Inovar helping homeless people by automating their tracking and managing system

Homelessness is one of the biggest challenges/drawbacks for the west coast seaport city of ‘Seattle’. The City of Seattle’s Navigation Team and the Seattle Police Department were in great trouble to find shelter for over 10,000 homeless people. From managing Encampment areas to connecting and following up with homeless citizens, their entire process was manual, which created an additional burden for the Mayor’s Office and associate members. 

Initially, the government created an application to add data and find out places for homeless people. But initially, the entire system was processing through manual data submission and processing. At some point which became very troublesome, and especially, the data analysis team started facing several errors when analyzing those. Automating their data management and tracking system has become one of the vital points for the Seattle government. 

Inovar was presented with the challenge to develop an integrated process automation solution by building a customized application called ‘NavApp’ to combat the homelessness crisis and backend their IT setup in real-time. What they needed was dynamic and efficient technological solution.

With our Design-Led Approach, we were able to propose a comprehensive solution sitting on Dynamics 365. The situation was more complicated for the fields agents as they were responsible for collecting handling and sorting all data. Considering this, we created an efficient and connected solution that was the priority. It was essential to manage identity and vital records for people experiencing or at risk of experiencing homelessness.

Data was key for which several data sources like HMIS and others needed to be integrated and deduced. Visualization of the homeless population data on a city level and the ability to monitor and mark new encampment areas were critical as they gave visibility to how large was the problem. The final important was to bring in different teams in a coherent workflow to improve the operation efficiency of the entire task force.

Considering all the facts and their present consequences, we synchronized their entire process within one application. Our customized web application and data-driven software solutions connect the dots of the city’s system to help people navigating towards various vital sites along with encampment areas.

Once the CRM-based App was Developed, it efficiently helped the City of Seattle to combat homelessness.

• NavApp improved field activity accuracy and efficiency by more than 40%.
• It was able to provide accurate and real-time information about the Encampment Sites by using Geo-Spatial Mapping.
• The ability to quickly reconcile information and provide housing provision on the go was one of the most performing features.
• Turnaround time for cleaning up sites and other verification activity was reduced by 25%.

The automated solution removed most of the difficulties of a field worker and made the workflow faster and smoother. Even this procedure has become more helpful to check their data and note down the status of encampment areas. Finding encampment areas and providing shelters were not the end this automated solution connects the dots from every corner of the city. It helps people to find out the nearest food centers, hospitals, grocery centers more. The compact solution and web application made the life of homeless people easier.