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Home Instead Senior Care

The SME Productivity & Innovation Centre (PIC) at Edge Hill University delivers impact through an intensive fully-funded programme that helps established SMEs, with the vision and potential for growth, build a coherent business model strategy to scale-up.

Home Instead Senior Care case study

Newly defined processes and service offer

Gail Dodson, Director – Home Instead West Lancashire & Chorley

“We relished our time on the Innovation Sprint Programme working with the business experts, facing hard hitting challenges and benefiting from tremendous academic support. We spent valuable time stripping down our business, goals and aspirations, current products and services, defining our challenges and future opportunities and benchmarking our sector. We successfully managed to define what our future business model should look like. What gets you to where you are, does not necessarily get you to where you want to go. Eighteen months later we continue to see our revenues increase in line with our ambitious growth projections.”

Gail Dodson, Director – Home Instead West Lancashire & Chorley

Revenue increase as a result of new defined processes and service offer:

  • Clarity of customer pain-points and user needs.
  • Launched new flexible care services – Re-connect, Re-assured and Peace of Mind.
  • Introducing new mobile technology to provide secure and immediate data access for care givers, staff and clients.
  • New cost-effective assistive technology to be launched.
  • Four new jobs created.
  • Opened a new office in Chorley town centre and totally refurbished their existing office in Ormskirk.
  • Weekly and monthly cash flow challenges eradicated.

Starting point

Robert and Gail Godson opened the franchise, Home Instead West Lancashire and Chorley in early 2012. After a challenging start, Home Instead in 2015 became one of only three care service providers to be awarded ‘Outstanding’ status under the then new Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspection regime and the first in the North West. Despite their success the company was not developing how they imagined and projected, they were very responsive, focused upon quality but at the same time restricted by a one size of service fits all.

The opportunity

The team had created a highly regarded service with a culture of continuous improvement, holding respect and dignity at the centre of the business to produce a person-centred care and support plans to meet people’s actual needs. The Innovation Sprint Programme offered the team the opportunity to explore the prohibitors to growth and focus and unpick the business processes.

The journey

From the initial workshop The Home Instead team found the intensity of the Programme challenging. Admittedly quite defensive at first, it soon became apparent that the deep dive into their business processes was the route to unpick challenges and re-focus the business. Using the frameworks and tools the team were able to explore their current service, customers and pricing and agreed it all needed clarity, deeper understanding and consistency. Articulating what they do became easier as the workshops progressed.

The solution

The team clarified their customers’ needs and created a new business model to offer specific regulated activities at newly defined price points. The new tiered service offer provides clarity for both customers and the team and feedback from existing customers since launching October 2018 has been positive.

Home Instead have also employed a Community Partnership Manager, a Scheduler, a Head of Recruitment and a Senior Care Supervisor. They have totally refurbished their premises, upgraded back office infrastructure and have opened a new office in Chorley Town Centre.

New technology is also being introduced to the businesses to help improve efficiency using mobile technology ACP to provide secure access to client’s files, saving time, improving accuracy and providing instant visibility of enhancements and changes made to records. Their customers will also soon benefit from new assistive technology developed to help clients remain safe at home for longer, seeing them achieving their mission ‘to change the face of aging’ whilst enabling them to be an innovative, high quality, high touch and a high-tech leader in the local care sector.

Robert and Gail were delighted to be crowned Outstanding SME Business 2019 at the PIC’s inaugural SME Innovation Awards 2019. Robert stated, “To be recognised as an Outstanding SME by EHU PIC, academia and the wider business community is simply amazing, that is why we were delighted and humbled to receive the award and why we have since dedicated this award to all our current and former employees”.

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