ResCare, the largest private provider of services to people with disabilities and privately-owned home care company in the nation, was looking for a way to streamline its application delivery process. As a healthcare company that employs more than 50,000 people and serves more than 2 million patients, keeping information protected and secure is critical.
The company serves multiple lines of business with unique technology needs and had previously relied on traditional development to create new solutions. Each new solution required custom coding which could often take months to create.
ResCare’s IT team turned to Quickbase to not only bridge the gap between IT and business stakeholders, but to also develop secure applications three to four times faster than traditional coding.
Employees from across the organization have since developed hundreds of applications with built-in governance features like custom, role-based dashboards and granular permissions help safeguard data to help quickly provide custom solutions to help ResCare provide high-quality care.
Challenge
- ResCare had many unique technology needs that required custom coding for each solution
- The average custom application delivery time was 3-4 months
- Business and IT were siloed from one another leading to inefficiencies
Solution
- ResCare now has more than 120 unique processes running on Quickbase
- There is now a collaborative process for fielding application requests and delivering solutions
- Leaders implemented application governance processes managed by IT
Results
- Quickbase apps delivered 3-4x faster than with traditional development
- Ease of customization and flexibility allows applications to be easily updated and adjusted as needed
- Governance features are in place to balance speed and security and protect users' information
Addressing unique technology needs
ResCare is a $1.8 billion company that provides home care, vocational training and job placement, and services for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
As with any large organization, the IT team at ResCare serves multiple lines of business with unique technology needs whether it be large ERP implementations or smaller point solutions. The IT team is committed to quickly providing business users with flexible, custom solutions whether it’s adding functionality to an existing application or custom coding in .NET.
For everything else, there's Quickbase.
Uniting business and IT
To get the right solutions delivered fast, ResCare relies on a process centered on rapid prototyping. After gathering core requirements, the team then creates an application in Quickbase, typically within two weeks of the initial request.
After a brief round of feedback and quality assurance, the application delivery team will delete test data, make the necessary changes, and work with business stakeholders for final approval.
This process has supported the development of more than 120 Quickbase applications that support multiple lines of business and are used by more than 2,000 employees including:
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM). The HomeCare Services business at ResCare uses Quickbase to manage the process of nurturing and tracking sales opportunities.
- Client Management. The Workforce Services business uses Quickbase to track clients as they progress through vocational training and other steps on their way to meeting their personal goals.
- Compliance. The Residential Services business, the largest at ResCare, uses Quickbase to track site visits and inspections in order to ensure its sites meet rigorous standards for quality.
- Accounts Receivable. The finance team uses Quickbase to help track Medicare and Medicaid billing and collections.
ResCare utilizes built-in features like notifications, custom dashboards, and custom permissions to ensure work flows smoothly no matter the use case. Joe Lichtefeld, Vice President of Application Delivery said that Quickbase's governance features enable his team to “create granular roles and permissions to ensure that in-app data is only available to those who need it.”
Harnessing the power of the platform
ResCare has seen a dramatic increase in the speed of delivery of custom applications since they began using Quickbase.
In most cases, new applications go from request to delivery in about
one month, compared to the average 3-4-month cycle for custom-coded .NET
applications. That speed, plus the ability to make changes to Quickbase
applications as business needs change, allows ResCare's IT team to keep
its backlog as small as possible.
