Mable revolutionises care with a data-driven business model

Mable is on a mission to improve access to affordable, flexible, quality support and care for more Australians. It offers a platform that enables older Australians and people with a disability the opportunity to connect with a diverse community of independent support workers. So whether they need nursing services, social support or help around the home, they can find a worker who best suits their needs.

The distributed nature of Mable’s business means that it relies on data more than most to understand and drive performance, and 18 months ago it created a data science team responsible for analysing all aspects of the business. The team initially used spreadsheets to measure performance against targets, but as Mable scaled rapidly, they needed to make data more transparent to support and coordinate decision making.

Tableau has proved the ideal solution and has helped Mable embed a strong data culture. It has also helped the business provide the best possible support to the community during COVID-19.

According to Scott Savage, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Mable, the company’s entire business model is built in Tableau, with dashboards that track performance against every target. Data is automatically pulled in from sources like Salesforce and Amazon Redshift and visualised in a way that everyone can understand.

"Our ultimate goal relates to the number of care and support hours delivered and, with Tableau, everyone can see how we are tracking towards that goal and how they contribute," said Savage. "They can also better understand the interdependencies between different measures and how that impacts our final target.”

Insights like these make it easier for the business to collaborate around performance and identify different levers they can use to scale and manage challenges like supply and demand. And with this transparency has come a demand for even more data, prompting the introduction of a new data champions program.

Led by the data science team, the program offers training and support for employees who want to visualise and analyse data on their own. This includes training on essentials like privacy and topics like using data to tell a story.

To date, 60 employees have become data champions, benefitting their careers as well as the business. “Being good at data is a great skill to have these days, and with more people looking at our data, we’re able to spot issues and patterns a lot faster,” said Savage.
The program has reduced the number of ad hoc requests sent to the data science team, allowing them to do deeper analysis and focus on broadening reporting. They’ve also been able to increase automation and reduce the time spent on compliance reporting by one week per month.

The strong foundation that Mable has built around data has allowed it to accelerate innovation and increase support to customers during COVID-19. Many customers are at increased risk of serious illness from the virus, and so it has been important for Mable to understand and react quickly to the impacts.

Early on in the crisis, Mable created a COVID-19 dashboard to track the impact of the pandemic in real-time. Included on the dashboard was a location-based heat map, correlating any changes in platform use with COVID-19 case volumes in the area. The dashboard was shared with all decision-makers and data champions, providing a single source of truth to guide their crisis response.

After tracking this information for a few weeks, Mable realised that the largest fluctuation in platform use occurred after each government COVID-19 restriction announcement. This was because customers and Independent support workers were unsure if they could access or provide services under each new restriction measure announced. Mable responded by issuing targeted communications after each government announcement.

“Transparency is key in leading through a crisis and with Tableau, we’ve been able to expand our reporting and ramp up the frequency,” said Savage. “Now that we are going through this again, we’re able to reapply these learnings and proactively reassure our customers that they can continue accessing the services they need.”

To further support its community, Mable has rolled out new infection training for workers and spun up an online store where they can purchase PPE. It has also introduced an on-demand service to quickly replace any workers needing to self-isolate and is using Tableau to keep a close watch on how this is performing and whether service requests are being fulfilled.

The next step in the business’ data maturity will be to take metrics such as these and combine them with an analysis of keywords, whether from support calls or service requests online. “Data maturity is not just about the numbers or the immediacy of information, but making sure that you’re looking at the right mix of data and that’s why we will continue to bring more insights into Tableau,” said Savage.