Delivering ROI The Case for a Validated

Outcomes Management Solution    

 

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The Case for a Validated Outcomes Management Solution While the non-profit landscape is highly varied, these mission-driven organizations are all challenged beyond simply getting funding and using it to serve their established purpose. What lies between those funds and their use to accomplish a mission are the operations of the non-profit – the ‘how’, which is ultimately the ‘make it or break it’ of any organization. And given the nature of NPO’s, this ‘how’ needs to not only be highly efficient and effective but it also needs to be done in a way that helps communicate their story, both to their communities and to their funders. Hobson & Company, a leading research firm focused on Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and Return on Investment (ROI) studies, worked with Social Solutions Global (SSG) and their Efforts to Outcomes (ETO) product to explore these challenges and learn how industry leaders are responding. H&C conducted independent research consisting of 10 in-depth interviews with ETO clients and found that a validated outcomes management solution addressed specific customer challenges across non-profit organizations to deliver a quick and compelling ROI (Return on Investment). The goal of this research study and paper is to highlight examples of validated use cases where the impact of ETO is not only strategic but also measurable based on key metrics confirmed by current users of the solution.

Non-Profit Organization Challenges Customers interviewed noted that there are consistent outcomes management challenges throughout these non-profit organizations. Below is a list of some of the most universal concerns.

Lack of Data Oftentimes, the best way to tell a story is through data, but non-profits are constantly challenged with not having adequate data in order to be able to do so. Disparate and antiquated systems result in inefficiencies surrounding data entry and tremendous challenges in achieving data integrity, both of which result in suboptimal reporting (and related decision making) capabilities. Thus, non-profit organizations are first challenged with getting the right data in their systems and secondly challenged with accessing that data in an efficient manner.

Strained Resources A common denominator in non-profit organizations is having strained resources and always trying to ‘do more with less’. This situation is aggravated by inefficiencies in internal processes and systems. Direct care staff spends too much time tracking down participant service delivery information or potentially inputting information into several disparate systems. Once the data is captured, they then spend countless hours on required reporting. All of these inefficiencies take away from spending time with their participants and working to positively affect outcomes.

Limited Funding While there are numerous funding sources, there are also an endless number of organizations where those funders can direct their money, making it difficult for non-profits to stand out and be able to get new funding or simply protect the funding they already have. The first part of this challenge is clearly having the ability to achieve strong outcomes, which ultimately demonstrate the organization is worthy of those funds. The second part of this challenge is being able to generate timely and optimized reports that provide the necessary data elements to be able to apply for various funding sources, including those that have robust reporting requirements.

 

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Customer research identified Efforts to Outcomes (ETO) benefits across three broad business objectives:

ENHANCE DATA ACCESS AND VISIBILITY

Reduce time spent managing data integrity With disparate and varying systems in place across organizations, duplicate data entry, time-consuming data auditing processes and data errors are the norm. This results in a reduction in overall confidence in data organization-wide. ETO enables organizations and their staff to easily and effectively input data with advanced functionality including required fields, duplicate catching and merging, logic-based error flagging, etc. In addition, ETO customers can use advanced reporting to manage data integrity across the organization significantly reducing the amount of time spent on manual auditing and correction processes.

“With ETO, we have fail safes in the reports that catch duplicates or other data errors which helps

ensure data input is clean and allows us to be confident in the

accuracy of the data used for our analysis reports.” (Program

Analyst)

Customers interviewed reported:

ê50% REDUCTION in time spent managing data integrity

Reduce time spent on reporting Reporting is crucial to both internal decision-making as well as to external partners, including funders. However, with suboptimal systems in place, it is extremely time consuming and difficult to generate reports related to external reporting needs or for internal organization and service delivery needs. ETO enables organizations to automatically track and easily report on specific requirements related to funding and regulatory requirements and present the data in a variety of meaningful ways. In addition, organizations are able to automatically track and easily report on uniform and aggregated data across multiple programs and agencies including participant behavior and involvement (via dashboards and scorecards that automatically provide aggregated participant data across multiple programs, agencies, etc.).

“Without ETO, we would not be able to run our

monthly reports as quickly and efficiently as we do.”

(Program Analyst)

“The time savings on reporting have been

phenomenal.” (Team Lead)

Customers interviewed reported:

ê75% REDUCTION in time spent on standard reports

ê40% REDUCTION in time spent on customized reports

   

 

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IMPROVED ORGANIZATIONAL CAPACITY

Reduce ‘back-office’ time spent managing participant service delivery Any time spent on back office management means less time spent on service delivery. Inefficient processes related to participant management result in a lot of lost service delivery time as well as overall staff frustration. ETO allows organization staff to easily access and manage relevant participant information in one flexible and customizable system, which is particularly important with multiple programs or lengthy participant history, for example. Instead of spending hours figuring out the past history and current status of a participant, ETO users are able to quickly view that information and consequently spend that time working with that participant to achieve better outcomes.

