People over age 65 made up 16% of the Australian population in 2020, and they’re on track to represent more than 22% by 2026. This growing cohort is increasingly forgoing traditional facility care models to remain at home. The Australian government offers financial support to qualifying citizens, who can use those funds to support in-home care.
These government funds are typically managed by a traditional provider who establishes a plan within the customer’s budget and assigns caregivers. They offer limited to no choice regarding providers and little transparency on how the funds are being spent. This inefficient and costly approach reduces available funds for actual care with limited and often unfamiliar providers.
Enter HomeMade, a startup looking to disrupt the home care sector with a transformative solution that would empower customers to not only stay in their own homes but also to oversee their spending and self-select their providers. With an initial staff of only six, HomeMade set out to create a technology platform that would deliver efficiency, flexibility, transparency, and ease of use for customers and a scalable model that would grow and evolve with the company.
A Rock-Solid Technology Foundation for a Digitally Native Startup
Technology is at the heart of HomeMade’s business model, so choosing the right technology partner and the right digital platform was essential. “We wanted a solution that would give us that ability to scale rapidly and with confidence knowing that the rails weren’t going to fall off, because to be digitally enabled is what makes us different,” Laura Westhorpe, HomeMade general manager, said.
HomeMade found the perfect partner in Bourne Digital, part of Accenture, which steered the startup to SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP). In choosing the platform, HomeMade benefits from a locally hosted, high-performance cloud architecture that can scale across its network. As a React Native open-source Cloud Foundry runtime service, the HomeMade application is intuitive, user-friendly, and easy for the company to maintain and support long term. Add SAP Integration Suite and SAP HANA data storage into the mix and HomeMade emerged with a secure, integrated, and scalable technology foundation to offer efficient care and support to Australia’s at-home care population.
Young Company Makes an Outsize Impact
In just two years, HomeMade has grown its business to 2,500 customers and reduced new user onboarding time from 14 days to 48 hours. The company has empowered qualifying citizens to manage their budgets and choose their care while saving 14 million Australian dollars and counting.
Customers and families rave about the solution’s functionality and ease of use. HomeMade’s team members, who have grown to over 100, can happily focus on the customer instead of the endless paperwork they might find in traditional care management. Service providers appreciate timely payment, and another critical stakeholder – the Australian government – conducted a regulatory compliance audit and found that HomeMade scored 100% across 42 requirements for the Age Care Quality Safety Standards.
And this is only the beginning for a new company already making an appreciable impact. “As the needs of HomeMade grow and evolve, the platform will grow and evolve with HomeMade,” Selim Ahmed, managing director of Bourne Digital, part of Accenture, explained. For example, Ahmed continued, “We leverage AI business services to read documents…and we’re feeling really confident that those AI services will continue to play a part in the future evolution of HomeMade as the company moves more and more towards automation and self-service.”
Adding Value Through Innovation
An SAP Innovation Award winner in 2023, HomeMade continues to grow and think creatively about how its foundational SAP BTP-based technology can enable it to continue to innovate and add value for customers. “There are endless opportunities,” Westhorpe said, from increasing efficiency to leveraging data to identify falls or other incidents to using large language models to recognize clinical deterioration in users and launch preventative interventions.
For other startups looking to build technology solutions that will make a dramatic impact, Westhorpe offered to consider, “You want to build everything and you’ve got all these grand ideas, but what are the biggest things that will add value for customers?” Ahmed adds that resilience, a strong partnership, and hard work are critical: “Adapt, learn, grow together, and accept feedback…To build something innovative, you must be prepared to roll up your sleeves.”
The Full Episode
Special thanks to SAP AppHaus, a hub for fostering human-centered innovation, for collaborating on this Better Together: Customer Conversations on SAP Business Technology Platform episode. Learn more about how HomeMade built a better solution for qualifying citizens:
- Thought leadership podcast: Thulium’s CEO Tamara McCleary sat down with Westhorpe and Ahmed to discuss the change in caring for older adults, home-based care, and how technology can deliver on a promise dedicated to purpose.
- Practitioners’ video: Westhorpe, Ahmed, and I discussed the challenges and opportunities in creating a world-class digital solution for a small but rapidly scaling startup.
Explore more success stories of customers leveraging SAP BTP to help optimize processes for the sake of people and purpose:
- Colsubsidio: This nonprofit provider of wide-ranging social services chose SAP BTP and SAP HANA Cloud to enable extensive solution integrations, helping deliver better data connectivity and operational efficiency.
- Heartland Dental: Administratively supporting over 1,700 dental practices, Heartland Dental leverages SAP BTP to help improve the business assistant’s user experience, increase productivity, and reduce turnover.
For the full episode and the on-demand Better Together: Customer Conversations series, visit sap.com/btp.
Timo Elliott is vice president and a global innovation advocate for SAP BTP.