Thoughtworks worked closely with the Singapore Association for Mental Health (SAMH) to lay the foundations for growth and reach more people in need of support – by identifying the right CRM system for the task.
SAMH offers a range of services to promote mental wellness in children, youth, adults and the elderly across Singapore, from community outreach to creative services and rehabilitation. For scalability, SAMH needed to overhaul its clunky case management system to save direct service practitioners’ (eg, social workers, case workers, counsellors, art therapists, psychologists) time, especially when keying in data to report stats and coordinate service delivery of clients between programs when needed. Its basic legacy in collating data required lots of manual input, and different set-ups in each site were making it difficult to standardize and track data between centers.
Thoughtworks’ initial consultation looked into the challenges of volunteer/donor management systems. Subsequently, the Thoughtworks team’s advisory and tech skills were called upon to solve the case management system challenge.
The team set out to understand the current state, solution the future state and evaluate software for selection. Partnering closely, the Thoughtworks team brought processes together, standardized the new user journey between centers and evaluated off-the-shelf software solutions. We resolved on an off-the-shelf product, which the SAMH team will customize and implement, beginning with its YouthReach and Insight Centre Counselling Service. The Thoughtworks and SAMH teams paired to standardize the process for these centers, as YouthReach provides the most comprehensive programs/activities compared to the other programs. This approach ensures that the team will be able to set up and roll out subsequent centers without the need for any more process standardization.
From Thoughtworks’ perspective, it was important that we work closely with the SAMH team to bring them along on the journey, help them understand the tech’s potential and ensure recommended software solutions were user-friendly, flexible and on budget. A more efficient case management system will remove hassle from direct service practitioners’ day-to-day tasks, saving them time so they can focus on their core roles in reaching out and serving clients. While using an off-the-shelf solution rather than custom-built software means SAMH will benefit from after-implementation support, the goal is that with secure digital foundations in place, SAMH will be able to scale faster and support more Singaporeans in need using existing resources.