Blog 13 December 2019: Digital disruption, being customer centric, reform of the NDIS and creating alternate futures from Day 2 of the NDS CEO Meeting 20-21 November

Figure 1 Walter Tran, Matt King, Arahni Sont, Megan Nixon, Bruce Nixon

Opening Address Day 2 by Hon Bill Shorten MP, NDIS Shadow Minister – “Surveying the hostages is not the go!”

Figure 2 The Hon Bill Shorten, MP

A very passionate address by Bill Shorten on Day 2 of the meeting, starting with “it’s quicker to buy a wheelchair on Amazon than from the NDIA”. There’s a huge burden on PWD to prove everything and they have the added cost of paying for lawyers when appealing a decision of the NDIA. 1000 matters at the AAT now. It was the providers that drove for the creation of the scheme but now the NDS and its members are subsidizing the creation of the NDIS. Reforms are needed in so many areas:

• Payments, $500,000 million is owed by the NDIA to providers NOW

• Regional areas not being served and thin markets problem with NDS members being the safety nets

• Need strict deadlines for decision making – after x date it is deemed to be approved

• Workforce planning – need a national curriculum on disability care

• Providers need extra funds for admin costs

• Providers are not “businesses” –

• Assistive Technology quotes take too long to obtain and get approved

• Supported accommodation takes too long for SIL to be approved – why are there vacancy rates? The approval process is RIDICULOUS!

• There needs to be emergency care and RESPITE

These challenges are fixable. Everything is not fine! The patience of providers is not limitless – you need to be assertive in a quiet and professional way. Labour are holding 24 Forums around the country and will develop a workplan. “The pathology in the NDIA is like the Terminator movies when the machine turns on the humans”. Get impatient. Get ambitious. The system should work for the people, not the people running around the system!

Figure 3 “The pathology of the NDIA is like the Terminator movie when the machines turn on the humans”

“NDIA – Getting it right for each participant, each time, every time” by Martin Hoffman, new CEO NDIA

Figure 4 Martin Hoffman, CEO NDIA

The new CEO of the NDIA, Martin Hoffman reiterated some of the speech given by the Minister for the NDIS, the Hon Stuart Robert on day 1 of the meeting. He went on to admit to some of the current failings - that some providers are waiting too long to be paid and the payment processing and quarterly processing times are not good enough. Payment is one of those areas that he wants to tackle quickly so that providers can get on with their core business of delivering services to participants.

In early September the Agency opened its national provider sentiment and satisfaction survey allowing providers the opportunity to give direct feedback. With 2090 responses, only one quarter of all active providers responded. Provider sentiment has improved with 47% feeling optimistic about the health of the NDIS market, an increase of 8% over the last survey conducted in December 2018. The overall satisfaction when interacting with the NDIA has increased from a baseline score of 4.7/10 in December to 5.3 in December of this year.

Despite the fact the average plan budget has increased across the scheme, he acknowledged that some people have had different experiences and for some these have been poor. There have been inconsistent decisions and inappropriate plans and there is a need to improve support for LACs and planners.

Many of the challenges facing Australians with disability are historic and have their foundations in our communities long before the NDIS. “We continue to address these foundational issues such as lack of housing, lack of accessible transport, thin markets outside the metro areas and widespread lack of access to employment. These issues do not necessarily have a quick fix and have been long-standing. It requires cooperation between states and territories, different governments, agencies, between all of us in the room. The NDIA and our partners and the broader Australian community must do more to ensure our communities and workplaces are inclusive of people with disability. There are many moving parts involved. While the NDIS can make immediate improvements to the lives of participants, we have a sense of the historical context and what we are doing. We have had to look at the big picture and need to work with our partners and the private sector to address these large systemic and technological challenges. We are actively involved in the consultations to shape future national disability policy, including a new disability strategy for beyond 2020”.

“User First Approach to Digital Transformation” by Jon Osborne, Thought Leader

Figure 5 Jon Osborne, Thought Leader

Jon Osborne spoke about a user first approach to digital transformation. He said that KPMG recently published a study where they said that about 30% of digital transformations were successful. What is digital transformation? His definition of transformation is “change which affects every single part of your business. A bit like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly, it's not just the caterpillar's heads that grows wings”. Transformation is going to affect everything you do. He makes the distinction between digitisation which is taking a small part of our business and making that digital.

