With 4,000 employees and 1,000 volunteers, Carinova provides home care, residential care, domestic help, and informal care support to 12,000 clients in the Netherlands. We helped Carinova migrate their data centre and workspace to Azure and Microsoft 365. This was one of the projects that earned us the title ‘Microsoft Partner of the Year’ in the category ‘frontline workers’ in 2022. But innovation is continuous, and it doesn’t stop with the technical migration, as it’s only the first step their journey.

Having successfully moved to a cloud workplace, Carinova is now looking at new ways to address known future challenges in healthcare. Michael Hemminga, Director of Operations at Carinova, sums up: “The shortage on the labour market will not decrease. We are in the ‘double ageing’. So, we are looking for smarter technology and practical innovations.”

INNOVATION IS MORE THAN TECHNOLOGY

Johan Arnold, IT manager at Carinova, has a clear vision of what innovation in healthcare means: “You have technological innovations, such as Microsoft 365, but you also have to innovate on other fronts. More effective collaboration, scaling up… These are important innovations for your organisation. You then support them with good IT.”

Michael: “For example, we work with neighbourhood concierges. They deliver packages, but they also help people in the neighbourhood to get the right care. This way we can support clients better and they can continue to live at home for longer. We want to equip such a neighbourhood concierge well for those tasks. Behind a successful employee is always good IT. But the meeting culture could also be more effective because there are now better ways to communicate and collaborate.”

ALWAYS ACCESS TO THE CLOUD WORKPLACE

“We didn’t have many devices, which meant everyone had to walk back and forth to enter patient data. Now everyone has an iPad, which increases job efficiencies and prevents papers getting lost. A good work environment and good technology are now preconditions. Thanks to the collaboration with Rapid Circle, we are now more professionally equipped in this area. The implementation of Teams means everyone is much more accessible and we can plan meetings better, with less driving back and forth between locations.” – Michael Hemminga, Director of Operations at Carinova

“A good work environment and good technology are now preconditions.”
– Michael Hemminga, Director of Operations at Carinova

According to Carinova, a good digital workplace also influences recruitment and turnover of staff. Michael: “I’m not saying that people come to work here because they like IT so much…”

“Except that everyone gets an iPad,” Johan interrupts him. “That helps.”

“Yes, people ago home with positive feedback about that. People are now a lot happier with how we have done it than before the migration.”

HOW ARE YOU GOING TO USE ALL THAT SPACE?

Technical management has largely disappeared, data is more available and there is more room for innovation. How are you going to use all that space? Michael: “The next step is to scale up. For example, we now do 2-3% of the appointments via video calling, but we think that can be done to 30%. The technology is there. Now we really have to start using it.”

Johan: “By using the technology in a big way, we really want to improve our care for clients and supporting our people. For example, improving our employee’s user experience in apps by minimising the number of clicks in their daily work. We now have the infrastructure to achieve this.”

One ongoing innovation project is called ‘The basics in order’. That project must ensure that all new IT not only works well, but also works well together. Another project, ‘Planning and Scheduling’, optimally focuses on work processes in the new infrastructure. The project involves IT, but also culture and organisational aspects since the way of working is being discussed. The goal is to optimise the use of resources and improve the effectiveness of the organisation. In addition to working closely with pilot teams, IT supports them as they test innovative ideas on a small scale. If their tests prove successful, it helps them scale up their ideas.

“The islands disappear, and you work better together.”

Johan: “The question is always: who does what? Home automation is a good example. That was always the responsibility of builders. But of course, IT also has responsibilities in this. And because you share more and more responsibilities, you visit each other more often. The islands disappear and you work better together.”

COOPERATION MUST ALSO CHANGE

Now that the migration is complete, the cooperation between Carinova and Rapid Circle is also changing. Johan: “We started and completed the migration together. Now we have to look further. How can we best help each other? For example, they now support our support staff and we continuously exchange ideas at an operational-tactical level. They also help us to make better use of software and improve processes, such as with Bookings. That makes booking appointments much easier now. And Forms, we use that to quickly extract information from the teams.”

“Rapid Circle’s mission is broadening, and they are developing into a true IT partner.”

Michael: “Their assignment is broadening, and they are developing into a real IT partner. For example, they also supply devices now, with the adoption that goes with it. Rapid Circle has a lot of experience with this. For example, they said: set aside half an hour per person for learning to work with the iPad. We thought: everyone knows how an iPad works, right? But they were really right about that. As a result, such an adoption simply runs much better. But they also manage via InTune. We had one colleague who had studied this and who could do it well. But it’s not a good feeling to have just one person who knows how it works. It feels more secure now, because there is a professional partner on it.”

“That award is also a bit our prize.”

“Rapid Circle has many customers in healthcare. They connect those experiences with each other and share that knowledge with us. And what they learn with us, they use with other customers. That’s how they get better and so do we. So that Microsoft Partner of the Year award is also a bit our prize.”