With more than 9,000 early childhood care and development facilities spread across the state, the Colorado Department of Human Services Office of Early Childhood has its hands full keeping track of the places and people responsible for the welfare of the state’s most vulnerable residents.

The task was made no easier by the fragmented state of the databases the office used to have to deal with. There were three different databases tracking information related to licensing and childcare provider performance, along with a separate CRM system that administrators in the individual care facilities used to track funding. “We did a lot of large file exports, with people keying in data,” said Colin Tackett, a business analyst in the Colorado Office of Early Childhood. “We were updating monthly instead of nightly.”

That was a problem, considering the number of children the system serves and the frequently changing nature of the childcare landscape. With those kinds of delays built into the system, parents could show up to enroll their children in a facility that had gone out of business two weeks earlier.

A chance to get it right

In 2014 the Office secured a four-year, $44.8 million grant to bring ratings, referrals, licensing and quality improvement investments under one roof. The “Colorado Shines” program, which was launched early last year, is a one-stop shop for early childhood programs. Parents can search for nearby schools and care facilities and get up-to-date information on services and licenses. They can check for eligibility for financial assistance and even see ratings created by state regulators (right).

The Office investigated several packaged ratings applications but found them too restrictive. In the end, it chose an unlikely candidate to manage quality ratings, distribute funds and track results of its improvement programs: Salesforce.com Inc.’s CRM. But with help from some savvy third-party developers, Colorado Shines is now a reality.

There are two stages of licensing in the Colorado early childhood care system. All facilities are required to meet basic health and safety requirements in order to operate. Beyond that is a voluntary system that can qualify facilities for bonus funding based upon the assessment of on-site observers. Parents can consult those published ratings to choose a facility for their kids, which makes ratings a valuable tool for care providers. They deliver peace-of-mind to parents, which also makes them a useful marketing tool.

The Office also keeps track of training and certification records for licensed professionals. With caregivers spread across the U.S.’s eighth-largest state, that was a constant challenge under the old paper-based system. “Observers might go on site and find the professionals weren’t ready to be observed” because of a snafu in the paperwork, Tackett said.

And because the old administrative process was slow, paper-bound and fragmented, only about 10 percent of the facilities in the state opted for the voluntary ratings. “They didn’t see the benefit or want to take on the challenges,” Tackett said.

Custom-built solution

In order to create the custom ratings system in Salesforce, the Office needed to bring together licensing and quality data from its legacy systems and integrate data from a new fund-tracking system. Vertiba Inc. (now owned by Publicis Groupe SA’s Publicis.Sapient division) was chosen to build the applications. Scribe Software Corp.’s Scribe integration platform-as-a-service (iPaaS) was brought in to provide bi-directional and one-way integrations for the Salesforce hub. IPaas is a new category of cloud services that integrates and normalizes data from multiple sources in the cloud.

The development and integration work took five months, but there was a lot to do. Scribe was employed to import licensing and ratings data from legacy Oracle databases into Salesforce, append ratings and referrals data and share everything with the partner database in the Colorado Department of Education’s SimplyDigi Inc.-based professional development information system, which is used for credentialing, tracking and training early childhood professionals.

The office also used Scribe to create bi-directional integration between Salesforce and the SugarCRM-based Early Childhood Council Leadership Alliance (ECCLA) grants management system that helps local partners distribute funds to qualified facilities. Rather than replace the SugarCRM package, the Office opted to let partners use the system they were already familiar with.

Speed demon

One major and immediate impact of the integration project has been speed. The licensing database is now updated nightly so parents have current information about any facilities they consider. The integrated system has also improved the quality of on-site ratings while reducing the waste that was inherent in the old paper-based system. No longer do inspectors risk showing up at facilities that aren’t ready for them.

Integration with the SugarCRM fund-tracking system has given the Office better visibility into how its grants are being spent. Instead of processing paper invoices, staff can see exactly where each dollar goes in each facility and can correlate that information with performance. Bottom line: “We can see how our investments affect ratings,” Tackett said.

Participation in the ratings program has tripled to 30 percent as a result of improved visibility as well as the integration of ratings into the licensing process. “Now that facilities’ quality ratings are readily available, more of them want to participate,” Tackett said.

The Scribe iPaaS slashed the time needed to integrate disparate data sources and avoided a painful extract/transfer/load stage. “It’s is so easy to use that I can remap fields in the interface, change or troubleshoot existing integrations and add new integrations without any advanced Salesforce or database training,” Tackett said.

The Office staff is now finding that they can take advantage of other functions in a CRM suite – like call center tracking – to get better visibility into operations. They’re also looking to share the functionality of the new integrated system with other departments within the state of Colorado.

Photo courtesy of Colorado Shines