RecChat: ePACT - Restart Your Programs - 02/18/2021
Episode Summary
In this episode, our host Bret Alarcon is joined by Product Owner, Patrick Hayden, Director of Municipal Support, Cullen Barber, and Representatives from the ePACT Network, Director of Partnerships, Matt Webb, and Co-Founder, Kirsten Telford to discuss the ePACT Network integration with RecTrac and using this integration to restart your programs along with easing COVID 19 regulations.
Video
Transcript
Bret Alarcon 0:00
Good and that song means it's time for this week's edition of RecChat. I'm your host Bret Alarcon. So for today's RecChat We have our guests here from ePACT. They are Kirsten Telford and Matt Webb. Say hello, guys,
Matt Webb 0:23
Hi everyone.
Kirsten Telford 0:25
Hi, everyone.
Bret Alarcon 0:26
And they are here to be talking about how ePACT can help you restart your programs with reduced staff and budget this year. And on our Vermont system side, we have Patrick Hayden say hi Pat,
Patrick Hayden 0:38
Hi, everybody,
Bret Alarcon 0:39
he's going to be speaking a little bit on the partnership between ePACT and Vermont systems. So if you have any questions during the presentation, please ask them in the little q&a section. If we don't get to your question will be released in a document full of all the questions and answers. After this presentation, you can find them on our rec chat site. And if you have any comments, you can please use our chat area. Also with us direct chat, we're gonna have two polls today. So we're gonna try something new. So when you could, when we get to that section, I'm gonna post the polls and you can answer them how they affect you or how they work for your recreational site. So with that, I'm going to hand it off to Patrick to explain the partnership.
Patrick Hayden 1:24
Thank you, Bret. So some of you on the call today are probably already familiar, and hopefully already utilizing our enter integration with with ePACT, we've been partnering with them for a couple years now and had a lot of really great success with with bringing a lot of new value and new capabilities to our mutual customers. You know, we've done a rec chat in the past where we're really focused on the kind of functionality and capability of that integration. So for anybody who is really looking for more details on how the integration works, and the kind of capabilities that it provides, as Bret mentioned, there's a section on our support portal where you can get access to any past RecChats that we've done, and certainly encourage folks to go out and have a look at that. Because today's rec chat is, as Bret alluded to not so much focused on the specifics of the integration and the functionality, but more kind of a broader topic of some of the value certainly that the ePACT brings to the table and why we've partnered with them, but more specifically, what that sort of means and the current climate and some of the advantages that you can utilize to you know, run your businesses and be more efficient and functional in these crazy times that we're all in today. So this is a RecChat where Bret and I get to talk less, which is always nice and hand the floor over to Matt and Kirsten so that they can talk about not just the ePACT solution, but also just some kind of best practices in general and how we can all function better in times of COVID. With that, I'll hand it over to Matt and Kirsten.
Kirsten Telford 3:01
All right, great. Thank you, Bret and Patrick. So I'm going to jump in and share my Screen. And as I do every time I share my Screen on Zoom, hold my breath for a second and make sure it works. Okay. Well thanks, everyone for for joining us today. Let me just get started here. So just starting out with an introduction of who I am and who Matt is. My name is Kirsten, I'm actually a co founder of ePACT. So we started ePACT back in 2012 with a big goal of better connecting and protecting families, organizations and and entire communities. And before that, before ePACT, I actually was a consultant for about 15 years and I worked mainly with local government organizations to figure out how we can use technology to improve lives with things like smart communities, intelligent transportation systems, and so on. On a personal level, I am a an avid skier, so I'm looking at Brad's background and really wishing to be in Vermont skiing. I'm a cyclist. I do the ride to conquer cancer rides. Every year. I paddle board, I try to bring optimism to everything I do. And I am a mom, which is a key factor in in where ePACT came from. She'll tell you a bit about in a sec after we meet Matt.
Matt Webb 4:40
Thanks, Kirsten. Hi, everyone. My name is Matt Webb and I've been working with Kirsten and the rest of the ePACT team for almost seven years now. My role here at ePACT focuses on working very closely with many of you who are on the meeting today and also So overseen all of our partnerships here at ePACT. So working quite closely with the team at Vermont systems and also working closely with the National Recreation and Parks Association. Over the last 10 years of my career, a lot of that time has been spent supporting the public and private recreation community. There's a lot of familiar names that I'm seeing on the meeting today. So it's, it's nice to have you all here, on more of a personal level, I'm an avid traveler. It's actually a picture of me at the top of a mountain in Andorra. I'm also an avid photographer. Before my life in the technology sector, I actually ran a sports photography business. And just like Kirsten, I, too, am an eternal optimist.
