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Using Data to Drive Program Growth:
How SETWorks Is Helping Options For All Expand its Programs & Provide Participants Opportunities to Succeed
About Options For All
Since opening its doors in 1985, Options For All has assisted in providing high quality employment services, life skills training, and independent living supports for individuals with developmental and intellectual disabilities. Options For All serves over 1,370 individuals in San Diego, San Bernardino, Riverside, Santa Clara, and Santa Cruz counties in California.
Services: employment, day, community, independent living
Company Size: 400 employees
Participants: 1,370 individuals
Location: California
“SETWorks helps us capture more detail to support our clients. It goes beyond just commenting on goals and writing ISP reports — SETWorks allows us to collect more accurate and comprehensive data that we can use to make decisions and set strategy moving forward.”
Myles Horttor // Chief Program Officer // Options For All
Challenges
Elevating performance & expanding program offerings
Options for All is on a mission to create unique programs that give individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities more options for living their lives to the fullest — from vocational training to a full film and media studio where participants can learn employment skills, and everything in between.
The agency is constantly looking for opportunities to expand its programs in order to serve current participants better, as well as reach individuals in new regional centers throughout the state of California.
But as Chief Program Officer Myles Horttor knows firsthand, expectations have changed, and programs have to deliver exceptional outcomes in order to win and retain clients.
“Many providers appear very similar, but we all offer a different flavor of service,” says Myles. “So it comes down to quality at that point. If you do it well, I think it’ll speak for itself and you’ll get the client referral base and outcomes that you’re hoping for.”
Before SETWorks, Options For All was relying on staff to remember to document everything — for example, how many cues or prompts were delivered or how many attempts it took for a participant to satisfy a goal. This approach can often lead to documentation errors and cause a delay in data input.
“We needed something that we could utilize to gather more data internally, so we could take it to the next level and actually grow our programs based on current utilization and trends,” Myles explains.
While their existing system allowed for some limited reporting, it wasn’t powerful enough to allow Myles and his team to derive useful insights.
“It wasn’t that the former system wasn’t working for us — it was just that we realized that we needed to do more,” says Myles. “We were looking for a system that allowed a user-friendly approach that is easily trainable with our team of employees — because the majority of our workforce is our direct line staff — but that we could also use at the senior leadership level to pull complex reports from the data that’s being put into the system.”
Their existing system also lacked the ability to create custom forms — something Options For All needed in order to meet requirements for its funders.
As Options For All thought about ways to scale, they concluded that they had reached the limits of their existing database system and needed more firepower.
Solution
A simple but powerful platform
After hearing about SETWorks from another provider in Southern California, Myles mentioned the system to Options For All’s database administrator, who was actively exploring several other platforms.
What stood out most about SETWorks compared to the other solutions the team had seen was how the platform could not only fit the agency’s existing needs, but scale with them as they grow their programs.
After demoing the system, the Options For All team was excited to get started with SETWorks.
However, the implementation hit a snag right out of the gate when Options For All’s database administrator, who had been spearheading the project, left the agency. Myles had to quickly take over and learn the SETWorks system.
Fortunately, SETWorks Client Experience Manager Mat Koelling and Client Operations Director Preston Finkle were there to help him get up to speed.
SETWorks worked closely with Options for All to understand the agency’s existing workflows and state-specific requirements in order to configure the system to meet their needs. This included importing Purchase of Service (POS) records and customizing forms required by DDS, DOR, and other funders, which needed to be in a very specific format. SETWorks gave Options For All the ability to auto-populate these forms, which saves a significant amount of time.
Because the SETWorks platform is so intuitive, Myles found that it was easy to train direct line staff once he became familiar with the layout. Options For All decided to roll out the system to a single service region first, then gradually phase into other regions.
As with most things, transitioning to a modern system came with a learning curve — but Mat, Preston, and the rest of the SETWorks team were there every step of the way to ensure things went smoothly.
Myles says SETWorks makes it easy to capture the necessary data. “Now we can set the prompt level, and the system will prompt direct line staff so that we can get more accurate information,” he explains. “From the information that’s entered by staff, our managers have a whole suite of reports that we can pull — from caseload utilization, to hours of service, down to goal writing and tracking.“
Myles and the team are also fans of SETWorks’ integrations, which allow it to interface with the other systems Options For All uses. This streamlines their scheduling, payroll, and billing processes.
Results
Using data to drive program growth
Since implementing SETWorks, Options For All has been able to achieve much higher levels of efficiency compared to their previous system.
Having all of this information at their fingertips, Myles says, has helped Options For All make decisions and set strategy moving forward.
“For example, are we going to grow a program? Are we going to look into an additional service area? Does this make sense based on attendance and the percentage of referrals that we’ve received over a year? That’s been the most useful for us.”
Myles says that being able to track all this data has given Options For All a competitive advantage.
“There are so many different elements of this service that happen simultaneously — not just within one program, but throughout three different regions of the state,” explains Myles. “At the pace we’re going, we need a system that can keep up. With SETWorks we don’t have to wait until the end of the month to pull a comprehensive report; we can pull it the same day.”
The data in SETWorks will also help Options For All better tell its story in its annual reports to funders for marketing, development, and fundraising.
Myles says the continued support from the SETWorks team has been critical to their success.
“I still have very regular calls with Mat and Preston. They are fantastic support, very quick to respond, and always there for what we need. It doesn’t matter how many times I ask the same question, they take the time to explain it. That’s really helped me to gain a solid understanding of the system so I can speak knowledgeably on it to the rest of my team.”
Options For All has a number of initiatives for future growth and plans to use SETWorks to help it achieve them. Currently, the agency is in the process of establishing metrics and KPIs for its programs. With the SETWorks system in place, Options For All can set tangible targets for staff at every level and measure program performance.
Myles says a tool like SETWorks is essential for any provider that wants to adapt and engage participants in the modern era.
“The service industry is changing. SETWorks is one of those tools that’s going to help agencies modernize to meet new demands so we can better serve our clients.”
Modernize and grow your agency through data-driven software
SETWorks is comprehensive disability service management software, built to handle the needs of person-serving agencies, across programs, on any device.
SETWorks is more than software, our team partners with organizations across the United States to help them maintain compliance, become data-driven, and solve their problems through empowering, best-practice solutions and robust cloud-based technology.
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