By debunking these myths, our goal is to help you grasp a more accurate understanding of software implementation before dive into our strategy. It’s important to realize that a successful implementation takes time, aligns with your business objectives, and involves the whole organization. When we approach it this way, we can better prepare ourselves, set realistic expectations, and ultimately achieve more effective implementations that satisfy everyone involved.

Successful software implementation: The AlayaCare implementation approach

With the AlayaCare Implementation Approach, we follow a customer-focused journey to optimization. Our client succesteam is determined to help our customers get up and running as quickly and efficiently as possible. We have designed the software to be straightforward and customizable so users can adapt and manage the platform in a way that meets their organization-specific needs. 

Whether you’re a start-up company or an enterprise-level organization, we will work with you to customize your implementation process to achieve mutually accepted goals that are simple, attainable, and measurable. Let’s take a high-level look at what a typical implementation looks like at AlayaCare.

software implementation optimization journey

1. Pre-implementation discovery: Developing a realistic implementation plan

Developing a practical project scope is an essential aspect of implementing software. This involves establishing clear objectives and desired outcomes, determining relevant performance metrics, and devising strategies to achieve them.

A. Setting clear goals and KPIs

A crucial step in achieving a successful software implementation plan is setting clear goals and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). To establish achievable objectives, managers should prioritize defining the company’s overall goals and recognizing the responsibilities of their software engineering manager. It is also important to establish standard performance metrics and utilize the SMART framework – specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound – for goal-setting.

In agile software development projects, KPIs serve as an effective tool for measuring performance against business objectives. They allow for data-driven decision-making processes and help analyze trends throughout each code commit or sprint. By aligning with project goals on all levels from start to finish through these strategies, KPIs facilitate a more efficient path towards success in implementing new software within any organization.

  • What are your business goals and expectations?  
  • What are the role and responsibilities? 
  • What does success look like for you and what does it look like for other stakeholders? 
  • How do we align our schedules? What events or risks could impact our deadline? 

We then build out an action plan to achieve these desired outcomes and make sure our customers know exactly what to expect every step of the way.  

The first stage you can expect to embark on is a pre-implementation discovery engagement. When we first started implementing AlayaCare 8 years ago, we used to jump just right into configuring the application. We would uncover requirements as we went, lead them to unpleasant surprises on both sides of the fence. But beyond surprises, it’s easy to lose track of why you’re making the effort to do the software implementation when you get into the weeds. So the discovery it forces you to really articulate the business objectives and ensure that you’re coming back to them as the project is progressing, so you don’t get stuck, and ‘I’d like this button to be over on the left hand side of the screen’ you’re instead coming back to ‘I want to improve my scheduling efficiency by 30%.’ So that discovery engagement is really important key phase In our world.

Chase Potter, VP of Professional Services at AlayaCare

B. Requirements and configurations needed to match your goals

After building the plan, the next step is to review the requirements and configuration needed to match the goals outlined in the planWe consider any customized features or functionality our customers might require such as billing codes and libraries, process validations, forms and tasks, reports and integrations, and partner applications. Our team learns as much as they can about your processes and workflows and configures the software in a way that is suitable for everyday use. 

  • What are your business needs/priorities? 
  • What are your agency and location-specific requirements? 
  • What do we need to build to address out of the box situations?  
  • What libraries of information do you need and how will these libraries work with your business?
  • Do you need any integrations? 

We move next into that environment configuration where we take what we learn in discovery and start to put it into practice in the software. We know that while two businesses might be very similar, they are very rarely still not founded at all identical and there really is a need to collaborate on these configurations around the platform and ensure that, as we build off our best practices, they’re still meeting the needs for your business. Within the software.

Chase Potter, VP of Professional Services at AlayaCare

2. Testing and onboarding: Ensuring a smooth transition

When it comes to implementing new software, we need to pay close attention to testing and onboarding. These steps are crucial in the overall process.

A. Testing to catch any glitches or bugs

It’s important to create a dedicated environment for thorough testing to catch any glitches or bugs and make sure the software works properly. We begin rigorous testing to ensure the workflows and processes in place meet your needs. The goal is to run through all possible scenarios so that by the time we reach go-live day, you can rest assured you feel comfortable navigating and leveraging the software to its fullest. 

Going beyond the configuration of user acceptance testing is really important. You’ve built out your workflows, your configuration of the environment is set to go. You need to actually test it. Make sure that the software is going to work for you. Our team, we support our customers in preparing for user acceptance testing, helping to build out test cases and ensure that customer is comfortable at the end of that testing period, ready to go live and beyond testing and so feel good. Software was great.

