Automating Affordably
Administratively, most aspects of running Family Partnerships involved paper-intensive processes. Very little was automated, resulting in unnecessary costs, frustrated employees, multiple compliance challenges, trouble taking on new clients, and too much focus on non-mission related activity.
Family Partnerships of CT is a Windsor, CT-based community service provider that facilitates access to support resources for people with special needs. The organization was established in 2001 to address a service delivery gap between families, state agencies, and communities.
Staying Focused on the Mission
In an effort to help her organization stay focused on its key responsibilities, Executive Director Susan Miller felt it had become necessary to invest in an automation solution that would address the most pressing of their administrative burdens. She called on Triple Helix to come up with an affordable answer for automating processes where the need to have the right information available for Connecticut Department of Developmental Services (CT DDS) and financial audits was paramount.
The most critical areas included time entry for their caseworkers, documenting progress notes, and invoicing and reporting. The solution developed by Triple Helix was a secure web portal through which employees can enter their time, with logic built in to ensure the hours entered are valid for what the contract allows.
A Flexible Solution to Accommodate the Future Affordably
Before the new portal was added, employees often worked and reported more hours than contracts stipulated, resulting in Family Partnerships spending many hours reviewing records and invoices to be sure to bill only for the allowable hours. By putting in place a system that insured the accurate recording of time worked and required progress notes for each client, the organization could more easily satisfy audit requirements. It also laid the foundation to add automated invoicing to save even more time.
Because of the flexibility inherent in the open source design for this solution, accommodating requirement changes such as a new state reporting mandate could be accomplished quickly and inexpensively. The new system was built to be modular and adaptable, allowing a small organization like Family Partnerships to pay for exactly what they need now and then add functionality over time.
Time Savings Measured in Hours
The result for Family Partnerships has been a transformational improvement in their business operations and an ability to successfully prepare for and maneuver through the audit process. Time entry is simple and accurate. Hours worked that can’t be billed for have been eliminated. Employees appreciate the convenience of entering time and progress notes from any device.
Reporting for state purposes is now automated on the backend, greatly reducing human error and the time required to manually aggregate and prepare the data. “This new system is an incredible step forward for us, as it saves us considerable time and effort over how we used to create our paperwork manually,” Ms. Miller said. “One report that used to take us over 8 hours to produce is now created in mere seconds.”
Since 2004, Triple Helix has provided data and information systems for the aerospace and manufacturing industries as well as businesses in the service, healthcare and non-profit sectors. Our solutions complement existing technology investments to avoid costly replacements.
Contact us if you would like to schedule a risk-free consultation to see if Triple Helix can help your company better organize, access, and analyze your data.
