Abney & Baker
Jan Czerbak, Business Support Manager
CarePlanner helps you save time on administrative processes so you can focus on providing quality care. Together with our providers, we develop innovations that refine and simplify our software processes, and support your service more effectively. Our API, or Application Programming Interface, is a key part of our innovative approach to care management software, empowering ourselves and our users by facilitating a wide variety of integrations.
Saved hours of admin every day
We spoke to Abney & Baker, one of our long-time providers, to find out how they use our API to streamline their management and reporting processes.
Innovating Your Digital Experience
Jan Czerbak is the Business Support Manager at Abney & Baker. Jan oversees all things IT at Abney & Baker, from hardware and software to overall strategy. He joined the company one year after CarePlanner was implemented. In his 7 years with Abney & Baker Jan has helped develop their technological functionality, which has included working closely with our development teams to create bespoke features that match the needs of their business.
“We’re trying to digitise as much as we can, and also make it usable for reporting purposes and interactions. It’s one of the reasons why we decided to go for the CarePlanner’s API, because we want to interact with the data in an easier way.”
“We’re trying to minimise paper and minimise the unrecorded data we were letting go to waste,” explained Jan. “We’re trying to make all the data recorded by us in Careplanner reportable and interactive, so that it’s not just numbers and letters. We want it to be meaningful to us as a company and meaningful to the clients, their families and the carers as well.”
“We’re trying to digitise as much as we can, and also make it usable for reporting purposes and interactions. It’s one of the reasons why we decided to go for the CarePlanner’s API, because we want to interact with the data in an easier and more efficient way.”
Building a Solution
APIs can seem daunting at first. Developing new functionality is a challenge for providers, but it can yield significant rewards. It is crucial to have a clear understanding of what you are trying to accomplish, and to work with the right software supplier to help you get there.
APIs can seem daunting at first. Developing new functionality is a challenge for providers, but it can yield significant rewards. It is crucial to have a clear understanding of what you are trying to accomplish, and to work with the right software supplier to help you get there.
“We were running reports on our own, in house. We were using CarePlanner reports through a web UI, downloading those reports, and then uploading them to a database. Then we were using [Microsoft] Power BI to analyse the data from that database. We wanted to streamline this process, make it independent of anyone doing any manual work. So rather than downloading, uploading, [and] refreshing, we wanted to have that API connection so that the data is updated automatically, and so that reports can be refreshed automatically as well.
“The ambition was to have independent, automatic data sources that refresh themselves regularly. This is why we launched our API project.”
The Benefits of an API
The results quickly pay back the time invested in implementing this process, and the effort is worth it.
“First of all, we save time, because we don’t have to download anything manually. Also, the data is as up to date as we needed to be. If we want it to be a daily refresh, we can make it a daily refresh. If we want it to be a weekly, we can make it weekly. So basically, it’s an automatic process, which saves us time.”
The ability to track trends and highlight specific information is a valuable business tool that can have a far-reaching impact on many areas of your operations. Additionally Abney & Baker were able to support their teams more effectively by applying some of the data they were collecting.
“Careplanner data collected via API feeds our own, custom-built holiday app so we can quite easily see who’s taking their annual leave, who’s not, who’s taking too much, who’s taking too little. Thanks to that we can easily see who could be at a risk of a burnout, and who’s taken too much halfway through a holiday year.
“It makes reporting, the payroll and managerial processes a lot easier. Along with being very time efficient from an IT and reporting perspective.”
Working With Our Team
The process of implementing new features and developing with our API is not one you will have to engage with on your own. We have a highly skilled team of developers and support to ensure that you get everything you need from our API. CarePlanner’s strength has always come from our ability to collaborate with our users and produce innovative solutions together.
“Without [the API], none of what we do would be possible. Basically, we would rely on manual extracts, manual uploads, and imports, it just wouldn’t be feasible. It will require a person to be responsible for it every day.”
In order to use our API or implement new features, you won’t have to deal with the process on your own. We have a highly skilled team of developers and support to ensure that you get everything you need from our API. CarePlanner’s strength has always come from our ability to collaborate with our users and produce innovative solutions together.
“It was really good. They were quite responsive. Our questions they were answered quickly.
“We were among the first people who used CarePlanner’s availability calendar endpoint. We raised the query explaining that the availability endpoint doesn’t work. It’s there, but you can’t use it because of the restrictions. When we raised it with you your team immediately looked into it. Your developers made the first draft and came to us to test it. We did some testing, found some minor bugs, and then they fixed the bugs quite quickly. It was a very smooth process. When we had questions, we got answers quite quickly.”
Solutions that Save Time
We have been privileged to work with providers like Abney & Baker, who use their experience and perspective to help shape the potential of our system. As tech providers our experience can only take us so far, and by combining our expertise with the expertise of our users we are able to create solutions that benefit everyone in the process, from coordinators to people in receipt of care.
“Without [the API], creating our holiday app wouldn’t be possible. We would rely on manual extracts, manual uploads, and imports, it just wouldn’t be feasible. It will require a person to be responsible for it every day.
“It makes reporting, the payroll and managerial processes a lot easier. Along with being very time efficient from an IT and reporting perspective.”
If you would like to talk to us about using our API, and how we can build a suitable integration for your business reach out to us here.
We can discuss, scope, potential and cost for the feature in more detail.
