Vision To Learn Exam Application – Serving 1 Million Eye Exams Per Year

Executive Summary

Vision To Learn is a nonprofit, providing free eye exams and glasses to 300,000 kids in low-income communities. The company was seeking a more intelligent toolset to support national expansion, but was entangled in legacy systems. GreenData successfully designed, configured and implemented a coherent and future-proof solution that enabled the efficient coordination and management of over a million vision screenings in 328 American cities.

Business Case

Many American children do not have access to essential vision care they need to reach their full academic potential. Vision to Learn is a non-profit dedicated to solving that. Vision to Learn partners with school districts, providing vision screenings and glasses for those that require them. As children’s vision needs are a large-scale and widespread issue the nonprofit needs to expand to meet students where they are. With national expansion in the horizon, the firm needed to scale operations efficiently. As it stood, the scale of the mission did not match the capabilities of the legacy technology system, a precarious system of multiple tools for specific functions that did not come together smoothly.

Design Approach

To support the grand vision and mission, the team needed to assist Vision to Learn’s migration to a new, more effective tool for long term growth and sustainability. The consultants understood the specific stated need but went deeper and focused first on the current state of activities. Through assessment of business functions, the team discovered some data and process redundancies and also identified some areas for reducing time waste and errors.

Moving next to tackling the main problem of the new management system, the team evaluated many potential tools. It was determined that out of the myriad of tools available in the medical records, customer relationship management (CRM), and custom design arenas, Microsoft’s Dynamics 365, an enterprise resource planning (ERP) software with integrated CRM, would be the best fit for the use cases, as it needed to assist on scheduling, as well as case and resource management.

An important use case for Vision to Learn was the mobile vision clinics. People in the field at the schools themselves need access to important student information. Because Dynamics 365 is an online, cloud-based platform, it allows for easy use on multiple devices. Due to this, it offered support for mobile workers, as well as specific customization for their unique use cases. On the backend, GreenData configured the data gathered into powerful metrics using Power BI, a data visualization and analysis tool for reporting and optimization.

How can we reimagine the experience of optometrists and vision exams?

Outcome

Since this shift, Vision to Learn has expanded their reach from a few cities and school districts to over a million vision screenings in 328 cities. As a result of using the new system and specific customizations GreenData consultants implemented, further use cases were enabled, adding value for the same cost.

With only one tool for the people on the ground to learn and use regularly, the GreenData solution decreased the number of steps needed to perform vital tasks, increasing speed and scale of exam activity while reducing effort from field staff. The solution also offered greater flexibility for data access, vital in the non-profit world where a group sinks or swims based on proof of value. Key metrics are now at the fingertips, ready for reports to donors in the blink of an eye. Vision to Learn not only upgraded to a better tool, but upgraded their entire process, allowing for immense growth.