Kirsten Telford 5:51
Which is critically important this year. Very much. Okay. So today, as you've heard, we're gonna touch just on, you know, a few things. First of all, for those of you who aren't using ePACT, what is it and and for those of you who are who maybe don't know, the history of ePACT, I'm gonna share a little bit of that. And then what we're hearing as we talk to organizations across across North America, as we look at how to come through the rest of the pandemic, and then we'll touch on what ePACT is doing about it, and how that works with respect to the partnership with the with Vermont Systems. So first off, what is the ePACT? So to explain a ePACT, as as one of the founders, I always like to take a bit of a step back to how ePACT began. As I said, in my intro, I'm both a mom and a person who likes to tackle challenges in communities. But what I didn't mention is that I'm also a person who absolutely fundamentally despises piles of paper. And I used to call the start of school year or the start account paperwork, actually my two glasses of wine and get it done paperwork. Every year, I'd grumble about it. And then I'd pontificate that there was probably a better way, or definitely a better way to tackle this. And then something happened. So way, way back in the day, when I was at university, I lived in a small town in Japan called Fukushima, which nobody had ever really heard of outside of Japan until 2011, when it was hit by one of the biggest earthquakes ever recorded, as well as a tsunami, and then nuclear reactor meltdown, which is probably why many of you do recognize that name, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plants devastated a big part of Japan and I watched my friends go through this and be separated from their children for days not know who was alive. And so then I looked back at that pile of emergency paperwork. And I looked at it through a different lens for the first time, and I realized that this paperwork sucks, it sucks for parents, it sucks for the organizations that are collecting it. But it's actually but it actually matters. And we often forget that when we're collecting emergency information, we're collecting health information. It's it's not the paper that is important. It's the process and the understanding of of what's going to happen in an emergency. That's so critical. And that really was what led to the vision of of ePACT, which today for for you guys as rec professionals is basically seamless automation of the paper processes that most of you likely hate as well, those health and emergency forms and all of the work that goes with them, for your for the families you support. It's a single secure place for them to manage all of that health and emergency information for the whole family in a way that's private, secure, and super, super easy. Together. Those two pieces form the ePACT network, which basically is a network that allows you to prepare for and respond to any kind of emergency whether it is a bee sting, a scraped knee, you know, and an injury or it's something big like an earthquake, a sudden cold snap as we've seen this last week, or a global pandemic. So enough about about ePACT, and and over to you. I saw this online. The other day, somebody talking about Rec and you know and thinking about the word recreation and what it really means and where it comes from in this. This notion that recreation is really about creating again about renewing He, and I thought, This is so critical right now, what you all do is such a critical piece of how we are going to come out of this, out of this pandemic and the energy that we're going to bring forward coming out of through the rest of 2021 and beyond.
So, what we want to talk about is how do we help make that how do we help make that happen? How do we tie these pieces together this critical piece of safety and the need to, to get things back to normal to get us back to the parts of our lives that we love? So we've spent a lot of time over this last year talking to rec professionals across North America, we've done surveys, we've done polls, we've talked on the phone, and we've spent a lot of time trying to figure out what were you what were the biggest challenges? And how could we help and you'll have seen that some of you who've worked with us, you've seen that through our community support programs, and so on. But I thought I'd share what we're hearing what we've been hearing lately, and I'm sure you can probably relate to, to some of it. So overarchingly of the people we've touched out to recently, the surveys we've done, uncertainty is causing the greatest stress. You know, many people we're talking to you right now are saying, you know, I don't know how big my programs will be this summer. I don't know if I'll have programs this summer. What will the vaccine mean for us? What if there's an outbreak? And what if the regulations or what I need to do in my job changes again. And that uncertainty, you're telling us is lead to chaos or a sense of a sense of chaos, even if you're even if you're putting you know, even if you're showing up with a smile on your face, it's that sentiment of I'm juggling. It's it's bringing about a lack of trust and confidence. And not and that trust this is an interesting one, because it's so unique to the pandemic, it really is about do I as a participant trust the other participants that are arriving that they're doing the right thing? Do I have the staff member trust that things are being done? Right? Do I have the as a leader do I have the confidence to bring people back into my facilities and and move forward? And I think the the other thing that that uncertainty is absolutely leading to is fatigue, we're general across the board. Everybody's tired, we're tired. And we just want to get back to focusing on the fun stuff. So the first poll question that that Bret's gonna throw out to you is, what do you see as your biggest challenge for the summer? Are you in that boat of not knowing what you'll be able to run? Are you dealing with reduced budgets? Maybe fewer staff members? Are you grappling with as we're hearing in some states, you know, the possibility that you may have be at 30% capacity this summer? Or you might be at 90? So is it a scale up and down challenge? Or is your biggest challenge compliance and making sure people do the right thing? So give you give you a second to, to answer that
Bret Alarcon 13:31
looks like they're coming in. So far, the quick lead is being prepared to scale up or down quickly. And we'll see how that does.
