Loving care organized from the heart

Sint Jacob, an elderly care organization in Haarlem and Heemstede (NL), has seven residential care centers and a rehabilitation clinic, and its 800 employees and 300 volunteers are committed to providing the best possible care to more than 600 clients, day in, day out.

ORTEC has been working with this provider of loving care for many years and all Sint Jacob’s locations have implemented ORTEC WS modules. Support services provide assistance from the central administrative department and the scheduling department draws up schedules for all permanent employees, the flex pool employees and hired workers. Here, at the heart of the organization, providing high-quality care comes first. We have to optimize all peripheral processes to ensure that the right healthcare professionals can assist Sint Jacob’s clients at any location.

“The scheduling department doesn’t have the time to constantly monitor and process CLAs; we have ORTEC to take care of the functional side of things.”

Optimal support

In ORTEC, Sint Jacob has a reliable partner who has expert knowledge of staff scheduling processes and the underlying legislation and regulations and produces highly customizable applications. For Sint Jacob, this expertise and configuration freedom are key reasons for opting for a solution that mainly serves to optimally support staff scheduling processes. “The application is highly flexible and configurable, enabling schedulers to do their job the way it was meant to be done. All our software updates have run smoothly and were tailored to CLA changes. The scheduling department doesn’t have the time to constantly monitor and process CLAs; we have ORTEC to take care of the functional side of things. This gives us a lot of peace of mind and ensures that employees get everything they are entitled to. Changes to the scheduling package have a significant impact on employees, especially during the corona pandemic.”

Migrating from own server to cloud-based servers

Maartje Stoelinga, the manager of Sint Jacob’s Scheduling department & Flex pool, told us that the current database (employee records and schedules) of ORTEC WS was outdated. With work processes changing over time, the application had become contaminated, making ORTEC WS a rather unwieldy beast that was no longer optimally suited to supporting current working processes. At first, ORTEC was tasked with migrating from ORTEC WS version EP4 to version 7 it seemed, until Sint Jacob expressed its desire to also update the configuration and outsource the technical application management to ORTEC in the future. Together, the decision was made to reimplement ORTEC WS while also transitioning to ORTEC’s hosting solution. This re-implementation project reaffirmed the partnership with ORTEC and served as a marker of Sint Jacob’s ambition to take the support of the staff scheduling processes to the next level and generate maximum results.

“We kept asking ourselves this one question: “What do our healthcare professionals need?”

Comprehensive solution with app delivered despite tight time frame

"The deadline was ambitious but we made it, except for a few small bumps in the road," Maartje begins. “Sint Jacob wanted to go live before the summer. We started building the database and preparing the hosting setup in February and began configuring the system in March before testing. Finally, on 1 June, all modules went live, as did the new app.”

We had a very short time to put together a comprehensive solution, but because the basics of most processes had been properly configured and required little by way of updates, we managed to save a lot of time. Most of the time went into building the new database. We kept running into the same question: “Is the solution design right”?

Maartje thoroughly enjoyed the support of the small project team that was fully dedicated and committed to Sint Jacob. The lines of communication were short and they were able to move quickly. The project team met twice a week, while the project manager monitored the tight schedule and made the necessary adjustments. We kept asking ourselves this one question: “What do our healthcare professionals need?” That’s how we made our decisions. Sint Jacob was particularly appreciative of how ORTEC ultimately scrapped a module on its own accord because it offered little added value, despite the fact that Sint Jacob had ordered it. “For ORTEC, building long-term relationships with clients matters more than short-term sales figures. That’s a rare find in a company.”

What sticking points did you run into during the project? The corona pandemic made this project even more challenging than it already was, and the expectations of the new app were also a major sticking point. Sint Jacob wanted to add several new features, because the organization wanted the mobile environment to be just as comprehensive as the desktop version. “Perhaps the deadline was just a little too tight”, Maartje concludes.

Trusting each other to find the best solution

Sint Jacob opted for a hard launch without running a pilot first. It was a bold move, but because they had worked with ORTEC in the past, they had faith in a good outcome. Fortunately, this approach paid off, without any teething problems at that. Everyone was kept in the loop and told about what would have to be done in advance and Sint Jacob’s digital coach was closely involved in the entire process. The project would not have been as successful without the great interaction between the client and the project team. The right people were cast in the right roles and because Maartje was so knowledgeable about all the processes involved, we were able to act quickly and effectively.

What has this optimization meant for Sint Jacob? Up-to-date software with a configuration that meshes seamlessly with its staff scheduling processes and ambitions, enabling them to provide optimal care. There are no further innovations on the horizon, apart from the biennial update.

Employees have responded positively to the new software, and although it took some getting used to new features such as the Employee Self Service, they appreciate using a single, integrated environment.