“OpenTent used a collaborative approach to guide ESF through process mapping, building, user acceptance testing, and translation to deliver a streamlined solution.”
ESF received funding from the state of California to provide up to $5,000 in grants annually to support childcare workers' education, including higher education, childcare certifications and other education. With a union membership of nearly 700k and no legacy system in place, ESF needed to create a new grant application and review process from scratch. Additionally, the system had to execute complex eligibility and application review processes in 9 languages and meet a tight 90-day deadline to avoid losing the grant.fdfsafds fda
OpenTent adopted a collaborative and strategic approach with ESF to design and standardize the dynamic application process.
The team used process mapping to lay out the complex process and look for places to automate when possible. OpenTent gathered the most vital ESF stakeholders, and brought in a guest expert that had built a similar process. Leading ESF through requirements - from the funder, eligibility and backend system - the team visually mapped the detailed steps needed to get from member interest to grant disbursement.
Based on the process map and data complexity, OpenTent proposed using ESF's existing Salesforce platform with a custom Form Assembly integration. By customizing the integration, the team could automate many of the steps leading to a more efficient and elegant user interface.
After building a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) based on the process map, OpenTent presented it to ESF for testing and feedback. This key step is vital to optimizing the experience of the applicant and ensuring the solution meets the needs of the application. In all, the ESF team was guided through 3 rounds of improvement and testing to create the final application process.
OpenTent and ESF also partnered with expert translators for each of the foreign languages in order to display each step as clearly and logically as possible for every applicant.
After User Acceptance Testing and Translation, OpenTent added the application to the ESF website and the application went live! Within hours there were 40 applications processing in the system.
Launching this automated application system lowers the barrier to education for childcare workers. Previously applicants had to pay for education upfront and wait months to get a reimbursement. Now childcare providers can quickly apply for future opportunities and apply granted funds directly to education expenses - no need to pay themselves.
While it usually takes a similar grant system over 4 weeks to complete an application cycle, ESF’s new grant cycle takes just 48 hours.
Instead of hours of manually entering information from an application system into the grant system, ESF’s central system automates every step from initial application to grant payment processing.
