Alan Wikman of SYNERGY Grew His Business by Measuring Everything

00:00:02 Romi Gubes: Hi, Alan. Hello. Thank you for joining me on the Growth Operator Podcast. It is super exciting to hear about your journey, speak about your last few years in home care, and learn some lessons from you. If you can start by just giving the audience a quick overview of yourself and your business, then we can dive right in.

00:00:15 Alan Wikman: Sure. So, I’m Alan Wikman. I started ten years ago from scratch and have grown my business up to where we have probably about 100-ish clients and 127-ish caregivers—somewhere around there. It’s been an exciting journey. A lot of struggles, but exciting overall.

00:00:30 Romi Gubes: And you’re a part of Senior Synergy Home Car

00:00:32 Alan Wikman: Yes. Yeah, yep.

00:00:34 Romi Gubes: Thank you for letting us be very close to your business growth and learning with you. I have to say that through our journey together, you were always very open to learning about new things and bringing on board new technology. You’re very passionate about that and very strategic when it comes to how you think about your business needs and what tech can or cannot solve. If you can give me a high-level view of how you think about your tech stack and what kind of recent implementations you did in your agency.

00:01:02 Alan Wikman: Sure. So, for me, a tech stack is something that I don’t want to become too complicated for my office staff or caregivers. I’m always focused on where it’s going to free them up the most so that they can put their focus back into managing the clients, managing the caregivers, and making sure they’re happy. One thing that we recently implemented is text messaging. What we saw over four months was that our caregiver satisfaction—just with that easy ability to communicate with them—more than doubled, almost tripled. So, it’s being able to identify where the needs are in your business and then figuring out the technology to free up your staff to focus their efforts where they are most meaningful.

00:01:45 Romi Gubes: So you decided to bring on board the Sensi messaging?

00:01:48 Alan Wikman: Yes.

00:01:49 Romi Gubes: Messaging, yes. That actually centralizes all the communication with your caregivers into one place. What did you have before?

00:01:55 Alan Wikman: We were using AxisCare messaging, and it was just too hard for the messages to be delivered to the caregivers. Now, it’s quick communication. They can text, and everybody in the office can see it. We also use it just to send them general messages, well-being messages, some tips, tricks, and anything that we have in the office. It’s been a huge “wow.” While it seems like a small thing, it has made a huge impact on the business.

00:02:22 Romi Gubes: Can you help me and the audience understand a little bit of your decision-making process? This is a great example of you deciding to switch from one platform to another in a specific area of the business. Obviously, since you came in and introduced a new product, you heard about that. What were you considering at that point?

00:02:44 Alan Wikman: Well, to me, it boils down to the ease of use, right? If it’s another platform or something, this just goes directly to their phones. I was investigating Zoom a lot. We use Zoom, but not everybody can see the messages. It’s ease of use for me that makes the most difference.

00:03:05 Romi Gubes: So you felt like there was a solution that was not working as smoothly as you wished, and there was room for improvement.

00:03:12 Alan Wikman: Yeah. And I mean, I sometimes actually get stuck in analysis paralysis. You go and you research all these different options. But with Sensi messaging, it really was a no-brainer because it’s so simple and so effective. I think that’s what’s important: simple and effective.

00:04:13 Romi Gubes: Can you walk me through an example where you felt like you were getting into this analysis paralysis or overthinking?

00:04:20 Alan Wikman: Oh, probably just about anything. I mean, I’m a data guy, so I like to have a lot of data. Sometimes you can look at data for so long that your head starts to spin. But yeah, this specific instance was really a no-brainer.

00:04:38 Romi Gubes: Yeah, I think we all get into this trap sometimes of overanalyzing something. I feel like with today’s landscape, having more and more tech solutions and AI solutions popping up really makes it even more challenging because you’re in a FOMO situation. You have FOMO on one side, and then fatigue on the other side, so you’re kind of caught in between. It makes you overthink sometimes. Are there any other solutions you decided to bring in to solve specific areas of your business?

00:05:08 Alan Wikman: Well, now I’m honestly waiting for Sensi to deliver all of that because it’s easier, right?

00:05:18 Romi Gubes: Yeah, no pressure. No pressure at all!

00:05:22 Alan Wikman: But no, it’s just too hard. You know, we were just at our annual franchise meeting, and we probably had 15 different tech solutions there. Now my staff is going to be logging into 15 different sites, and they’re not talking to each other. That’s just not going to give me the data that I need, so I’m pulling the data manually.

00:05:45 Romi Gubes: So the way you think about it strategically is not only “how can I automate many different areas as fast as possible,” but “how can I create a tech stack that is simple, consolidated, and not overwhelming for the team?”

