Business Goals
- Move homeless clients into housing as quickly as possible
- Streamline collection of crucial client data
- Reduce delays in data entrys and submission duties
Outcomes & Results
- 50% less time required to place clients into housing
- Increased efficiency and reduced paper
- Real-time form submission eliminates data entry lags
The Challenge
Featherfist is a not-for-profit social services agency on the south side of Chicago with 62 employees that provides supportive and housing services to the homeless.
Prior to placing a client in a housing unit, the agency has to collect information on that client and conduct property inspections.
“If we met someone on the street, we’d have to sit on the street corner and do all that paperwork by hand,” says Stacey Anewishki, chief program officer. The forms would then have to be returned to the main office for data entry. Project manager Kari Williams describes a day in her life before TrueContext as being inundated with paper, which lead to substantial lags in data entry. “It was very slow, very time-consuming, very tedious because every piece of information does need to be entered into our databases for multiple tracking reasons,” she says.
“So it was a very long day.” Williams would receive forms at the end of each day, but if there was a backlog, the data may not have been entered until the following day.
The Solution
Featherfist has replaced its manual processes with TrueContext, a smartphone and tablet mobile form application that allows users to collect, receive and submit data in the field.
“We are using TrueContext in pretty much every aspect of our day-to-day business,” says Williams.
Featherfist can now electronically capture and store information on all its programs and clients. Data can be sent back to the office as soon as it is captured. The agency can also track rent structures for different income levels and conduct media-rich housing inspections. Case managers can take photos of housing units and seamlessly integrate those photos onto mobile forms.
The Benefits
“It allows us to go from taking maybe 6 months to find a unit for a client to 3 months to find a unit for a client.”
KARI WILLIAMS
PROJET MANAGER
FEATHERFIST
“Our main goal is getting people housed as quickly as possible,” says Williams. The ability to swiftly capture, track and retrieve data has allowed Featherfist to significantly speed up the process of housing clients.
A homeless person in need of shelter can’t be left waiting, says Anewishki. Featherfist has to respond immediately. “TrueContext are helping us take people off the street.”
