AN ARTICLE FROM ASPIRE OF WNY’S 2022 IMPACT REPORT
Aspire of WNY supports over 3,000 individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Each person, the people who support them, and the agency’s administration team require hundreds of thousands of data points to accurately track everything across our footprint.
That’s where Tom Matyas and Lisa Murdock come in. In November 2020, Tom Matyas was hired to fill the Records Coordinator/Power Apps Developer position on Aspire of WNY’s Quality Assurance & Compliance (QA) team. This was during the height of the pandemic, and providers were required to report COVID-19 events to the Office for People with Developmental Disabilities (OPWDD). Tom entered these events into the OPWDD Incident Report and Management Application (IRMA) dashboard.
After understanding the full scope of this work, Tom took the initiative to create a Microsoft Power App for COVID-19 reporting. This app resulted in efficiencies for both the end user and the agency. The app was mobile-friendly, making it easier to complete and submit, and the automation that Tom built into the app auto-populated the COVID-19 tracking sheet when the app was submitted.
This led to an explosion of apps and dashboards being created that have simplified work tasks throughout Aspire of WNY and has provided an opportunity for that information to be analyzed in ways previously not seen at the agency.
Since then, Lisa Murdock has joined Aspire of WNY’s App Developer Team as a Senior IT Project Manager, and numerous other employees have collaborated with Lisa and Tom on Aspire of WNY’s journey toward Business Intelligence (BI) and Digital Business Transformation (DBT). BI and DBT are heavily represented in our strategic plan, The Moss Project, and will be part of our daily operations in the future.
With significant innovative steps in Business Intelligence, our ability to provide efficient and personalized services to the individuals we support continues to be a reality.