00:05:58 Alan Wikman: Yeah, because if I’m going to implement something that gives me more data but it’s going to be another step for my team in the office, they’re not going to follow through with it. Ultimately, it needs to free up office staff so that they can concentrate on what’s most important, which is the clients and caregivers.

00:06:18 Romi Gubes: Yeah, 100%. Obviously, you’re preaching to the choir. This is how we think about that at Sensi as well. We’re here to speak about growth, and obviously, there is a direct connection between the simplicity and effectiveness of your tech stack and your ability to grow. Can you connect—maybe we already touched on the messaging example, or if you have any other example in mind—how that connects directly to growing your business? Do you have any kind of concrete example from the field?

00:06:50 Alan Wikman: Well, I don’t know that I could come up with a concrete example off the top of my head, but I think what it boils down to is making sure that you’re able to see the care that your clients need. Growth can come either from new prospects calling in or from your current clients. Ultimately, if you can match that care to the correct level, they’ll be in their home longer. It’s pulling the data from the caregiver care notes from the Sensi system that is in the home, and combining all of that to ensure that your clients are receiving the care and that the caregivers are giving top-notch care. That’s the goal that clients expect, as they should.

00:07:32 Romi Gubes: So what you’re saying is, “How can I connect the different dots that I have in my business?” The things that are coming from messaging, the things that are coming from what we call the point-of-care data right from the home, and then your office staff data that they hold—whether from phone calls or from the system of records—and really make better decisions.

00:07:55 Alan Wikman: Yeah, and right now that’s a manual process. For me, there are a lot of manual parts to it. That’s where a lot of my work comes in. The office staff doesn’t necessarily see that piece, but that’s the only way to succeed.

00:08:12 Romi Gubes: If you were in our seat serving home care agencies and, unfortunately, could not do everything at once, what would you prioritize as the next biggest effort to solve in the business?

00:08:22 Alan Wikman: I think it’s the caregiver recruiting piece, because there’s a lot of tedious, manual work that goes into that which could easily be automated. Well, I say easily, but I don’t design the systems. But I think that by now, being very close to Sensi’s roadmap and thinking, and in general in the world, we all understand what AI can do for us at this point. We all understand the power of agents and the full potential of AI. So, with that in mind, I do believe that there is a lot to automate on the caregiver hiring side.

00:08:55 Romi Gubes: Absolutely. Today, who in your agency is doing that? Do you have a dedicated recruiter?

00:09:00 Alan Wikman: We have a dedicated recruiter, yep.

00:09:02 Romi Gubes: And where do you feel are the areas for improvement specifically?

00:09:06 Alan Wikman: Well, just like with clients, it’s getting the caregivers in for interviews quickly because they’re applying for jobs everywhere. The first person to really get them in is the one that’s going to have the first pick of the best caregivers. Speed to interview is a big metric that I follow.

00:09:25 Romi Gubes: How do you do it manually today? How do you ensure speed to interview?

00:09:30 Alan Wikman: Well, that’s one of my recruiter’s metrics. We use Apploi right now, so they give us that number. I actually have it set up so they get a text message automatically once they apply, and they get a Zoom link to schedule their interview right on the spot. But not everybody responds to that, so then it’s the recruiter following up with those people. That’s just the first hurdle, right? Then you have to get them to show up for the interview, go through all the paperwork and documents, and then come into orientation. There are a lot of steps in there that should be automated so that she can focus her time more on the period after they’re hired—making sure that they transition well into caregiving, have mentorship, and all of that.

00:10:32 Romi Gubes: We speak a lot at Sensi about the perfect playbooks because, with the power of AI, you can actually create perfect workflows, which is a completely new concept. With human power, you have resource limitations and training limitations, but with AI, you do not have all of that. When it comes to hiring, imagine the perfect workflow without any limitations out there. How would you approach that?

00:11:09 Alan Wikman: That’s a little bit of a challenge because I do have a whole workflow. We use Jotform for all of our workflows, but it should just be able to seamlessly go through. To me, I think having an AI agent interviewing the caregivers, while still having that human interaction where somebody is going to either approve or decline an applicant with the AI agent’s recommendation, would be ideal. Then, being able to continue them through all the paperwork that needs to come back, signing their background checks, and all that stuff can happen in the background. It’s taking the administrative pieces off of the recruiter; that’s what it boils down to for me.

00:11:50 Romi Gubes: If you think about the best recruiters you’ve had, what did they focus their efforts on? What did they do differently than others?

00:12:00 Alan Wikman: It’s the way they communicate with the applicants. We need to sell to the applicants just as much as we need to sell to prospective clients. They need to know what our culture is when they’re first contacted. Training is important to us, and it’s about setting the culture from the very first phone call.

