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Considering AlayaCare? Here’s what happens after you sign up
It’s a big decision to transition to any new software.
At AlayaCare, we have many people to help guide you through the process. From business development managers to professional services consultants, customer relationship managers, and everyone else in between, we have a passionate team that lends their expertise to get your organisation up and running with AlayaCare.
We spoke to some of the key members who support customers as they transition to AlayaCare to explore exactly what happens the moment after you sign on the dotted line.
What does AlayaCare do?
First and foremost, what is AlayaCare?
We offer a revolutionary end-to-end software solution that empowers residential, home and disability providers in Australia and New Zealand to achieve better health outcomes.
Founded in 2014, AlayaCare’s Cloud-based technology enables organisations to optimise their operations, generate valuable insights, access real time data, and implement robust, reliable systems for their staff and clients.
So, what exactly does this include? We have two key software solutions:
- AlayaCare Cloud: An end-to-end customer management solution spanning back-office admin, care and clinical documentation, scheduling and coordination, a mobile home solution, and many other features.
- AlayaCare Residential: An all-in-one cloud platform comprising two dynamic components – Clinical Management and Financial Management for Aged Care and Retirement Living – that facilitates a single client record for all facets of residential care.
Our software is highly configurable and suitable for organisations of all sizes. Depending on your needs, we work with you to offer the right solution for you.
What happens when I choose AlayaCare?
Our implementation process begins the moment you start talking with someone at AlayaCare.
We call this the Engage phase. It’s one of six steps you will take to get your business up and running:
- Engage
- Initiate and Plan
- Discover and Build
- Train and Test
- Gear Up and Go Live
- Stabilise
Engage
The Engage phase is critical in understanding your organisation’s challenges, needs, and the various solutions we can offer to help you address them.
At this stage, you’ll start working with one of our business development managers, like Paolo Tan.
We spoke to Paolo about what you can expect when you engage with AlayaCare.
“This stage is really about understanding a customer’s challenges and demonstrating how we can solve them,” Paolo explained. “We want to know: what are their requirements, what are their pain points, why are they talking to us?”
Paolo says a critical part of this phase is establishing whether AlayaCare is the right product for an organisation’s needs.
“You have to understand, is AlayaCare a fit for them, are they a fit for AlayaCare? Rather than just selling features, we want to understand ‘why are you here, what keeps you up at night?’’”
The next step in this phase is to show you what AlayaCare can do for your organisation. We’ll organise one or multiple demos of the product, showcasing the relevant features for you and your organisation.
As Paolo puts it, “When we’re finished with the demos, we’ll both know what you’re getting into.”
If you wish to proceed, we’ll prepare all the relevant documents that will form the basis for your project.
These will all be referenced throughout your implementation process, with the statement of work forming the backbone of the unique product configuration your organisation will eventually go live with.
Once signed, your business development manager will introduce you to your project manager and professional services consultant who will guide you through the implementation process.
Initiate and plan
In the Initiate and Plan phase, you start working closely with at least two of the 55 people who make up our customer success team.
We spoke to Project Manager Scott Harris and Professional Services Associate Tom Wu from the customer success team to delve deeper into what this stage involves.
Scott explains your project manager will plan a kick-off meeting with your organisation’s project lead to get the ball rolling with your implementation.
This is a one-hour meeting where you’re presented with an overview of our wider team, methods of collaboration, the implementation approach, proposed timeframes, upcoming steps, and an introduction to AlayaCare University.
“This is an important step,” Scott says. “A project planning session between Project Leads from AlayaCare and your organisation will closely look at all tasks, responsibilities and timeframes to agree on and approve the project schedule.”
From here, you’ll be invited to complete your first course at AlayaCare University. This 1.5 hour course, which anyone in your team can watch, provides a high-level picture of the AlayaCare Cloud.
Once you’ve completed the Initiate and Plan phase, it’s on to the Discover and Build phase.
Discover and Build
This is where you really get into the nitty-gritty of the implementation process.
In this phase, your project manager and professional services associate or consultant will work closely with you to explore the requirements identified in the Engage phase and determine how best we can configure AlayaCare to suit your business’ needs. These sessions are called Discovery Workshops.
The detail discussed in the Discovery Workshops will be based on the scope of work agreed on with your BDM, but refined, finessed.
And according to Professional Services Associate Tom, “This is where I fully come in.”
During the workshops, customer success teams will focus on understanding your organisation’s requirements, documenting them clearly, and starting to build out solutions.
“The consultant starts to document the detail in a Solution Design Document (SDD). This is the reference document that the customer will approve and sign off on. During this time, the configuration of the User Acceptance Testing (UAT) environment also begins.” says Project Manager Scott Harris.