Chase Potter, VP of Professional Services at AlayaCare

B. Training and onboarding to help employees quickly adapt to the new software

At AlayaCare we believe in a sustainable training process. We offer a number of training and support resources at AlayaCare that enable both self-guided and classroom style (in-person or virtual) on-boarding. We typically take a “train the trainer” approach where we work with supervisors or dedicated “super users” to turn them into AlayaCare experts who can then support and enable the rest of your staff during and after implementation.

Training is obviously an essential component to adoption of any platform. On our side we generally lead with a ‘train the trainer’ model. We find that by training up a number of users and super users and trainers within a customer, we’re more likely to get staff buy-in from the platform on a broader basis. The reality is that a nurse in the field is more likely to really hear what’s being said from someone at their company that they’re used to seeing on a regular basis than a software vendor who’s coming in.

Chase Potter, VP of Professional Services at AlayaCare

Imagine a world where new workflows are easily adopted and put into practice by your admins and care providers.

With our three-tiered learning platform, AlayaCare University (ACU) is your organization’s personal online training center where your staff can reskill and upskill on AlayaCare Cloud and onboard faster! On average, save up to 30* hours of your onboarding and training hours with ACU. 

C. Getting everyone onboard

Getting internal advocates on board is key to driving acceptance of digital advancements and motivating employees to embrace new software and associated procedures. Effective communication plays a crucial role in ensuring that everyone involved understands and actively participates in the integration process.

It’s important for aligning integration objectives, achieving successful outcomes, preventing misunderstandings, and encouraging productive collaboration.

One way to achieve this, recommended by Chase, is by gamifying the training experience and offering incentives. We can also recognize the top performers and generate excitement around the program. By highlighting the benefits and creating a sense of anticipation, we can motivate participants to embrace the change.

But let’s not forget the “why” behind this initiative. We all know that human nature tends to resist change, so it’s crucial to clearly articulate the reasons and benefits to help overcome any resistance and encourage participation.

So what’s in it? For me, that piece is really key. Okay, you’re going to get paid quicker. You need to now integrate it with some sort of daily pay organization as well. You could get paid daily. Maybe you’re a scheduler and right now you spend a lot of time on repetitive tasks. Okay, let’s kill back some of those repetitive tasks. You can spend more time with clients, talking to clients and caregivers what you really want to do in your role.

So making that why at the forefront really does help move some of that hesitation, because at the day, you’re still going to have some hesitation, but as folks see the energy around them, the others adopting the platform to turn to hit on them as well.

Chase Potter, VP of Professional Services at AlayaCare

3. Getting ready to roll out

A. Gear up and go live

This is the exciting phase in our implementation where we being to plan the communication and roll out phase with all stakeholders as we get ready go live with the software. The AlayaCare team will be on-standby for full support during your launch and wmake sure you and your team have everything you need to start using the AlayaCare solution as planned 

Tasks may include: 

  • Go Live planning sessions and checklists. 
  • Stakeholder communication plans 
  • Readiness reviews and team sign-off. 
  • AlayaCare team onsite to support for the first 2 days. 

B. Stabilize, roll out, and optimize

The last phase once you have gone live with the software is stabilization. This is the phase between going live and business as usual where we really focus on checking all the boxes, completing workflows, and have everything signed off on by your organization. We’ll roll out the software in phases to accommodate all stakeholders and then it’s smooth sailing from here. 

Elements of stabilization: 

  • Payroll, billing, and funder reports have been run at least once. 
  • Reviewed and sign-off success criteria from the beginning of project.
  • Identify any blockers. 
  • Introduction of Client Experience team. 
Client Success Diagram

As you continue your journey with us at AlayaCareour Client Experience will take over post-implementation. Our team will continue to support, measure, and assess how you are using the software and work with you to make sure you are achieving your goals and improving outcomes 

Elements of optimization: 

  • Health checks where we identify greater efficiency opportunities. 
  • Analyzing opportunities for improvements or new features. 

Home Health 360, Episode 58

Successful software implementation for organizational transformation in home-based care

Successful software implementation for organizational transformation in home-based care

The customer journey differs for everybody, but no matter your business need, our team and our products are flexible enough to pave the path that’s best for your organization. Contact us to learn more about our Customer Success team and how we can support you when you’re ready to implement new technology.

FAQs about software implementation

Based off interview with Chase Potter on the software implementation episode of Home Health 360.

