Blog

Ask anyone at Northwoods what has made us successful for the last twenty years and they’ll say it’s our mission-driven people who love nothing more than making an impact. We truly do love partnering with our customers throughout their change journey, and seeing our shared hard work make positive changes for workers, supervisors, administrators, and ultimately the people they serve. That focus on mission and love of witnessing transformation is our secret sauce.

In the spirit of Valentine's Day, I wanted to share some stories from those at Northwoods who work with our partner agencies every day. I asked our teams to share in their own words times they have felt they made an impact or were really proud of the work we accomplished with our customers.

Human services software needs to be simple, intuitive, and meaningful for today’s caseworkers to use and love it. At Northwoods, this concept is at the foundation of everything we do—from how we build our products, to how we train and support the workers who use them.

However, we know that even the most tech-savvy workers need a little extra help sometimes. You may hear us talk about “software that supports itself,” which allows users to get help when and how they want. But what does that really mean? We invited our product education team to give us a behind-the-scenes look at how our efforts continue to grow to meet customers’ needs.

Since 2012, children services agencies, partners, and businesses across Ohio have shown support for child abuse prevention by participating in "Wear Blue," a statewide awareness campaign that takes place on the second Wednesday of every April, Child Abuse Prevention Month. Ohioans are encouraged to wear blue that day—to work, to school, to a community event, or at home—to show support for preventing child abuse and neglect.

If you’re a child support caseworker, you may feel overwhelmed. Creating court orders and motions is a tedious, paper-heavy, and time-consuming process, not to mention obtaining complete information regarding non-custodial parents.

Additionally, most child support caseworkers lose valuable time every day to the antiquated documentation systems and manual processes they use to collect, retrieve, and share information. This makes it impossible to be truly efficient and provide complete client service, which can delay families from accessing resources and children from receiving the support they need for their well-being.

It’s no secret that technology is a huge investment. If you’ve put significant time and resources toward integrating technology throughout your agency’s daily flow of activities, you expect to see ongoing, long-term results long after your initial purchase.

But what happens when you stop seeing those returns? The reality is, even the most successful technology implementations can get off track down the line—especially several years later.

People turn over. Crises interrupt operations. Processes change. Time passes. If the way you use technology doesn’t adapt to the way you work, the efficiencies and time savings you once gained may slowly trickle away.

Editor’s note: you’ve likely heard people talking quite a bit lately about “human-centered design” (or “user-centered design,” “user-experience (UX) design,” or other similar terms). While it might seem like a relatively new trend to some, it has been the foundation upon which Northwoods has developed and delivered our products for years. Learn more about our human-centered design approach and how it influences everything we do.

In recent years, “adventure therapy” has emerged as an engaging and effective way to help and heal children who have experienced trauma. Last month, several Northwoodians volunteered at a 3-day, immersive camp dedicated to this cause. They had such an overwhelmingly positive experience that we felt compelled to share a little bit about adventure therapy and how these camps can impact kids.

At Northwoods, we talk a lot about “designing solutions around you.” But, what does that really mean? The methodology outlined below is at the core of how we operate and work to advance health and human services (HHS). We have delivered multiple products and solutions influenced by this methodology that incorporates three “gears” of building better, faster, and more impactful solutions for human services.

Don Abney, Northwoods’ Chief Technology Officer, has spent the last 20 years developing and delivering technology services across several industries. He’s also one of the smartest humans you’ll ever meet.

Don recently sat down with our Business Development team to answer some questions about how Product Delivery (PD) at Northwoods continues to evolve and innovate to meet customers' needs.

His answers were just too good not to share!

It's that time again! As each year comes to a close, we like to recap the top blog posts from the last 365 days. If you're a new reader or subscriber, this is your chance to catch up on all the good stuff you might have missed.