What's happening for a successful organisation to work? Well, there's three things. There's what he would call technical skills, competencies that help us get the job done. They're essential. In our case, care in the disability sector. Then we have systems and processes. They're ways of working, procedures, business models, they're things that are stable and they help us get things done without worrying about it, without having to reinvent the wheel constantly. And then finally, there's an element of human interaction, and that includes leadership, it includes the way that we communicate to one another, it includes trust, and it also includes learning, organisational learning.

“So if we throw digital into the mix, and we're talking about transformation, what does that look like? Well, digital in a way is a kind of lubricant between those three elements of a business. They're already happening it's just digital introduces new ways for us to interact and think about value in our organisation. The gap between the work that we do and the competencies required and the systems and processes to sustain that, is data. Then there's this third element called system design, the gap between human interaction and processes. System design is how you take a technology and you make it relevant to your organisation, how do you make that work.”

“Critical success factors to navigate (or drown) in disruptive futures” by Prof Sohail Inayatullah, Futurist

Figure 6 Prof Sohail Inayatullah, UNESCO

We need to map and create alternative futures. New jobs! 44% of jobs will be automated in the next 10 years. 46% will disappear or radically change and 60% of students are chasing careers that don’t exist!

Adaptive change will lead to new jobs, roles and retraining – the Robot will see you now!

“Alternative finance for disability service providers to invest in growth and impact” by Laurie Berrange from Synergis Fund (SVA Fund) and Diana Ferner from Social Ventures Australia

Figure 7 Laurie Berrange, Synergis Fund (SVA)

Alternative finance is any form of non-bank finance, such as private equity, venture capital and impact investing. Impact investing refers to investments made into organisations, projects and initiatives to generate measurable social impact alongside a financial return.

• Expands the pool of funds available for impact purposes

• Available to both not-for-profit and for-profit organisations

• In Australia, there are currently no concessionary rates for impact investing

Case Study: Vanguard Laundry Services

The Vision:

Anyone with a lived experience of mental illness has equal career opportunities.

• ~$8m social enterprise laundry in Toowoomba

• Jointly developed by Social Ventures Australia and Toowoomba Clubhouse, with support from Ramsay Foundation, AMP Foundation, Westpac Bank & Foundation, Hallmark property

• Focus on employing people with a lived experience of mental illness

• Opened January 2017

Customer Centric: by Sueanne Carr and Peter Turner from Customer Frame (see www.customerframe.com/scorecard)

What is Digital Disruption (a summary of their presentation)?

Netflix did not kill Blockbuster. Ridiculous late fees did. Uber did not kill the taxi business. Limited access and fare control did. Apple did not kill the music industry. Being forced to buy full-length albums did. Amazon did not kill other retailers, poor customer service and experience did. And Airbnb isn't killing the hotel industry, limited availability and pricing options are.

A lot of people think disruption equals technology. We're here to tell you today that that is not actually the truth. The truth is that disruption starts with your customer and their needs. Technology is just an enabler. So the biggest threat for your organisation in the future is whether you are customer centric or not.

So, are you customer centric?

86% of buyers will pay more for a better customer experience. Customers are four times more likely to buy from a competitor if the problem is service related versus price or product. We'll talk about industry dynamics soon but I want you to park that in the back of your mind. I'm four times more likely to leave you if it's service related, not about the price or the product. This is where we're heading. The last one that I wanted to talk about is 70% of buying experiences are based on how the customer feels they're being treated. So not how they're being treated, not their internal process, we went through this form and ticked all those boxes, it's how they feel about how they are being treated.

Also, you've got what we call ultimate customers and intermediate customers. Your ultimate customer is the person that's actually getting the disability services. But your intermediate customer is also involved. Who might that be? The guardian. Yeah, the carer. The family that's around them that's part of the decision making process.

So the organisations that will disrupt this industry are the ones that understand their customers, their customer needs and change and really leverage the paradox of choice to their advantage. You can win this game by leveraging the paradox of choice. Your customers are crying out for it, I can guarantee it. Do you know what's important to your customer? Do you track your business performance from their perspective and do you align your organisation with them? Three key questions to ask yourself when you leave here today.

See the website - you're able to go through and answer some questions to see where you are today. Be honest with it, maybe get a couple of other team members or senior members to do it with you or alongside. You will get a little email back saying where you are and a couple of little tips on how you can improve your position today.