What's kind of interesting, it does it all in real time so I can flush the bars get smaller.
Kirsten Telford 13:49
Well, and that scaling is that scaling is an interesting thing I've seen we saw it happen. You know if I think back to that first end of the first quarter of the pandemic, and there was this flurry of, you know, we are going to open we've got two weeks and we saw that and we saw it again in August this very quick turnaround and and now we're seeing it I'm seeing people you know, people were talking to people sharing things on social media and saying, Yeah, geez, I've got two weeks to get open again. You guys gotta be getting good at getting pretty good at it but stressful. How are we? What are the what are our results looking like?
Bret Alarcon 14:37
So it looks like first place is being prepared to scale up or down quickly. Followed by not knowing what we'll be able to run followed by compliance making sure people stay compliant. And lastly, managing with reduced budgets and or staff.
Kirsten Telford 14:56
Good Do we have a strongest scaling up and down a strong na How strong winner? Are they kind of?
Bret Alarcon 15:02
Yes, at 46% is they've been prepared to scale up or down. Second place is the 26% of not knowing what we'll be able to run fall of 18% of compliance and 10% of managing reduce budgets.
Kirsten Telford 15:21
Okay, so not not surprising, not surprising to hear that we'll talk a little bit about what we might be able to do to help in that area. But I thought I'd share the other the good news we're hearing right now. You know, I think the general sentiment is we are moving in the right direction. And I think even at the start of the year, the first few weeks of January, it was it was feeling a little touch and go back, we didn't know how quickly the vaccine would get rolled out. And now we're hearing more and more confidence, a peep from people that summer programs are going to run in some way, shape or form. Obviously, the scaling issue is the question. It's nice to see more and more people back back to work fewer, fewer furloughs these days. And I think what's you know, not related to safety at all, but just watching the industry and the the amazing creativity that's that people are bringing to programming right now in order to work within a safety environment. But I think what's pretty cool about that is a lot of this new programming, we expect to see kind of carry on and change the way that that we do things more outdoor programming, more activity, more things in our parks, and so on. And the last centerpiece on the right direction is most people we're speaking to feel like you've got safety protocols in place, the question becomes more? How do we scale them up? Or, you know, is something going to change? So we have another? Another question for you on capacity. So and this may be because of the uncertainty around scaling is maybe a tougher question. To answer. We've left the we've left the ranges pretty broad, but we're wondering what capacity you expect for summer programs? Will it be almost back to normal? What you see 50 to 75%? Less than 50? Or are you pretty sure you're not going to run this summer?
Bret Alarcon 17:23
So it looks like we ran that question already, along with the first one and we didn't have our results. The leader is at 57%. And that is 50 to 75%. In second place is 34% at less than 50%. Third is almost back to normal 76 to 100% 8%. A lot of percentages, and 2%. We won't run camps.
