This article is sponsored by Aline. In this Voices interview, Senior Housing News sits down with Brad Frasher, Chairman and CEO, Aline, to learn about the merger of Glennis, Sherpa and Enquire to form Aline. He discusses the macro conditions that led to this merger and how the strategic investment, which led to this merger, is a first for this industry. He also walks through some of the steps Aline is taking to address the greatest CRM challenges operators are facing, as well as what the future holds for the organization.
Senior Housing News: What career experiences do you most draw from in your role today?
Brad Frasher: I am a long-time senior housing guy and spent a lot of my career with Atria Senior Living, which is now the No.2 largest operator in North America. I’ve always been focused on making businesses more efficient, and from the time I started with Atria, the organization has scaled to over 400 buildings today. During my tenure there, I helped design the operating system they were building, which led to the formation of Glennis. I spent a lot of time at the ground level, talking to operators about what makes their businesses more efficient, what helps them grow, and the levers we can pull to help them achieve their goals in a timely manner. Designing a system that could accomplish that for them was a passion of mine.
How are you thinking about developing and positioning two strong CRMs that were previously competitors in the market?
It’s been an incredible privilege talking, meeting and working with the teams at Enquire and Sherpa. There’s a reason why combined, they serve the largest CRM client base in the senior living industry today. I spent a lot of time with their sales, development and customer-facing teams, which further demonstrated to me that the two legacy companies shared a singular passion and drive for putting their clients at the center of their companies. That focus was fundamental to their success.
As to the future, we’ve spent the last five months looking at what makes each of those systems the best. The first thing that we focused on was the customer. The customer is always first, and we wanted to create plans that minimized disruption for our customers.
Phase One was to integrate the CRMs with the existing Glennis platform so that we could offer our CRM-only customers the option of a fully-connected CRM, billing and care suite under one roof. Now, we’re moving into Phase Two, which involves looking at the value drivers of each CRM and enhancing our offering. To that end, we’re making significant investments in UX, product design and feature simplification to ensure that no matter the preferred legacy CRM, our customers’ systems will be substantially improved. We have the benefit of building with the two most fully-featured CRMs in the industry as our baseline. We’re going to end up with the best of both worlds and so will our clients.
You talk to operators of all sizes every day. Of course, your solutions power the largest senior living operators in our industry. What problems are they bringing to your desk right now?
These problems fall into three buckets: efficiency, investor accountability and resident experiences.
For one, it’s widely known that it’s hard to acquire and retain good team members. We can create a more efficient, customer-friendly experience for our operators, and give them the information they need when they need it so that they can do more with less. Aline also reduces the amount of training time necessary to get up and running on our system. We want customers to be able to sit down and use the solution on Day One.
Secondly, many new owners and investors coming into the space have different needs and expectations than the typical owner-operator, which is where the industry came from. Whether that’s the REITs, private equity or other more sophisticated buyers, they’re making their way into senior living. Within their portfolios in other sectors, all the data they need is readily available, but that’s not the case in senior housing. We’re solving that problem with our unified data model. If you want information about sales, billing, rates, or care, among other things, Aline delivers easily accessible data in one place.
Lastly, we are creating a system that helps operators deliver great resident experiences at scale. This means we not only capture and deliver resident data across the full lifecycle of a resident’s needs, but that we also find ways to automate exceptional customer service at scale. Better operations and better outcomes are our primary focus.
In your experience, how are operators using tech to respond to those challenges?
When times get tough — high inflation, staffing troubles — you want to invest in things that make you more productive. It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, technology is always the answer. In the world that we live in today with smartphones and apps for everything, technology is all about making life easier. There’s a lot of investment in the space, and that’s part of the major thesis.
Our partners at Rubicon made a big bet on the senior living technology space to create a platform that is a one-stop-shop for operators — something that hasn’t been seen before. Then from the time a potential prospect inquires to the time they move out, we can handle the entire process and workflow to make owners’ and operators’ lives easier along the way.
It sounds like you have an incredible mission ahead. What can you tell us about the team you’ve assembled to take it on?
We have a very deep bench with a lot of experience in senior housing. I’ve spent more than 20 years with an operator and several years now on the technology side. Our president Erin Hayes is one of the co-founders of Enquire, which was focused on the resident journey from inquiry to move-in. Her team created a contact center so that customers can speak with real people, and it’s a little over 80 strong at this point, servicing a lot of buildings for CRM and marketing automation.
Ali Sareea, our CTO, came with me from Atria and has spent over a decade in senior housing, physically running a sophisticated, vertically-integrated assisted living company with a national footprint. He also has commercial technology experience, and there’s nothing better than sitting him in front of a new CIO at an operator and saying, “What is your tech stack today and how can we change your life in the future? How will we simplify that so that you become more efficient?”
Matt Jesperson came from Sherpa, which is very well-known for the way they interact and partner with their customers. He’s now our chief customer officer. We also retained Lucas Hayes, the former CEO and co-founder of Enquire, as our chief commercial officer. His partnerships in the business are bar none. That’s his focus going forward.
Finish this sentence: “In the senior housing industry, 2023 will be the year of…”
…growth ali(n)ement.
Editor’s Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Aline improves, automates and digitizes operational workflows across the resident lifecycle so senior living organizations can improve efficiency, productivity and margins all while delivering exceptional resident experiences at scale. Learn more at AlineOps.com.
The Voices Series is a sponsored content program featuring leading executives discussing trends, topics and more shaping their industry in a question-and-answer format. For more information on Voices, please contact sales@agingmedia.com.
The post Voices: Brad Frasher, Chairman and CEO, Aline appeared first on Senior Housing News.
Source: For the full article please visit Senior Housing News
Be First to Comment