“We can now have

conversations with the team about the overall view and how

to improve service delivery instead of just figuring out client

status.” (Services Director)

Customers interviewed reported:

ê50% REDUCTION in ‘back-office’ time spent managing participant service delivery

Reduce costs of system and process modifications As the old adage says, ‘the only constant is change’ and this holds true in NPOs as well. However, many times modifying the current system to account for changes in programs or to create a new program is extremely expensive and time consuming. ETO enables organizations to easily change or configure their system to account for changing program needs and requirements as well as providing the ability to easily scale and replicate effective models to facilitate new program implementations. This often means that these IT resources and/or related budget can be better spent on other strategic initiatives that would have otherwise fallen by the wayside.

“Scaling and replicating programs is very easy and we

are able to basically copy/paste a program in order to create a

new one”. (Director of Learning & Evaluation)

Customers interviewed reported:

ê50% REDUCTION in costs of system and process modifications

   

 

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IMPROVE SERVICE DELIVERY & FUNDING

Increase and protect funding due to better reporting The process of applying for and getting funds has evolved and is now highly dependent on reporting to help communicate how a NPO is performing. In the past, anecdotal evidence sufficed, but now more and more funders want to see data to back up those stories. However, this can be extremely time consuming, and sometimes simply impossible for many NPOs. ETO delivers robust reporting and analytics of aggregated data that is easily manipulated to address specific compliance and funding requirements, ultimately removing data as a barrier to applying for funding. In addition, organizations have deep reporting functionality allowing them to collect and provide clean data sets to external evaluators in a variety of formats that are easy for them to consume/analyze. This not only helps provide optimized reporting to current funders, but also opens up the funding options tremendously as a lack of data (or timely reporting) is no longer a barrier to pursuing new funding options.

“ETO reporting is pivotal to being

able to attain funding” (Executive Director)

“Data is no longer a barrier to apply

for any grant…it allows us the freedom to apply to all grants possible.” (Program Analyst)

Customers interviewed reported:

é5% INCREASE in funding

Increase and protect funding due to improved participant outcomes It all boils down to outcomes. Yet, participant outcomes are negatively affected by system inefficiencies and suboptimal process and related decision-making. In addition, outdated participant profiles and activity logs pose additional and unnecessary challenges to direct care staff, reducing their ability to positively affect outcomes. ETO enables 360 views of participant activities across distributed programs, staff, locations, and allows for robust and correlation-type analysis helping organizations and staff make better decisions and adjust service delivery in order to optimize outcomes. Research consistently confirmed that ETO represents a crucial piece of the puzzle that enables NPO’s to succeed.

“The bottom line of having ETO is improving outcomes

because we are able to track everything in real-time and

have data driven discussions about how to improve service

delivery.”(Services Director)

Customers interviewed reported:

é5% INCREASE in funding

 

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IN SUMMARY Six discrete organization-wide benefits were identified during the customer interviews for this research paper. Below is a summary of those benefits and their potential annual value to an organization with $7.5M in annual funding and 50 total staff, 35 of which are involved in direct service delivery:

KEY ROI FINDINGS The value of a validated outcomes management solution is immediate and demonstrable. A sample NPO with $7.5M in annual funding and 50 total staff, 35 of which are involved in direct service delivery who spends 480 total hours per month on reporting can realize significant financial benefits from an investment in a validated outcomes management solution. For this organization, annual benefits can exceed $1.3M per year.

For this sample organization, the three year investment totaling $55K generates a positive return in 1 month. The three year net present value (NPV) and return on investment (ROI) are strong at $2.4M and 1,634%, respectively. The key financial metrics for the sample organization were calculated by standard methods with the NPV calculation assuming a 10% cost of capital.

Financial Metric

3-Year Value

Payback (months) 1.0

ROI 1,634%

About Social Solutions Global Social Solutions Global, the provider of Efforts to Outcomes (ETO®) and Apricot Software™, specializes in outcomes management software for human services, workforce, and education programs. Across the globe, our software is the leader in equipping thousands of organizations with the tools needed to transform the lives of children, adults, and families by making data useful to staff at all levels, from case managers to executive leadership. For more information visit, please visit www.socialsolutions.com About Hobson & Company Hobson & Company helps technology vendors and purchasers uncover, quantify and validate the key sources of value driving the adoption of new and emerging technologies. Our focus on robust validation has helped many technology purchasers more objectively evaluate the underlying business case of a new technology, while better understanding which vendors best deliver against the key value drivers. Our well researched, yet easy¬-to--use ROI and TCO tools have also helped many technology companies better position and justify their unique value proposition. For more information, please visit www.hobsonco.com

 $-­‐        

 $100,000    

 $200,000    

 $300,000    

 $400,000    

Increase  funding  due  to  improved  participant  outcomes    

Increase  funding  due  to  better  reporting    

Reduce  'back-­‐of?ice'  time  managing  service  delivery  

Reduce  costs  of  system  and  process  

modi?ications  

Reduce  time  spent  

managing  data  integrity  

Reduce  time  spent  on  reporting  

 

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