Kirsten Telford 17:49
Okay, well, that's great. That's, that's great news, because that's actually stronger. You know, you guys may not be a fully representative sample of the nation. But, but that's the strongest, we've seen those, those numbers come back since the start of the year. So that is really good to hear. Okay, so what's left? How do we get you scaled? How do we get you scaled back up in this environment? We see three kind of key areas to address. The first one is that scaling of safety. So as you scale up, down and sideways, how does the safety stuff scale with you without adding without, you know, adding additional resources that you don't have? The second piece is the area of compliance and this new area that I've that I touched on, on on not only you know, are people comply? Are people complying as you usually expect them to. But where does the trust piece come in. And the third piece is managing costs and how you and how you prepare to scale up and down or down without risking without financial risk. So this is where I'll jump a little bit over to what ePACT actually how ePACT actually can help with this stuff. So ultimately, as I said, ePACT is about automation. It's about how to take the whole process of collecting your health and your emergency information, your child care check ins, your COVID questionnaires, your waivers, your consents, all of that paper and process, and automating it so that you're dedicating almost no resources to those processes. And the nice thing about that from a perspective of scaling up or down, is as more people are added to your programs, there's no incremental work. So you're not having to get more camper packets out. You're not having to add more staff to deal with that administrative process. They just get added to the system seamlessly from there. through RecTrac or WebTrac, and, you know, Bob's your uncle way you go. The other piece, so that's the sort of collection side of things on the other side is the, the ability to report across across this data. And because you're now dealing with not just your standard, allergies, and so on, but you're also dealing with things like, who would, you know, like COVID risks, potentially vaccine tracking, the automation allows you to handle that reporting that search and reporting piece as well. So that in an instant, you can see who at a site who attending a program has an allergy, you can track if we need to start doing this by the summer immunization data for COVID. You can also communicate across all of these people on mass, which is going to be another piece that's important, in that scale up scale down close to open potential that we may still have. So the ability to very quickly communicate out to participants or potentially to their emergency contacts, and so on through the system. So ePACT does offer three different ways that you can do that. And you can do them simultaneously as well with one Click. And that's communication by email, text, actually, there's four ways email, text and voice. And then we actually also have a two way text messaging system. And this is, this is one that, that we've seen used this week with the, with the cold weather in, in some parts of the country where programs have been canceled at the last minute that we the roll call function is actually a text function that lets you send out a text blast to everybody and manage responses from everybody simultaneously. So tools like that become important in these kinds of live emergency situations, whether it is the cold weather, or it is a pandemic where you need to have that rapid two way communication. So compliance, compliance is something that comes up quite a bit with our, with our customers. And there's kind of three aspects to your compliance piece. And this and this goes to both compliance with your standard health and emergency stuff, as well as the COVID stuff. So the first piece is, Are people complying? So how are you ensuring that people have completed their information? Their is it? Is it accurate? Is it legible complete,
on your health forms, and so on, and automation does do that for you. It requires everything and it flags if there's a problem. health screening allows you to do that for your covid screening and do it ahead of time before people even arrive at the facility or kids. So that's specifically for kids arriving at camp programs, you can manage that compliance piece as you need to ahead of time. Second piece of compliance is proving that so we can do our best to be complete, ensure our our participants are compliant, that we're doing all the right things. And then it comes down to how do you prove that for so if you're running licensed childcare, you know, you need you need to be able to prove that you have the data that you're required to collect, that it's archived and so on. If you're storing health data, you need to be concerned about is it stored compliant with HIPAA regulations? Does it meet what the legal department wants in terms of signatures? And is it easy to is it easily archived? And more importantly, if you need it two years from now, because there's some kind of legal case? Can you find it so the the process of automation handles all of those pieces for you by being designed to meet your licensing requirements, allowing you to report on stuff when you're in an audit situation? It offers legally legally binding e signatures on all of the pieces and it automatically archives things for you and then later allows you to retrieve them through a quick search of you know, counts 2018 count one, it'll find it for you and allow you to deal with those kinds of situations.
Bret Alarcon 24:36
Kirsten, we do have a question if you Jess wants to know How do you have check in and check out on ePACT while keeping a while keeping saved and distanced.
Kirsten Telford 24:48
Okay, so the ePACT has a contactless check in check in Checkout app. And the way it works is families enter their information through ePACT, including the authorized pickups, those pickup contacts get sent an email with a link to essentially download a QR code. And when they come to pick up, they simply scan. They scan their phone on your, on your iPad. And the information is it passes the data across of who picked up. That's all stored and archived for you and ePACT without there being any contact sharing of pens, people getting too close, and so on. The app also allows for on drop off if you are screening for if you're screening kids for COVID. When you in those programs, it allows the parent to go on to their app even before they arrive and answer the various questions so that when they scan and it pops up shows you that they've passed and stores their COVID data as well. Does that answer the question Jess?
Bret Alarcon 26:08
I'll let you know, once they
Kirsten Telford 26:10
Okay.
Bret Alarcon 26:11
Sure.
