Innovating for a better user experience: How IT Directors can champion change
Andrew Grabowski, the Director of Technology at Bernard Zell Anshe Emet Day School, is always on the lookout for the best tools that his faculty, staff, and families will love. For Andrew, picking software is about more than just checking boxes, it’s about making sure his school community has amazing tools that truly support their needs.
A couple of years ago, Andrew started looking for a new EHR. Andrew noted that their previous solution
“wasn’t user-friendly for the nurse, it wasn’t user-friendly for the teachers, and it wasn’t user-friendly for the end user.”
Andrew wasn’t able to pull the reports he needed so he started exploring other EHRs that offered more modern features and a better experience for his staff and families. The search led Andrew to August Schools.
“At the time August was kind of new to the game…I remember when we hung up our original sales call thinking, if this is even half as good as promised then this is a no brainer. We decided to take a chance and we’ve been really happy ever since.”
What stood out most was how seamless the onboarding process was.
Andrew recalled his initial hesitations,
“I thought the implementation was going to be tough and I was bracing myself for, well that’s not gonna be a fun summer project, but it was really streamlined and really easy.”
August’s team provided clear, step-by-step instructions and took care of the heavy lifting.
“I really didn’t have to do a lot,” Andrew added.
“August set me up with a secure FTP bucket where I could upload all my user data and all the files I needed. They gave me step-by-step instructions on what I needed to do and what I needed to export out of our previous EHR.”
Making sure nurses and behavioral health staff were involved early on made the transition to August simple and painless.
One of the best features of August for Andrew has been its user-friendly design. With their previous EHR, training a substitute nurse was challenging. With August, Andrew noted that even a substitute nurse with no prior experience using the system can get up to speed in minutes.
“We’re able to just give them a 3 minute bootcamp of here’s everything you need to know to help us today” and the nurse is up and running.
August is designed to be intuitive and easy to learn so that nurses don’t have to waste time learning the system and can instead focus on what they do best, caring for students.
One of the most appreciated aspects of working with August has been its approach to user feedback. With chat support embedded within the platform, users can easily reach out to the support team with any question.
“When I have a question or an idea...I just fire off an email and I typically hear back within 24 hours,” Andrew said.
August’s responsiveness and ability to implement user suggestions swiftly reinforced his confidence in the platform.
“I usually find out within the next few weeks or so that something that I’ve wanted has been implemented.”
The constant improvement has been a game changer for Andrew.
“August has gotten better every year since we’ve rolled it out. We’ve been so happy with the solution.”