A UAT environment will give customers a first look at their refined AlayaCare platform. This environment will visualise proposed solutions to the previously detailed requirements and workflows.
When creating these, our customer success teams harness extensive experience supporting customers to implement our software to develop a unique, complete solution for new customers.
Data migration is also a critical part of this phase.
Moving a large amount of data can be a daunting task. To help ease the load, our customer success teams provide workshops to take you through best practice considerations for migrating data, typical data cleansing procedure, and provide a data import template to make the process more straightforward.
Train and Test
This phase is about getting into the details of your new configuration.
Unsurprisingly, Train and Test is broken down into two parts:
- Train: You will complete training on how to use and test your bespoke AlayaCare environment
- Test: You will start testing the AlayaCare environment that has been configured to ensure the environment has everything your organisation needs. This is also an opportunity to test your data migration activities.
At the start of this phase, you’ll get access to a tailor-made suite of courses on AlayaCare University that will guide you through how to complete the UAT cycle while providing an overview of how to use your new software.
According to Training Manager Colin Smart, “this lays the foundation for truly understanding AlayaCare.”
Colin and his teammates’ roles are integral to ensuring the many customers onboarding each month are given the right information to help them seamlessly transition to their new software.
Key training leads like Col are also available throughout this training process to answer any questions you may have.
After completing this initial AlayaCare University training, you will move on to Customer Specific Workflow training.
These trainings help to demonstrate the specific configuration of AlayaCare for your organisation. According to Professional Services Associate Tom, “no organisation runs their business the same, therefore their configuration will not be exactly identical.”
For the testing element, your UAT will include generic test scripts of elements to consider when testing your new configuration. You can add elements relating to your specific business workflows to these generic scripts for a comprehensive test coverage of the overall build.
You can track the overall status of this testing phase through the UAT dashboard page that presents the progress as donut charts, ensuring everything stays on track.
Once data cleansing and migration is 100% confirmed and the UAT signed off, Tom will transition the data and set up your business’ production environment. This new production environment will be what you use moving forward with AlayaCare.
Once everything is tried, tested, and signed off on, the train and test phase is complete.
And then, you’re ready for the big moment.
Gear up and Go Live
This is it. It’s time to officially move all of your operations over to AlayaCare.
During this stage, your customer success team will work closely with you to resolve any issues that arise. Behind the scenes, it’s all hands on deck: Our leadership, data, and integrations teams will all be working hard to ensure the transition is as smooth as possible.
This is your opportunity to share AlayaCare with the rest of your team, having your own super users train the people in their team on how to use the platform for their specific roles.
It’s a big step. But this is why when everything’s up and running, there’s a collective sigh of relief.
And according to Scott, “This is a time for celebrations. Not only for the customer, but for us as a customer success team as well. It’s a great achievement to hit this milestone together successfully.”
Stabilise
And then, just like that, you’re working in the AlayaCare environment!
Of course, your customer success team will continue to ensure that things progress smoothly in the first few weeks of your organisation going live.
“We are there every step of the way,” explains Scott.
After two complete billing cycles over a two-month period of stabilisation, you’ll transition to working more closely with your customer relationship and customer experience teams.
Customer Relationship Manager (CRM) Melinda Goodwin says that when the internal handover is complete, she will formally introduce herself to the customers she’ll be working with.
“This includes introducing my role, setting up future meetings, and explaining what their journey with us looks like for them from that point on,” she explains.
Customer Experience Manager Sijan Shreshtha adds that you’ll also be “provided with all the tools you need to be aware of post implementation.”
Sijan explains the focus of his team of customer experience specialists is to help unblock any issues that arise once a customer is up and running with AlayaCare.
Melinda ensures a smooth transition from the implementation phase to Business As Usual (BAU) for her customers by setting up frequent and regular meetings in the first few months. She becomes a customer’s first point of call for questions, comments, and everything in between.
But of course, the support you’ll get extends far beyond your CRM and customer experience specialist. Everyone at AlayaCare is always working to give you the best experience, reduce your operational load, and help contribute to you providing the best possible care for your own clients.
As Project Manager Scott says, “I feel like we have a strong organisational structure to provide customers with really robust direction and support. Everyone contributes where they need to, from all elements of the business, to ultimately give them a great experience.”
How long will it take for my organisation to Go Live?
The whole process typically takes between six and 12 months depending on the size of your organisation, rollout approach and the complexity of the system you require.
How do I learn more?
As you’ve seen, there are many people who would love to talk to you more about this.
To learn more, you can reach out to our sales team to talk to a business development manager who can work with you to see if AlayaCare is the right fit for your business.