Bestchance processes more enrolments and streamlines support services with two-way automation

As an Early Years Management NFP organisation, Bestchance aims to support families and children in their early childhood, by delivering integrated services. Since working with Pendula in 2018, Bestchance has been able to provide a more streamlined experience for families registering and enrolling into sessional kindergarten.

Bestchance connected families and children to over 80 kindergartens, and previously, with no sufficient enrolment system in place, administrative-heavy processing placed strain on the enrolment team.

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Pendula removes the requirements for the team to make follow-up calls which could be to over 700 people...this is a significant improvement when you have a very small team trying to get through all the daily data processing and working to commence children at the service as quickly as possible.

Priya Prasad, systems & operations team leader

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Bestchance wanted a platform that would work within Salesforce to complement alternate departments who are working towards a centralised CRM. A customised approach was required as alternatives within the market had been unable to accommodate the specialised requirements in the industry allowing Local Government list data imports — enter Pendula, an end-to-end solution for Bestchance. “We were looking at a product that we could potentially get across all of our areas, which was long day care, kindergarten and family daycare,” says Systems and Operations Team Leader, Priya Prasad.

Bestchance has since enjoyed a radical internal change of model that supports processing larger volumes in a better way. Through leveraging Pendula to devise configurable workflows, a centralised solution has been brought to provide a streamlined customer experience.

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Connecting families and children to over 80 kindergartens across 14 local government areas involves seamless conversations with all stakeholders, and staying on top of things that are sent and received. Priya was aware of the repercussions with no proper enrolment system in place — the Bestchance team was under major strain to process thousands of applications through manual data entry into spreadsheets and a DIY database. Accumulated data and records were disorganised and required administrative-heavy processing.

Given that we manage 80 plus kindergartens, and we do the enrolments for that many, we're dealing with communications to about 5000 families which we needed to be consistent.

Priya Prasad, systems & operations team leader

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The spreadsheets dealt with the administration of all the kindergartens: compliance, communication, history and listing of events. Communication tools from both the database and spreadsheets were non-existent, and “given the workload and time and so many different processes going on, [delivering welcome handbooks] didn’t necessarily always happen”.

Bestchance needed an organisational solution that was:

• Centralised for team members to access
• Easy touch and reach to communicate the services for everyone involved

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Since integrating with Pendula, Bestchance has undergone an internal change of model, where processes are now automated, coherent and organised:

• Scheduled, relevant communications that are professional and consistent looking in replacement of manual administrative tasks
• Automated reminders and confirmation conversations based on completion of an event (for enrolment application confirmation, expiring subsidy cards and expiring immunisation records)
• Greater quality of records and cleaner reporting resulting from ‘data-cleansing’ of Bestchance’s database of customer records

With their new automated flows set up in Pendula flows, Priya’s team has greater confidence in processing applications — for instance, “[sending out introductory handbooks] is an automated thing that happens every day, for any new enrolments that have been processed. I can guarantee that every family has received everything that they’re supposed to.”

I can confidently say that all families now receive all the supporting documentation required before the commencement at the preschool as this process is now automated rather than administrator driven.

Priya Prasad, systems & operations team leader

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Using this new automated system, Bestchance can ensure this experience scales up across multiple services, families and location with minimal impact on their team.

Families now experience a streamlined process from Bestchance, with the help of Pendula.

This is made possible through the reduction of manual processing required in attending customer enquiries.

Compared to the 2018, Bestchance saw

• 44% increase
  of completed enrolments over November and December 2019
• 80% increase in timely enrolments
  The number of families with incomplete enrolments dropped to 200 in January 2020, compared to more than 1000 in January 2019.
• 20% more enrolments processed
  between November and December 2020 compared to the previous year
• Automated password resets
  via the portal now happening

The implication of these results are huge:

• Reduced strain
  on the team to process the remainder with less time pressure
• Improved accuracy
  of internal reporting from January 2019 onwards
• Compliance and diligence
  requirements met with little to no extr aeffort
• Increase team morale
  for enrolments for team members' work rate
• Greater accuracy, reduced paperwork
  in internal reporting

...and this is just the beginning.