Bluebird Care achieving digital transformation goals
Bluebird Care was founded in 2004 by husband and wife team Paul and Lisa Tarsey. With over 200 franchise businesses nationwide, Bluebird Care is now one of the UK’s largest providers of home care and support.
Gary Johnson, director of two Bluebird Care franchises (Brighton & Hove, Lewes District) employs over 100 carers, supporting around 180 service users. With their day-to-day operation being both exceptionally busy and highly variable, ensuring good communication between each of the moving parts is vital.
Grapevine support multiple Bluebird Care franchises in the UK with mobile connectivity, enabling them to run PASS, a digital care management solution developed by our partners at everyLIFE Technologies.
“When we started out in this industry, it was very much a paper-based operation.” Gary revealed. “Any changes produced yet more paperwork which had to be physically delivered to customers and carers taking up a huge amount of time and left us vulnerable to version control”.
Whilst tech advances may have negated the need to rely on offline methods, early digital options available to businesses in the sector were not necessarily as effective they were hoped to be.
Gary shared his frustrations at the slow uptake. “Some of the technology we have used in the past has been ‘old school’ as the care industry has always seemed to be behind the times. Not always user friendly and not always reliable especially with regards to connectivity.”
Fortunately, such unfit-for-purpose solutions are in the past for Gary and his team, as Bluebird aspires to adopt the “best in breed technology” wherever possible, recognising both the quality and cost efficiencies as a return on investment.
“We realised that having real time and reliable connectivity not only made us efficient and saved a huge amount of time and money, but it also meant that our service was the best it could be and more importantly, we could ensure we were always up to speed with operational changes and could communicate effectively with customers and staff.”
“We are starting to achieve our aspirations.” Gary reflects, looking back on Bluebird’s journey of digital transformation and the benefits it has brought to the business.
“We have grown 30% year on year and we now consider that our operation is slick and provides an excellent and very safe service. Technology within care has changed dramatically over the last 10 years and I think that it is vital for us to remain at the forefront with regards to technology and connectivity.
We now have around a hundred devices with Grapevine, they’ve been our mobile provider since 2015 and I cannot fault their support. Our requests for new handsets and connection changes are always turned around quickly. Grapevine provide a high level of service that is very hard to find.”
To learn more about Bluebird Care please visit bluebirdcare.co.uk