Kirsten Telford 26:13
Um, okay. And that's an actually you can see on the Screen, you're seeing that's like a glimpse of that COVID Part of the of the check in app. So the next piece of compliance is this weird COVID one, which is that trust sign of things. So one of the things that we are recognizing in getting people back to normal, so to speak, is that it's not just about us doing our job to make sure they're safe. It's it's about making sure they feel safe, that they that there's high visibility on the safety processes. And so that what's helpful in that is, if you've got families that are participating in the process, and they're entering their data, it's not scrawled on a paper form, it's something that they are filling in that they understand it's an app they hold in their pocket, that they know everybody else also has. It gives them that sense of comfort, that everybody is doing what they have to do, because they can see those processes and the compliance are in place. So the last piece is this cost piece. And I'm glad to hear from the poll that everybody's budgets, most people's budgets are, are in reasonably good shape. But one of the things that we do hear concern about is, with this scaling up scaling down, how do we deal with costs? How do we deal with how do we budget for things? And you know, and can we take on, you know, can we make a purchase right now, it feels like maybe we shouldn't purchase things while we're, well, we're in the midst of this global mess. Automation is one of those things that you know, that that actually controls costs. So and we've seen this across the world in the pandemic, as people have automated more and more processes, in order to deal with uncertainty and staffing changes, and so on. So, what we've found with ePACT is even before the pandemic, our customers, we're saving hundreds of hours of staff time on this process. I was speaking to one of our customers a few weeks ago, and she said she personally was saving 20 hours a week of her time every all summer at just one of their sites. And that was that. That was the savings on the time that it just takes to, you know, collect information deal with parents who haven't filled it in deal with parents who filled it in wrong, aggregate it, scan it, binder it, archive it, shred it, whatever, whatever else. There's other hard costs associated with paper, you're printing, you're scanning and so on the cost of your storage for archiving. And then the cost that becomes tougher to put a price tag on is that cost of risk. So what's the risk of this data being stored in a binder that somebody's taking to the park or as this same customer that I was talking to she actually was at the beauty of a video call. She actually turned around grabbed a like a banker's box file box and chucked it on her desk. And she and said, Kirsten, this is health records from 2010. I just found them in the closet of a former staff member. So if you look at the you know the reality of the risks around people's personal information and how it's it's dealt with, there's a cost to that as well. Now, we've got an added cost, right we have the costs that comes from these added paper processes around COVID. And also the potential costs associated with an outbreak if we aren't handling these processes, right. So the, to kind of wrap up, because I think we're already at at half past the hour, I'm on the west coast. So it's 1130 here wanted to talk a little bit about what Patrick had said about our partnership and how ePACT works
with the the Vermont Systems tools. So essentially, I think we started talking to the Vermont Systems teams all the way back three years ago. And and as Patrick said, we've we've worked been working on an integration for the last couple of years. And we have worked very, very closely. Our two engineering teams meet every couple of weeks to talk roadmap and work on how to continue to improve the integration between the two products. But the way it basically works now is when you when you've done your when people have registered for your programs, if it's a program where you need to collect health and emergency information, which is you know, typically your your summer camps, you're out of school care, licensed childcare, and so on. That information, that basic roster information gets passed securely to your ePACT account. And it triggers the process of sending out all of your health and emergency information. And from there you manage that piece. And ePACT in the system just walks you through all the steps that you need to do to collect your health information. So I'm going to leave it there, leave it there. And just turn it over to any other questions. And you know, and thanks so much to to the Vermont Systems teams for having us on on today. And for everyone who who joins. Are there any other questions?
Bret Alarcon 32:10
Thank you, Kirsten. Not seeing any now but we'll we'll keep it open and see Oh, actually, I do see a question that just popped into the chat. Have you used ePACT with Facility Reservation is in a way to collect signatures for agreements to follow guidelines.
Patrick Hayden 32:30
So right now, the immigration is really focused on the activity module since that's where the vast majority of the kind of need and demand was seen. But we've certainly been talking with the ePACT about other kinds of potential deepening of the integration to support some other areas where folks might want to collect information that's relevant to the ePACT solution.
Bret Alarcon 32:53
Thank you, Pat. I'll leave it open for another minute or so see if there's any more questions, but
Patrick Hayden 32:59
And while we're waiting for more questions to potentially come in, just to reiterate something I said in the beginning, we obviously touched on a lot of topics today and it was not so much focused on the specifics of the integration, but certainly it might spark those sorts of questions. So obviously ePACT a great resource to talk to in terms of the integration. But there is also out in our kind of repository for past RecChats there is a recording on a past RecChat that was done that was really focused on integration and how it works and exactly kind of the the details that Kirsten alluded to on that last slide. So folks are looking for more more details there. There's a RecChat that's fully focused on that topic. We'll make sure to send a link to that in the in the follow up as well. Yes. Cool. So like no more questions. Thank you, Kirsten and Matt for for joining us. They appreciate having some some guest speakers on board and changing up the topics a little bit.
Bret Alarcon 34:06
Great information too
Kirsten Telford 34:07
Great, thanks so much for having us.
Patrick Hayden 34:10
All right, everyone. Have a great afternoon.
Bret Alarcon 34:13
Take care of one.
Kirsten Telford 34:14
Bye everyone.
Patrick Hayden 34:15
Bye