 By Jessica Binns
WHO: The Arc of Kauai is a nonprofit
organization in Hawaii
that caters to the needs of developmentally disabled individuals. Its 50 field
staff members log more than 5,000 service hours each month providing one-on-one
care to 40 special needs people in residential and community-based living
situations.
CHALLENGE: The Arc faced a number of
challenges in its daily operations. Employees kept records of their work hours
in a paper-based system. Thus, payroll processing was a laborious task; five
employees spent five days each month handling payroll issues, mainly because
the field staff’s time accounting was often inaccurate. State laws required
staff to be compensated within a very short time frame, which added to the
stress associated with the payroll system.
Arc
management also faced problems with staff supervision. Medicaid stipulates that
staff must be supervised in person, which could be difficult as employees, by
nature of the job, moved about frequently. Arc program director Ellen Ching recalls,
“We’d need to call staffers ahead of time to see where they were.”
Timely,
accurate communication with staff was problematic. If management needed to
communicate with staff, a memo was included with each staff member’s paycheck.
This system was not only untimely but it also often led to miscommunication as
word spread among staff members.
The last
major concern was safety. As an island in the Pacific Ocean, Kauai
is often threatened by such natural disasters as hurricanes, tsunamis and
flooding. Arc clients depend on the organization as their primary means of
safety and security, and as such, the need for a centralized communication and
notification system became apparent.
SOLUTION: The Arc of Kauai decided to
implement Verizon’s Field Force Manager (FFM), a location-based mobile business
application software, on 45 new Motorola v325 mobile phones.
Management
soon noticed significant improvements in business operations. FFM automated the
timecard and hours-tracking processes, which drastically reduced the amount of
time needed each month to work on payroll issues. Ching also notes improved
communication with staff. “Field Force Manager gives us an instantaneous,
universal, proactive communication function, and when people ask a question, we
can make sure that everyone is getting the same, immediate answer,” she says.
The Arc has also used FFM to conduct employee training and send employee
opinion surveys.
There’s
also increased peace of mind for Arc clients and their families. FFM allows the
Arc to quickly notify clients and staff about emergencies and disasters.
RESULTS: The Arc achieved an ROI in only
three months after deploying the Verizon FFM solution. Ching further expects
FFM to cut labor expenses by tens of thousands of dollars each year. An added
bonus has been reduced fuel costs; FFM’s electronic mileage feature has enabled
the Arc to trim the previous $100 per staff member per month mileage expense.
Says Ching, “The beauty of the Field Force Manager system is that it helps us
respond so quickly to the ever-changing needs of the special population we
serve.” | 
