Blue Sky Care provides residential homes and supported living services in the East Midlands for adults with learning disabilities and supplementary needs such as autism and challenging behaviours. We are passionate about recognising individual potential and helping to transform lives, by supporting and encouraging those individuals to develop a lifestyle that is rewarding through personal development, gaining or maintaining independence, building esteem and confidence and developing social and communications skills.
Pivotal to the success of our mission is our team of 100 highly skilled staff. We have built our business around a culture that nurtures their skills and helps them to work in a way that suits them, so they are able to always deliver the highest possible levels of support.
At the beginning of 2013, we were becoming increasingly concerned that our IT system was not supporting the staff in the best possible way. Everything was unconnected; we had a series of un-networked computers operating old Microsoft software on which files were stored. We suffered from non-standardisation across the business; our server solution was in need of upgrade and there was no central library for the team to be able to access content. We often had to resort to sending documents over email for other people to review and edit. Versioning challenges, inconsistencies and confusion were becoming commonplace.
We were facing daily challenges just to run the business. Where versioning inconsistencies crept up we were wasting time trying to consolidate content back into one version. If documents got lost, we'd have to reproduce them from scratch. We were permanently at risk of computer failures which would result in critical data losses and as a highly regulated business, with a high proportion of paper-based records, any document loss has serious implications. Our care team were also finding they couldn't access information as quickly as they wanted – as our care policies are paper based files, it was virtually impossible to share them across a group of individuals. The resulting impact was frustrating for everyone.
Fast forward to today and life couldn't look more different!
In February 2013, we took a big step and implemented Office 365 from Microsoft. Now, all our digital content sits within a unified environment, we all use the same version of software and have overcome our document access and versioning challenges by working from within SharePoint. We finally have confidence that our data is current and up-to-date. Staff can work on records electronically, from any device, press save and the information is there for all to share. People can collaboratively review documents without anything having to be emailed. We've revolutionised our day-to-day life and critically, our care support planning process is faster, easier and more secure. The team members 'on the ground' are properly enabled to execute their day-to-day roles more efficiently and deliver services faster.
The learning journey we've been on has been positive. When we decided to tackle the IT issues and risk head-on, we knew nothing about Office 365 but Microsoft partner Compatibility suggested we consider it. Even though I could instantly see how it would enable us to improve our service and transform the way we worked, I had real concerns about how we could make it operational without having strong IT skills within the team. But, Compatibility built our confidence by taking the time to understand our business requirements and demonstrating the variety of immediate benefits we could expect right down to the smallest daily task scenarios. It was very powerful to imagine being able to use a web browser to view, edit and share a document from anywhere! The extent to which it would enable managers in care homes across our region with the latest information in real-time was unimaginable at that point.
Following the implementation and content migration, Compatibility helped the team get up-and-running fast with coaching sessions and they continue to provide support services today to allow us to focus on care delivery. Getting operational wasn't actually anywhere near as challenging as we feared and the team are finding the rich functionality and ease-of-use very refreshing.
The next stage in our journey is to take our vast quantities of paper-based content and convert them into an electronic archive and content library. On average, we produce 30-40 sheets of paper per month for every resident, so we can clearly see the advantages that lie ahead of having this digitised for easy retrieval, which will also reduce regulatory risk.
We're a small company but Office 365 makes us feel like we've got the system of a larger enterprise! Our frustrations have disappeared, it's exciting and modern, and it fully supports us in our drive for service excellence. As we consider the future, we're always looking for new ways to extend our services and having the right technology and IT infrastructure to support that is essential. Office 365 simply enables us to always have the right information when we need it to help us transform people's lives.
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