Mass Senior Care, a leader in the field of care for the elderly and people with disabilities, represents over 4,000 individuals at more than 500 skilled nursing facilities, assisted living residences and continuing care communities. Mass Senior Care hired Blue Coda to craft a web technology solution (referred to as an Association Management System or AMS) to better support the organization's daily operations and facilitate a significant percentage of the interactions with its membership. Mass Senior Care also tasked Blue Coda with building two content-rich and easy to manage Web sites.
The Challenge:
Mass Senior Care consists of two separate organizations, known as the Mass Senior Care Association and the Mass Senior Care Foundation. Both wanted to position themselves to be the key destination for senior care knowledge and resources. One of Blue Coda's primary challenges was to replace the existing back office system with a new AMS and bring all staff up to speed with no disruption to the organization's daily operations. An additional challenge was creating a distinct aesthetic for each Web site while ensuring that both appeared as a recognizable component of a larger brand.
"Working with the Mass Senior Care team was quite a rewarding experience. Together, we substantially improved the way the organization conducts its daily operations, while building two unique Web sites that provide its member base a high degree of service in an accessible format."
- Darrin Samaha, Client Services Lead
Here's how we did it:
Recommended (and later integrated) an enterprise-level content management solution (CMS) to provide staff with the ability to easily manage and update both Web sites.
Recommended (and later integrated) an enterprise-level association management system (AMS) to provide staff with everything needed to manage and grow the Mass Senior Care membership.
Facilitated a full-product evaluation of AMS and CMS solutions and helped drive the selection of products that best fit the organization's budget, technology and operation needs. The organization chose Ektron CMS and Avectra NetForum AMS.
Established a new online identity through an original design and organization of content.
Migrated over 10,000 records of data from Mass Senior Care's existing, 130 table backoffice system to the Avectra AMS.
Customized the Avectra AMS layout and features to support current operations.
Built a online career center to allow members to post and display job opportunities after purchasing a subscription in the Association online shopping cart. Job opportunities could also be found through a searchable form on the Association Web site.
Set up both Web sites to be Section 508 compliant, enabling users with visibility impairment to get the full benefits of the new site tools and functions.
Coordinated eight separate training sessions for the staff on how to use the Ektron CMS and how to manage the Avectra AMS, and provided hands-on support over numerous Gotomeeting sessions.
Results:
The Association and Foundation Web sites, and the Avectra AMS, were launched on September 7, 2009. The entire project was completed on budget without any cost overruns, on the exact date set early in the project and announced in various marketing efforts several months prior to the launch.
