Feros Care moves CRM, productivity apps to the cloud

Aged care provider, Feros Care, has shifted its CRM and productivity apps to the cloud with the roll out of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online and Office 365.

The transition to cloud is part of a three-year strategic plan for the company to ease the burden of data centre upgrades and better cater to its remote working model.

Feros Care – which runs a national network of villages, at-home services, allied health and wellness programs, and telehealth services – also plans to close its data centre and move all IT services to the cloud by 2019.

“Our IT services team is quite small so we needed to look for ways of improving our services in times of upgrade,” said Glenn Payne, CIO of Feros Care.

“Just the length of time and the costs in doing these sorts of upgrades, and moving data centres or shipping data around, if we can offset that stuff to the cloud then we’re saving in the long run.”

The company has a remote workforce of around 400 people nationally, with one central office at the Gold Coast, which employs around 100 staff.

“Most of our work forces are completely remote, which is why we’re looking for online solutions to satisfy our strategic intent around that,” Payne said.

Microsoft was selected due to its ability to provide familiar and compatible software that was also accessible by remote staff using mobile devices.

“Knowing that our remote working model is key to our success in the industry and ensuring aged Australians can stay in their own home for as long as possible, having the ability to access anything, anywhere on any device is pretty important to us.

“Another big thing for us is making sure that geographical boundaries aren’t put in place by technology – we want to make sure our people still feel a part of the bigger organisation even though they are working remotely,” said Payne.

The lack of training necessary for the change in services was also a driver in selecting Microsoft as a technology partner.

“Being in aged care, our end users aren’t the most high-tech people, so keeping that flavour of training down to a minimum was definitely something that was close to our heart.”

Feros Care has plans to diversify its services in the aged care sector, and will be hiring another 120 staff over the next two months, all of whom will be using Office 365.

“We’re definitely heading down the track of moving everything, all our services, to some form of cloud collaboration tool,” says Payne.

“Like anything, these things take time to set up and get out there correctly so my advice to anyone would definitely be to partner with someone who knows what they’re doing, and get the set-up correct from the get go.”