Mission Australia comes out a winner!

Mission Australia was a winner at last night’s annual Australian Information Communication and Technology (ICT) Community Awards for a new software program which ensures its clients receive greater support and saves its staff valuable time.

Known as MACSIMS (Mission Australia Community Services’ Information Management System), the system picked up the award for ‘best use of software in a non-profit setting’ – a category which recognises community organisations using software products or services in an innovative way to enhance their operations.

Mission Australia’s staff use MACSIMS to more effectively support their clients, and in the process, capture data about their challenges, progress and outcomes. It provides reports to funding bodies and allows for more collaborative referrals to other services.

MACSIMS is unique because it can be fully customised to suit Mission Australia’s diverse range of community programs. Mission Australia has more than 300 community services across the country – each one of them different, facing local issues and with a range of funding sources – which last year helped close to 128,000 people.

So far Mission Australia has piloted MACSIMS and is in the process of rolling the system out nationally.

The results from the pilot were extremely encouraging:

• A 95% reduction in internal reporting time.
• 80% reduction in government report production and submission.
• 100% reduction in additional administration days.
• 80% of pilot staff reported a preference for the MACSIMS system.
• Increase in staff satisfaction.
• Staff quickly accustomed to new system – less than one week to adjust for computer users with service knowledge, and under two weeks for those without.

Perhaps the greatest benefit provided by MACSIMS is that it saves staff hours – and over the course of a year, days and weeks – in administration and reporting time.

The less time staff spend in administrative tasks the more time they have to help people in need.

MACSIMS is only made possible through the support of Mission Australia’s partners in the project, FlowConnect which is providing the core technology and PricewaterhouseCoopers in an advisory role.

Their efforts are making real differences in the lives of disadvantaged Australians.

Sources:
http://officialmissionaustralia.blogspot.com/2009/05/mission-australia-comes-out-winner.html

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