Success story: Helping Hands

Since 1989, Helping Hands have supported adults of all ages to maintain their independence and stay in the comfort of their own homes during their care.

Helping Hands have over 100 branches across England and Wales and, with the support of their experienced nursing team, support those with complex conditions such as dementia to live safely and comfortably at home.

Before Access, Helping Hands had implemented several data systems over time, and many of these were no longer fit for purpose to serve their growing organisation.

“As an organisation we have purchased lots of standalone platforms over many years to facilitate various processes and data collection throughout the business. What we’ve ended up with is systems that don’t talk to each other, resulting in siloed data,” says Kirsty Head, Head of Business Applications at Helping Hands.

When first coming to market for new software solutions, Helping Hands had some specific objectives to meet.

“I arrived at Helping Hands in 2018. My main objectives were to find a way to go paperless, provide a way for us to bring all of our data in one place, and automate our processes,” continues Kirsty.

The new software did not only need to provide greater efficiency to their current central operations but had to offer a scalable solution that would act as a solid foundation for Helping Hands’ impressive, ongoing growth.

“As a business, we’d got into a position where, as we were growing, we were putting more and more administrative job roles in our overheads. We have been growing very quickly; we’ve now got over 100 physical branches across the country, and there is an ambition to add another 35 in the next calendar year. We could not continue adding to our expenses with manual data processing,” explains Kirsty.

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As one of the UK’s leading domiciliary care providers, Helping Hands’ search for new software had to start with finding an industry-leading care software package.

“We are a health and social care organisation, so the main driver for us had to be the core operating system. When it comes to solutions in this sector, Access People are right up there as the best in the market. The fact that Access People has a full suite of supporting applications that surrounds it was a real added benefit,” says Kirsty.

As well as top-class operating software, Access People offered Helping Hands a suite of software that would help them to get away from siloed processes and bring their care and HR data into one place.

Access Workspace provided Helping Hands with a single sign-on platform, which lets busy staff get what they need – when they need it – quickly and easily. Expense claims, purchasing requests, and booking annual leave can all be automatically processed without unnecessary admin, bother, or hassle.

As Helping Hands explored Access People’s products further, they soon found that a suite of Access solutions would allow Helping Hands to streamline their back-office functions, bring all of their operational data into a single hub and give their busy staff effortless self-serve access to essential HR functions, as well as offering the added benefit of working with a single vendor.

“We did our due diligence by creating specifications and holding scoping days and found all of the other Access People products we were looking at met nearly all of our requirements. Plus, the benefits of having one vendor and one place where we keep all of our data far outweighed the benefit of having lots of individual vendors that I then had to manage,” says Kirsty.

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Helping Hands has found working with Access People a positive experience right from the start. Access People was already providing Helping Hands’ payroll platform, and they found it easy to build on that existing relationship with Access People, with the help of product experts at every stage of the process.

“It was just a case of my contacting our account manager and expressing our interest in other products and they put us in touch with the right people at Access. We were quickly assigned a sales manager who specialised in the sales for multiple products, so they understood all of the different products and how they all related to each other - which was very useful for us,” says Kirsty.

Access People looked at a suite of different products, exploring how the different solutions could be harnessed to answer Helping Hands’ needs and requirements.

Kirsty has been able to speak with product experts throughout her time working with Access People, all of whom have supported Helping Hands to build a suite of products that precisely answer their needs and will work with their processes. In doing so, this has maximised the instant benefit that Helping Hands will gain from their products as well as futureproof the system so that it provides a solid foundation for their ongoing growth.

Working closely with the team at Access People has also ensured that Helping Hands has had a seamless transition towards its new suite of products.

“Once we had signed on the dotted line, there was a very smooth progression into implementation. Our programme manager attended some of the pre-sales’ sessions, which was great because it meant that the switch from our main contacts was very simple and seamless. We’d already been engaging with the programme manager as part of the pre-sales process, so, all in all, it’s been a very positive experience to date,” concludes Kirsty. 

Access Workspace provided Helping Hands with a single sign-on platform, which lets busy staff get what they need – when they need it – quickly and easily. Expense claims, purchasing requests, and booking annual leave can all be automatically processed without unnecessary admin, bother, or hassle.

The Access Group's HCM division, Access People, offer an unrivalled suite of solutions for businesses, including HR and Payroll, Absence Management, Workforce Management, Compliance, Recruitment, Talent, Learning, Employee Benefits and Engagement, Health & Safety, all of which are underpinned by the powerful Access Workspace platform. 

The Access Group is one of the leading providers of business management software to small and mid-sized organisations in the UK, Ireland, and Asia Pacific. We help over 100,000 customers across commercial and not-for-profit sectors become more productive and efficient.