From a 45 minute demo to a seamless go-live: how Ali’s Home Healthcare moved to Evaran Home Care

About Ali’s Home Healthcare

Ali’s Home Healthcare has been supporting people across Canterbury, New Zealand for 26 years. The business began when a support worker who was unhappy with the standard of care being delivered in the community decided to set up her own service, working out of her garage. What started as a one person operation grew steadily, eventually being taken over by Kelly Seed, who bought the business eight years ago.

Kelly’s background is in construction, project management and quantity surveying rather than clinical care, a different route into the sector than most providers take. She brought that operational and organisational discipline to a business that today supports hundreds of clients across aged care, disability support and supported living, with a large staff, most of them support workers and care staff delivering hands-on support in the community.

The challenge

Ali’s Home Healthcare had grown increasingly unhappy with the software they had been using and after a frustrating period trying to resolve ongoing issues, Kelly made the decision to look elsewhere. A conversation with her regional manager introduced her to Evaran Home Care, and after a 45 minute initial demo followed by a more detailed session with a team members who would be involved in the transition, the decision to switch was straightforward.

“I was really, really, really impressed and could see how our business could function exceptionally well through Evaran.”

The migration

Ali’s Home Healthcare went live with Evaran on 1 June, just two months before this interview took place. The team chose not to bring across all the historical data that had built up in ways specific to their previous system, uploading their current client base and setting up each client individually instead.

From 25 May, Ali’s Home Healthcare ran both systems in parallel for a week to check everything matched, while staff went through two weeks of training ahead of the go-live date. Kelly described the transition as smooth from start to finish.

“Everything went exceptionally smoothly. It was so easy.”

Looking back, Kelly said she would have made more use of custom fields and brought across more historical information had she better understood the system’s capabilities at the outset, a learning she is applying as the business continues to refine its setup.

Life with Evaran Home Care

Two months in, Kelly points to several areas where Evaran Home Care has already changed how her team works.

Scheduling that sticks

Where the previous system required repeated, clunky adjustments, changes in Evaran are permanent once made. "Creating client appointments and assigning a support worker is seamless, we have confidence that staff are able to meet their guaranteed hours, clients’ needs are being met and service satisfaction is growing."

The team is now preparing to divide Christchurch into zones so coordinators can see staff availability and location more clearly, supporting better planning around leave and new client intake. Better visibility on the geographical location of appointments will also lead to greater efficiencies.

Bulk rostering

Around 80% of Ali’s Home Healthcare’s clients have email addresses, and emailing rosters out in bulk has cut a job that used to consume a Friday afternoon and a Saturday for 150 to 200 clients down to around 30 minutes, now handled by the receptionist rather than a coordinator.

Medication management

Kelly highlighted the visibility Evaran Home Care gives into medication administration, including accurate timestamps, as a standout feature. The team is working through a broader culture shift, encouraging support workers to use the Carer App on their devices actively throughout each visit rather than only for checking in and out.

Compliance and forms

Ali’s Home Healthcare is not due to be audited for another 18 months, but Kelly is confident Evaran Home Care has the reporting and documentation she needs, including using the Forms feature to create live, updatable documents that can be saved as PDFs and shared with both the client and wider care circle when a client’s needs change.

Care Circle client portal

Having only begun inviting clients to the Care Circle portal in the past two weeks, Ali’s is already seeing uptake of around 60%. Kelly expects this to be especially valuable for family members living overseas who want visibility into appointments, updates and photos.

Reporting

Kelly is looking forward to the enhanced reporting capability coming to Evaran Home Care and is excited about what more in-depth reporting will mean for tracking performance as the business grows, particularly as it takes on more clients and support workers across a wider area.

Support and training

Kelly praised the Evaran Home Care implementation and support team, singling out the depth of the help content and training videos which have often enabled them to figure out the answers to questions themselves. She is also looking forward to the upcoming Academy, a combined library of videos and guides currently in its final stages of testing.

Together, these changes have shifted Evaran Home Care from being a replacement system to becoming part of Ali’s Home Healthcare’s operating model. The early benefits are practical: less time spent on repetitive administration, better visibility for coordinators, and stronger tools for communicating with clients, families and staff.

The impact

Kelly estimates Evaran is already saving her team somewhere in the region of 20 to 30 hours a week, largely through faster scheduling and rostering. Some administrative roles are changing or not being replaced as staff retire or move on, a direct result of the efficiencies the new system has enabled.

"It is saving us hours and hours each week, with the ease of filling staff leave, actioning client changes and invoicing and preparation for payroll. The ability to use the capability function, to search for support staff for new clients is easing pressure on our coordinating team. Being part of a large software provider network has meant that updates and improvements are regular and have been well tested before landing in our environment."

Looking ahead, Ali’s Home Healthcare is exploring MOA Benchmarking to strengthen its compliance and quality reporting further, alongside plans to trial Evaran Home Care’s group functionality to better support its supported living homes.