Supernova Award Category

The Problem

The Mentor Network’s mission based care is critical to individuals with severe developmental or trauma based disabilities.  IT’s biggest challenge has been how to best align the economics of the technology used with the mission of the business. 

With over 70% of the company without email access, a highly distributed and diverse service model, and technology innovation needing to be self-funded, MENTOR had to look internally at ways to bring significant shifts in the way they do business.  After undergoing analysis of their total cost of ownership, CIO Jeffrey Cohen concluded that a disproportionate amount of the company’s technology investments were focused on providing care for those populations that MENTOR was serving. 

Further, after evaluating 90% of the work done as an organization was on paper, Cohen knew that it was important to modernize the technology used for improved efficiencies. Equally important, IT needed to implement the right kind of technology in order to capture information about the persons they serve, monitor service delivery more closely, and react to issues in the field quickly and in a more efficient manner.  The iServe Program was launched to influence innovation in the mindset of the company, and develop a better way to serve, serve well, and serve more.

The Solution

To address the lack of technology and data inefficiencies, MN had a unique challenge to find new funding streams to modernize their processes and bring more in-the-field technologies to the forefront, ultimately transforming the way they run their business.

MENTOR used Force.com as the backbone of iServe. Rather than use the application as a traditional customer relationship tool, Cohen rolled out the platform as a software development environment and designed it for a common clinical model that had lots multiple flavors across the company to accommodate its diversity.  iServe is a new health and human services Service Delivery program providing new and innovative business processes such as business development, admission decision support, risk management, behavioral management, provider tools, service to billing integration and data mining/analytics to share data amongst corporate and the direct service professionals in the field.

The results

• Modernized Technology, Reduce Risk and Restructure Efficiencies: Business process technology is non-existent as this industry is primarily paper based, producing risk to operations, accuracy and compliance.  By introducing an electronic footprint with modernized technology, MENTOR was able to improve data accuracy, delivery and analytics gaining operational control to be more effective and cost efficient.  They are now able to see all the data on a daily basis versus every couple of weeks via paper.  Remote and real-time information has allowed more rapid response and feedback, ensured compliance and improved the lives of the persons served.
• Savings Enabled Funding Innovation: Software application support fees can cost organizations millions of dollars annually, yet yield little or no ROI for the high costs.  By switching to an independent support model with Rimini Street for their Oracle EBS applications, Mentor was able to reallocate a significant portion of their IT budget to achieving the mission of serving, serving well, and serving more individuals. This restructuring positively impacted their competitive advantage, bottom line, and most importantly improved the lives of the persons served.
• Additional Impact: Data quality and compliance now aligns with HIPPA; Doubled the technology user engagement/adoption company-wide; Automated MENTOR's forms and processes; Introduced cloud environment for ease of use

Metrics

confidential

The Technology

Salesforce Force.com is a suite of point-and-click tools that deliver custom employee-facing applications for every role and department, extremely fast and secure in the cloud.

Chromebooks - used in field as web interface to access iServe in a HIPAA-compliant and cost effective device.  Direct service professionals in the field are able to input and update data from the payer, family and caseworker to develop the best care and behavioral plans, all in the cloud.

Disruptive Factor

MENTOR is using modern day technology, but it in a way that isn’t how it’s intended to be used, and in a way that is economically advantageous to their business and how they deliver it.

The organization is not only shifting how they think about quality being a more real-time activity versus a periodic activity, and changing the innovative mindset of all of their technologies and processes to include a more active (vs. reactive) monitoring approach. 

Cohen: “I think we’re the only ones who have figured out how to tie the actual care plans of all these individuals to specific behavioral outcomes.  Other technology tracks care plans and tracks behavior and tracks progress, but we have created a movement to tie all of those entities together.  This system will enable us to draw a more outcomes-based analytical approach that identifies the sorts of therapies, specific action plans, and services in order to prescribe them to a consumer to provide an improved success rate based on initial goals.  That is going to make huge impact on our mission-based work.”

Shining Moment

One of the Network’s program directors was raving to the president about the impact of iServe in the field and on the business-new visibility, thorough notes, specific consumer details-much more dynamic then in the past.

“The quality that we’ll be able to provide to the consumers in these group homes is greatly improved with the use of this system.”

IT no longer has to sell the adoption of some of these new technologies.  It is selling itself.