Are you considering a move to a new home care software for your agency? A change in home care management software providers can seem quite daunting when all of your business operations depend on your current software system. You may be asking, “How could I ever take on the (seemingly) difficult task of transferring all of my data and changing all of our processes?” For some agencies, moving your operations to a new home care management system may seem too overwhelming to even contemplate.
But the truth is, it doesn’t have to be. With more than 25 years of experience serving the home care industry, we’ve helped countless customers seamlessly navigate through the transition process when they sign up for service with our Rosemark System. And with all of this experience, we understand a lot of the questions you may be having and the thoughts that may be going through your head when thinking about making a software change.
To help ease the decision about switching software providers, we’ve put together a few tips to help guide you through this initial part of the decision-making process.
TIP #1: Identify Business Needs Not Being Met
If you think a change in home care management software is the right choice for your agency, chances are there are some things about your current software service that aren’t working for your business. Take this opportunity to go through each aspect of your business and create a list of features or services that are either completely missing from your current software system or not working well enough for your needs.
To help guide this process, we suggest that you first create a simple list of your main business functions. Then go through each item and record your thoughts on where you feel that something is lacking or not working well enough with your current software system. Your list will probably look something like this:
- Scheduling
- Electronic Visit Verification
- Billing & Payroll
- Caregiver Management
- Client Communications
- Referral Management
After you’ve completed that analysis, you’ll also want to think about other general characteristics of the service you currently have like the following:
- Customer support
- Training
- System reliability
- Cloud-based functionality
TIP #2: Identify Things Your Business Can’t Live Without
For this step in the process, you’ll want to utilize the same lists you created above but this time go through each item and identify those things that are currently working really well for your business. Think about making a note of those features and characteristics that your business just couldn’t operate without and those that you would definitely still want to have in a new software provider.
TIP #3: Get Staff Buy-in & Communicate, Communicate, Communicate
Now it’s time to give some thought as to how a software change may affect your staff. Over the years we’ve seen that every agency is capable of making a switch, it just requires some thought and communication up front to make sure everyone is on the same page.
For office staff who will be working most closely with the new software system, we recommend involving them in the process very early on so you can understand what their thoughts and concerns are about making a change. Where possible, we even encourage agencies to involve their office staff in helping to evaluate potential new home care management systems to get their feedback on what they think will be the best fit for your agency. In the end, as an agency owner, it will be you that is making the decision but it will make the process easier all around if everyone’s thoughts have been taken into consideration.
Once a software system is chosen, if any changes will need to be made to your caregivers’ normal routines, we recommend communicating with them well ahead of the switch to give them ample time to ask questions and voice concerns. From there, we recommend keeping them in the loop often leading up to and during the software change to ensure that they are absolutely clear on how things will work moving forward to help minimize any confusion.
To make a change in home care management software simply and easily, reach out to the Rosemark System today.
We hope these tips help to make the process of preparing for a home care management software change a little easier and more manageable for your agency. Want more tips on choosing a quality software provider? See our white paper on this topic here. And stay tuned for our next blog post in two weeks when we’ll share how we help our new customers easily manage the transition process from their old software provider to the Rosemark System.