A comprehensive home care business plan is your best friend when you are trying to grow your agency. This document will codify your goals, spell out how you plan to get there, and contain all the relevant research you have put in. Speaking of research, you should be doing plenty in preparation for your growth initiatives. Start by conducting thorough competitive research, noting the strengths and weaknesses of other providers. Consider where your opportunities lie, and where you need to improve in relation to your competition. Growth is not possible without a nuanced understanding of your marketplace, and your role in it. By establishing your place in the market, you will understand how to better tailor your services to meet customer needs.
In addition to competitive research, you should also conduct considerable research into the home care market as a whole. What trends are emerging? What commonalities are there among the top players? What do customers value? Pay special attention to what is important to patients. By staying in tune with their needs, you can ensure your offering provides more value than that of the competition, and that you become the agency of choice.
Lastly, consider any local demographic information relevant to your business. If your home care business plan does not take into account factors relevant to where your business operates, it is bound to be a failure. Ensure your home care business plan contains information regarding the number of seniors/people in need in your area, income levels, and who the major local agencies are. Taking local factors into account is what separates your home care business plan from any other.
Growth is difficult, and you need to make sure you have the proper team in place to weather the storm. If you have any major holes in your organization, they should be plugged before you embark on your growth journey. Teamwork is incredibly important when growing a business, and if your team is not comfortable working with one another, you’ll likely hit major speed bumps as you try to scale your agency. Before you hit the start button on your growth plans, be sure that you have the right team in place to do so.
Also consider your relationship with other businesses and partners. The larger your network, the better when it comes to growing. Don’t be shy to make connections with other local businesses that can potentially refer you business (and vice versa). Everyone running a business ultimately has the same goal: prolonged financial success. Partnerships can be a great low-cost way to make growing a bit easier for everyone involved.
As you consider your growth path, take a long look at your internal processes. Are they perfect? Can they sustain the growth you are looking for? If the answer is no, be sure to re-evaluate how you are running your business before you start growing. The last thing you want to happen is to start on your growth journey, only to realize that your current operational processes cannot be scaled. This can lead to tons of internal headaches, but most importantly, lower customer satisfaction and churn. You can sign on all the new clients in the world, but if your existing clients are leaving, you aren’t actually growing.
So, how can you achieve operational excellence? Evaluate each level of your business’ operations, from scheduling, to billing, to payroll, to client management. Consider if you can support double the customer base with your current infrastructure. If this sounds like nothing but a nightmare, you have some improvements to make. If you’re still running your agency with pen and paper, or with Microsoft Excel or another similar tool, it is time to invest in a more comprehensive solution specifically designed for a home care agency, that also integrates seamlessly with other critical software.
You should automate troublesome tasks like billing and payroll when possible, ensuring you have all the time you need to focus on improving your business instead of getting bogged down with administrative tasks.
Without processes that can grow alongside your business, you will not be able to sustain growth while delivering the same level of care.
With growth comes the need for analysis of results. Does your reporting stack up to the competition? Are you certain you are properly and scalably tracking critical metrics like churn rate, revenue, and more? If you do not have access to top-shelf reporting, now is the time. Ensuring your business is able to track key metrics reliably allows you to make data-backed strategic pivots and stay on the path to growth.
If you are looking to run your home care agency more efficiently, a software like eRSP can help. We have been helping home care agencies like you grow for over 20 years, and we have leveraged our wealth of expertise into creating a software solution that has everything you need to better run your agency. eRSP has all of the tools you need to manage
-Scheduling
-Billing
-Payroll
-HR
-Client Management
In order to effectively grow your home care business, you’ll need to become a master of marketing. This starts with your website. If your website is missing the mark, consider getting a fresh design that fits your brand’s ethos, and engages and delights visitors. A bad website is a common negative first impression businesses make upon potential customers. Don’t fall victim.
It is critical to not only leverage marketing to make yourself known, but to drive new business as well. You should manage distinct campaigns with each of these objectives, and pursue a variety of channels to meet your target audience. Before moving forward with a channel, think to yourself, can I find my customers here?
We’d recommend running local Google Search ads to show to anyone searching for home care agencies in your area, as well as pursuing other channels like Facebook where your target audience may browse regularly.
Additionally, be active in your community. Partner with local businesses, and run some ads in local publications to make yourself more known.
Ultimately, content is often what separates a good marketing strategy from a great one. Your business should focus on creating high-value informational content to post on your website and distribute in your advertising. This content should be focused on the key pain points and questions your customers are faced with. Your content should speak to them, and position you as a trusted expert in the industry. Although content production may not directly land you customers today, it is a huge part of long-term, sustainable growth.
We touched upon it earlier. If you are not delighting your customers, your home care agency will not grow. Your goal should not only be to sign on more new clients, but to decrease churn and ensure your clients stay on for the long haul. So, how can you get there? Your home care software plays a huge role in how you manage your agency, and as a result, the quality of the care you provide. Does your current software allow you to match caregivers with certain skills to certain patients? Are you able to automate billing so you can spend more time working on care improvements? Are you sure you’re fully compliant with the latest EVV requirements? You should be answering yes to these questions, and if you aren’t, switching software can help. Although it may be a big leap for your business to take, moving to a comprehensive home care software with the capability to automate troublesome processes and streamline your operations is well worth it. A solution like eRSP is the perfect tool for growing agencies to create operational efficiencies, and ultimately provide better care.
Let’s recap everything you’ve learned. When you are embarking on your growth journey, it is pivotal to start by defining your vision, doing plenty of research, and creating a comprehensive home care business plan. Next, you can move into execution. Start by evaluating your operational efficiency. Note where you can make improvements, and consider switching to a new software if your current solution cannot support your changing needs. Once you are backed by a software that fits your needs, the last steps are to start more aggressive marketing of your business, and focus on keeping high standards for quality of care. Mix all of these initiatives together, and you have a recipe for growth!
If your home care business isn’t satisfied with its software and is looking to start on the path to growth, we can help. eRSP is the original cloud-based home care software solution, serving the industry for over 20 years. We know what tools your home care agency needs to thrive, and we centralize those tools in one convenient location. We’d love to show you what eRSP is capable of in a free demo!
