Enterprise software provider Epicor’s latest version of its Senior Living Solution for the cloud, designed specifically for Australia’s smaller residential aged care providers, is now in use by a number of providers in the aged care industry.
Over the past quarter, the new Epicor SLE release with cloud deployment was selected by providers including St Catherine’s Aged Care Services and the Chinese Australia Services Society.
And, Vince Randall, regional vice president ANZ for Epicor, says that, faced with market opportunity, regulatory change, increased compliance requirements, rising consumer service demands and a strong push towards consolidation, a growing number of aged care service providers are opting for cloud solutions to tighten their operations and remain competitive.
“Smaller aged care providers are realising that the Epicor SLS cloud solution can help them compete against larger organisations, providing all of the advantages that an integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution provides, coupled with detailed aged care specific functionality at a price point and delivery model that supports them,” Randall says.
{loadposition peter}The new SLE cloud solution is designed for residential aged care businesses with under 300 beds, up to three sites and 50 or less users, Epicor says the solution is a “streamlined, out-of-the-box offering comprised of a selection of best practice modules and a fixed fee implementation program”.
And, the software company says it has built the small business package on the experience it has from designing and developing software solutions for the Australian aged care industry.
With industry-specific functionality, Epicor says the system incorporates the common industry and regulatory requirements, allowing aged care providers to quickly improve their business management systems, gain efficiencies, ensure more accurate data, improve compliance and governance, allow for increased visibility of data and help them run their organisations more effectively.
Randall says that, besides the inherent benefits of a cloud deployment, not least the speed-to-value proposition, there is also a significant speed-to-compliance factor for aged and residential care providers who select the Epicor SLS cloud solution.
“Epicor SLS has a great track record in helping our aged care and residential care industry clients to manage compliance in a highly regulated environment, and the Epicor SLS cloud solution can get the smaller organisations there even faster.
“Our key differentiators appeal to mid to large-sized organisations as well, who appreciate that Epicor SLS has been designed and developed by our highly experienced team in Australia, with a true understanding of the local aged care industry and its regulations, requirements and challenges. They value that it is backed by our ERP expertise and functionality, to present a residential care management solution capable of supporting financial requirements and complying with new legislative changes.”
Juliet Ye, business manager, St Catherine’s Aged Care says she used Epicor SLS for 10 years in a previous organisation and “it is brilliant”.
“When I started at St Catherine’s a year ago, we were using a solution that required us to enter in the same information in three different modules, sometimes in five different locations. It wasn’t integrated with any of the government programs we need to work with, or with other software we use.
“Fortunately, it was retired which gave me the perfect opportunity to recommend Epicor SLS. With Epicor SLS we will be able to ensure our information and data is centralised, and distributed across different locations more efficiently, accurately and cost effectively. We chose the cloud option to ensure we are always on the most up to date version, thus reducing both management and risk.”
Another Epicor SLS user, the Chinese Australian Services Society (CASS), which was founded in 1981, provides a range of services to the community, assisting migrants to settle and integrate into the Australian society.
Lillian Jin, assistant accountant at CASS and CASSCare, says prior to deploying Epicor SLS, the organisation’s residential aged care services had been managed with spreadsheets – “which is inefficient”. “We needed a new system that can manage our residential aged care as well as provide finance functionality,” Jin says.
“After we saw the demonstration of Epicor SLS, including the finance aspects of the solution, we loved it. We selected it to help us streamline our systems and save time. We want to avoid the manual processes and data entry and the risk of error that goes along with that. We need to eliminate the reconciliation process we have had to go through with our current system.”