What's happening at JN Solutions?

Last week Bridge rolled out a new feature that enables users to make EPF claims through Bridge. Some of the highlights are: digital copies of all invoices stored with the claim; direct exports to accountancy packages; and claims can be authorised by head office.

Feedback from users has been very positive; a 15-30 minute process has been reduced to 1-2 minutes.

Update: Purchase orders are now generated automatically and there is a tiered authorisation system.

The big day has arrived, today we are launching Bridge.

Bridge is a partial replacement to DEEWR’s ESS. We have started by simplifying the most common tasks in the Job Services Australia (JSA) Employment Services Deed 4 (ESD4): Initial interviews, Job Seeker Classification Instruments, Employment Pathway Plans, Job Referrals and more. Over the coming months will be releasing more advanced functionality that will improve business processes and save vast amounts of time for users.

We have one clear goal for Bridge: To build a system that people love that doesn’t require them to also use ESS in an average day.

Congratulations to all those providers who were successful in the Job Services Australia tender.

A special congratulation to Job Futures who achieved the highest number of location/outlets for streamed services, and Indigenous outlets. Max Employment for services in the most ESAs. Jobfind Centres Australia for the highest number of Generalist sites. MatchWorks for PwD. And Last but not least AMES for Culturally and linguistically diverse.

Also congratulations to Tracys and Breakthru for a substantial increase in business.

As usual DEEWR did not supply the data in the most usable fashion; we have created a more usable Excel spreadsheet here. Please make sure macros are enabled.

We look forward to working with some of you to help you excel in ESC4. Have a look at how we can help you increase your capacity by 30% with our software.

As you may have noticed we just released details of an exciting new client management product called Bridge. Head over to our products section if you have not had a chance already.

We have started to focus on the new DEEWR Employment Services contract, ESC4, we will continue to support our Job Network software until it is no longer required.

Starcast will be stepping out of the lime light for a while until sufficient data is available in the new contract.

Analytics will broadly stay the same but the integration into Bridge will be of interest to a lot of providers.

Click here for a PDF about Bridge to whet your appetite.

Then your current performance could not be more critical to the future of your organisation. We don’t need to tell you that DEEWR will be looking at your performance right up until the decisions are announced.

Starcast and Analytics not only increases performance of those who use it but it also substantially mitigates risk. Providers that used our software had an average increase of 6 percentile points in the last milestone. And the worst performing site only lost half a star – their performance has now stabilised.

Plan your performance with us using quantifiable metrics; the ‘do 10% better than last year’ plan is far too risky when such a sizable contract hangs in the balance.

While the entire industry is busy writing their tenders for the Employment Services Contract 2009-2012, it is important that they don’t overlook their performance leading up to the December 2008 star ratings. If all the statisticians, performance analysts and other key personnel are busy with the tender, who is tracking your current performance?

Starcast makes tracking your performance incredibly easy. In the chart below, that is a standard part of Starcast, the red line indicates the site’s actual performance while the green line indicates the target performance over 3 months. The yellow dots are official percentile rankings and the blue lines are star ratings.

From this chart you can quickly and easily see that this site is performing below the target that was prepared and that they’re heading down. It takes only a few seconds to see these trends and it doesn’t require a statistics degree to make sense of them.

Imagine this kind of report, simple and easy to ready, available any time you want it, updated automatically every week without requiring any data downloads or preparation. That is Starcast.

If you’d like to see your site’s data presented in such an easy way, give us a call or email and we can guide you through the steps.

Last week DEEWR released the Job Network Star Ratings for June 2008. This release is more than two months after the last day of the milestone and a total of 8 months since the previous performance measure in December 2007.

Can you reliably navigate your organisation towards success when it takes this long to get feedback?

Luckily for our members, they already knew where their stars were heading. When the star ratings do come out it gives us an opportunity to measure the accuracy of our star rating forecasting software, Starcast.

We are pleased to announce that over 90% of all predictions by Starcast were within one quarter of one star and not a single site triggered our money back guarantee. So while not having to return any fees is good news for us, it's also good news for our members as they prepare for their 2009 Employment Services tender while Starcast keeps a bright eye over their current performance.

Starcast also accurately predicted a full 1.5 star increase in performance by two sites under its watch, so congratulations to those sites.

JN Solutions is exhibiting at the 2008 NESA Conference this week. We’re at booth number 4 in the afternoon tea/coffee area.

We will be demonstrating Starcast and Analytics and providing all participants with the chance to trial our software during the conference. If you’re an existing cumstomer, please come by and say hello.

For those that are not already customers, please come by and we can schedule a private demonstration focussing on your specific concerns.

Hope to see you there.

Today we released the first version of Analytics, our reporting system.

Analytics is a system where you have easy access to a range of reports including reports made specifically for your organisation.

The system will help catch missing claims before it’s too late, let you know the change in characteristics of your caseload, let you know who the new referrals are, keep track of performance in terms or outcomes, show where your revenue is coming from and any report you require.

The possibilities are endless and that’s why we let you choose the reports that we make. The data is updated each week and every report is just a click away.

And the best news is this new product is included in our membership price and if you already use Starcast you will see Analytics in the main menu today.

Analytics 2.0 is due for release shortly and this will add a dashboard to the system so you can see all your favourite reports on one screen presented as you desire.

JN Solutions has already made one submission in response to the discussion paper. Our first submission focused on Star ratings and benchmarking. That submission can be found here.

Our second submission focuses on the implementation of a new way for providers to interact with their data and reduce the administrative burden of the employment service contract (ESC).

We have not yet made this submission as we need the help of providers.

If you would prefer an alternative method to download and submit data with DEEWR to Smart Client please provide us with your comments so that we can include them in our submission.

I am sure you share in our frustrations with EA3000 and Smart Client. At the moment it does not look like the next contract is going to be any different. We are not suggesting that that Smart Client be abolished, just that it becomes a choice.

We will do our best to include your comments in their entirety, if you wish to be sent the submission before it is sent to DEEWR to give yourself the opportunity to remove anything please let me know. You do not have to agree with the whole submission, you comments will not be used out of context.

Some parts of the submission are technical, if you have any questions please give me a call. Please feel free to make any suggestions to our submission.

Thank you for your support in this matter, I believe the changes will benefit all providers, small or large.

A draft of this submission is below:

Draft Submission regarding data access

Please email comments to info@jnsolutions.com.au or leave them in the comments section.