The administration and delivery of nearly 500 Meals on Wheels a week has been significantly simplified with the use of a complimentary app built for the Guernsey Voluntary Services (GVS).
The app was built by Dave Wratten, Business Solutions Architect with Resolution IT who said: “The GVS team came to us to ask if we could build a replacement for their existing Meals on Wheels system which was proving time-consuming to manage. Over the next few months, I worked with them to update the data structure, building them a new app which is more flexible and user friendly. This has reduced the amount of admin, allowing the team to focus on delivering their core service. I’m delighted to have been able to use my skills on such a worthwhile cause”.
Niki Martin, one of the Guernsey Voluntary Service’s Meals on Wheels Co-ordinator said: ‘The new Power App which Dave has built for us has transferred our client setup from four different sections into one user friendly input screen. It’s made the whole logistical process easier and quicker and cuts down any potential user errors. Our menu selection has become individually client based, reducing the need to manually change meals weekly, after we have run the meal order function when ordering meals from the Princess Elizabeth Hospital catering department”.
Niki continued: “To give you an idea of the administrative scale of this voluntary service – we deliver 493 meals to 126 clients six days a week across four different daily island routes, based off a six-week rotational menu from the Hospital. In total, that’s 23 delivery rounds a week, with two volunteers on each round. Now we have use of our own bespoke Power App, it has made the whole process so much easier and gives us the ability to make any further enhancements to the Meals on Wheels operational requirements going forward”.
Shaun Lane who heads up Resolution IT’s digital transformation department said: ‘This is a fantastic example of how transformative building a bespoke app can be. We’re thrilled our voluntary support of the GVS has helped the service utilise the amazing opportunities that cloud based tech offers. For businesses looking to digitise their processes, this type of development and technology is a cost-effective way of achieving that”.
