Don’t Find a Senior Living Technology Vendor – Find a Partner

Seventy-eight percent of senior living operators increased their technology spend in 2021.

This push for connectivity is certainly warranted – more older adults want, and use, technology than ever before. But it takes more than just sharing a platform with residents and staff members for them to experience its value.

You need clear implementation processes. You need strategies to continuously drive adoption. You need technical expertise for when any issues come up. In other words, you need a senior living technology partner.

Here are three ways a partner – not a vendor – can help you get the most out of your senior living technology.

1. Facilitate and Enrich Pilot Programs

The implementation of a senior living technology platform often determines its long-term impact on your community, nursing home, or wellness program. That’s a lot of pressure – especially if you don’t fully understand the technology yet yourself. But you don’t have to run implementation alone. Your technology partner can help, starting with a pilot program.

If people are lining up to join your pilot on day one, that certainly makes implementation easier. Buy-in is important, after all. But low turnout doesn’t mean you’re doomed. It creates an opportunity for you to uncover pain points and design a program that caters to both tech-avoidant and tech-savvy seniors.

Your partner can help you with this, whether by providing online training modules and best practices, sharing weekly usage reports, or coming onsite and demo’ing the product live.

When your partner does this work, it gives you more time to learn the ins and outs of the technology on your own. The experience you gain from that will pay dividends down the line when residents or staff members need help and you can provide it immediately.

Sure, this level of hands-on assistance requires your partner to spend a fair bit of time on every implementation. But true partners aren’t just able to do this work; they’re happy to do it. And that’s because any good partner knows that their success hinges on your success.

2. Provide Tech-Agnostic Solutions

We’ve identified how a partner streamlines and enhances your implementation process. But before you’ve even selected your technology provider, it’s important to consider how well their technology integrates with other systems.

For example, you might use a work-order management system, like TELS or WorxHub to track work orders in your community. An engagement platform vendor may offer you a platform that works on its own but doesn’t interact with your existing work-order management system. A partner will deliver a platform with open architecture that easily integrates with your work-order system. This open architecture drives more value out of both technologies. Here’s why.

Without this integration, residents may need to call in and request a work order – and your staff members would need to file the request in your system and oversee any follow-up. That’s a lot of steps just to fix a leaky faucet.

With an integration, residents can go into their community engagement platform, place the work order, and oversee its status all in a matter of minutes. The result: everyone saves time.

A technology partner’s ultimate goal is to improve the aging experience for older adults. If that means offering plug-and-play integrations with other industry leaders, a true partner will jump at the opportunity. That’s because partners develop their platforms in the same way they handle client relationships: by focusing on how to make life better for residents.

3. Anticipate and Solve Future Technology Needs

There’s a pretty good chance your needs will change over time, whether it’s because community residents want additional training or because staff requires new communication tools to stay connected. A senior living technology partner responds to those emerging needs by evolving their product over time.

Let’s say it’s been a year since you adopted your engagement platform. Residents are thriving. Occupancy is growing. Family satisfaction rates are increasing. But staff turnover is starting to hamper your day-to-day operations – and you’re specifically having difficulty filling open shifts.

A standard vendor might not notice (or care) about this problem. A partner, however, stays in regular contact with you and uses your experiences and feedback to inform their product development choices. The result: a product update that features automatic open shift alerts.

The open shift alerts save you time and help your caretakers balance their schedules more effectively. And because your partner was staying in touch – and is invested in your success – you knew help was on the way and that you didn’t need to seek out a new piece of senior living technology to solve your issue.

Unlock the Long-Term Value of Senior Living Technology by Finding a Partner

There’s a reason legacy systems that rely on manual administrative tasks are still prevalent: they’re familiar and don’t require much technical knowhow. But they do require more time – time that frontline care staff could use to personalize care for their residents.

Adopting a new piece of technology can feel daunting – especially if it’s your community, nursing home, or program’s first foray into the senior living technology market.

But that’s why finding a provider that behaves like a partner is so beneficial. They walk you through every aspect of their solution so you, your team, and the older adults under your care will feel confident using it every day.

A final note: in case you haven’t heard, the Caremerge Engagement business has been acquired by VoiceFriend – and is rebranding to Icon. If you’re interested in working with a senior living technology partner, check out the new Icon website for more information.