When discussing implementation with customers, we emphasize the various phases and highlight the data migration challenge. Migrating data is complex, but we have tools to simplify the process. Dealing with health data adds complexity, from extracting it to importing it into AlayaCare. It becomes even more challenging when customers want to migrate all their data.

To address this, we work closely with customers to determine essential data for success on days one and 30. Our technical service team specializes in data migration and collaborates with customers to map and extract data into a template for AlayaCare. We’ve introduced a self-serve data migration tool, enabling efficient data mapping and reducing validation time.

We continuously improve the process to make it accessible, even for smaller customers. While data migration remains complex, evolving tools make it smoother, even when dealing with multiple systems and paper records.

When evaluating your current state quarter, it is important to identify areas of pain and waste. These areas can help define your project objectives. For example, if we observe a wasteful process where we have to manually add client information into a Google sheet and email it to Joe in accounting, we can see that it adds an extra 10 minutes each time we add a client. By eliminating this step, we can save time and improve efficiency. It is unnecessary to deeply analyze every single step to find significant opportunities for a high return on investment.

Even small steps, like sending visit offers that take only one minute, can have a big impact when scaled up in a large company that sends tens of thousands of visit offers per week. By optimizing these processes, we can achieve a significant return on investment.

When it comes to focusing on specific aspects, we often engage them in discovery sessions. These sessions usually occur during the sales cycle, where we interact with executives who possess a strong understanding of their business. However, they may not be aware of certain small, inefficient steps that occur within their processes. For example, they might not realize that Tom takes an extra step every time he schedules a visit, as this information doesn’t always come to their attention.

That’s why, during our discovery sessions, we don’t limit ourselves to just meeting with the executive team. We prefer to shadow individuals and observe how they currently utilize their systems, noting the steps they take. This same approach applies when we conduct business optimization engagements using AlayaCare. We need to witness firsthand what you’re truly doing to identify the most significant areas of value.

  1. Assemble a strong and dedicated court team. This team should possess cross-functional expertise and be capable of effectively representing your business. Their commitment to the project is crucial. Having such a team in place greatly facilitates progress and ensures that you have the right representation when important decisions need to be made.
  2. It is imperative to establish clear business objectives. I have already stressed the importance of this point, but it cannot be emphasized enough. Without clearly defined objectives to refer back to, projects easily veer off track. While no implementation or product can ever be entirely perfect, it is crucial to assess whether any minor imperfections are hindering your progress toward your goals. If they are, it is perfectly acceptable to pause and address them. However, if they are not impeding your progress, it is important to keep moving forward.
  3. It is vital to conduct a post-implementation review. Many less-than-ideal practices tend to develop in the first three months after a project goes live. Staff members often find ways to get the job done, but these methods may be far from optimal. Therefore, before you consider closing the case on a project, take the time to evaluate how things are being done and optimize their usage.

By considering these three components, you can enhance the quality and effectiveness of your projects while ensuring that your business objectives are met.

As stated in the blog the stages would be:

  1. Pre-implementation discovery
  2. Testing and onboarding
  3. Go live

Timeline-wise per stage, it is highly dependent on the individual organization the number of service lines, complexity. Generally, when we’re working with a larger enterprise organization, we do consider a phased implementation. We start with either a region or a service line where we think we can deliver value more quickly based on what we know of your business. And time from that initial kickoff to the first phase go live is usually somewhere in the 4-8 month range.

Regarding the entire switchover, again every agency is different, so I don’t want to put broad strokes out there. But for an agency of 2000-3000 employees, we’re talking about let’s say it’s predominantly personal care we’re probably looking at somewhere between 8 to 12 months for the full project.

But remember, every agency is different.

Having a well-defined strategy is crucial when implementing change. Unfortunately, it’s often overlooked or forgotten as projects progress. It’s easy to get caught up in the details and lose sight of the importance of communication with your team. To ensure successful change, it’s essential to have a clear strategy and consistently reinforce it from executive leadership down the hierarchy. By championing the change and ensuring everyone understands the “why” behind it, you create a solid foundation for success. These key elements are instrumental in driving positive and effective change.

We closely collaborate with our customers to support their change management initiatives. Ultimately, just like with training, it’s crucial for their internal stakeholders to champion the change. Field staff rely on their schedulers, who in turn depend on their managers to articulate the importance of the change. From a strategic standpoint, we are committed to supporting you every step of the way in implementing your change strategy as our valued customer. This emphasis on change champions is vital, and it should be a key area of focus regardless of the nature of your implementation.

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