00:12:20 Romi Gubes: First impressions.

00:12:22 Alan Wikman: Yeah.

00:12:28 Romi Gubes: Moving to another topic, it’s interesting for me to understand your perspective on different markets. We’re seeing different trends, and the balance between caregivers and client demand changes very often. Where are you today? What is more painful to you right now?

00:12:45 Alan Wikman: Caregivers. Caregivers are blockers for growth, yep.

00:12:50 Romi Gubes: So you do feel that the demand is there?

00:12:53 Alan Wikman: For the most part, yeah. I mean, there’s work that we can do there too, but right now, it’s significantly caregivers. Next week, like you said, that could be different.

00:13:10 Romi Gubes: Yeah, it’s a dynamic business for sure.

00:13:12 Alan Wikman: Yes, yes it is.

00:13:15 Romi Gubes: So today, are you at a point where you’re actually declining business?

00:13:20 Alan Wikman: Well, there are times that we can’t staff a shift, which is a killer for me because we left somebody without care, and that’s not okay. But it’s just a hard business to predict, which is why always hiring is a huge, top priority.

00:13:40 Romi Gubes: Whenever you have a client coming in, you go on an assessment, you build a care plan, and then you look behind your shoulder and figure out that you might not have caregivers for him or for her. What do you do? What is your first approach?

00:13:58 Alan Wikman: What we see typically is that we are very cautious about communicating the start of care with a client. We strive to start them exactly when they want to, but you have to match the skills with the availability. I’m actually working on trying to figure out a way to match personality a little bit. So, it’s communication with them in the beginning. I can’t think of a time that we’ve not been able to support somebody. There could be a shift here or there along the way where a caregiver calls out at the last minute and we don’t have somebody to fill it. My office staff does go out and do shifts for super high-need clients that we need to get covered. We also have an on-call caregiver 24/7.

00:14:46 Romi Gubes: So you’re saying that you’ll be able to fill almost every shift at the end of the day, with rare exceptions?

00:14:52 Alan Wikman: Yeah, that’s the way that we’re setting ourselves up.

00:14:56 Romi Gubes: And you said you have over 100 clients today and over 100 caregivers as well, right?

00:15:02 Alan Wikman: Yeah.

00:15:04 Romi Gubes: In how many territories?

00:15:06 Alan Wikman: Two.

00:15:08 Romi Gubes: Looking ahead for ’26 and ’27, what is your desired growth rate?

00:15:15 Alan Wikman: There’s a lot of building that I can do in the second territory, which is my newest one. I’m looking for at least a 15% increase year-over-year.

00:15:28 Romi Gubes: That’s ambitious.

00:15:30 Alan Wikman: Yeah. Especially at this point in the business. You’re already pretty solid in terms of footprint, and at those numbers, it’s a bit harder to grow at that cadence.

00:15:42 Alan Wikman: Well, it is, but in business research, you always run into revenue hurdles. For me, what I’m trying to blast through right now is the 3 million mark, which is typically that first hurdle. That’s when you really need to start with standard operating procedures so everybody knows what’s going on. That’s where I’m at. I think once we get that dialed in and get the right people in the right seats—which we’re very close to—it’ll be easier to blast through that hurdle.

00:16:15 Romi Gubes: What I’m hearing from you—and feel free to correct me if I’m not accurate—is that the demand is there, you’re putting more effort into caregiver hiring, and a secondary effort is on building out the team and the processes. With those two, you feel like 15% growth is achievable.

00:16:32 Alan Wikman: Absolutely, because if you have the right processes in place, then you can grow within your current client base. If you can identify a need that a client has that maybe they don’t even know they have, you can grow that way as well, which ultimately keeps them safer at home.

00:16:55 Romi Gubes: So you’re looking at an increase in billable hours as well. Demand is not only new client acquisition, but also growing within your own business.

00:17:10 Alan Wikman: Correct, yeah.

00:17:19 Romi Gubes: Do you have any tips you can share on that specifically—how to maximize hours of care based on the needs of the clients?

00:17:28 Alan Wikman: The quality assurance visits are a big piece. But again, it’s having that standard operating procedure where you don’t have your care supervisors or care coordinators—whatever you might call them, I call them care supervisors—going in and just checking boxes. They need to have the time and the mental bandwidth to actually go in, review what’s going on with the client, and review their care notes. That kind of boils down to removing some of those administrative functions from their plates so they have more time to really focus on that.

00:18:04 Romi Gubes: So you’re saying building relationships and listening is huge. That is something people are not always good at, right?

00:18:12 Alan Wikman: Historically, the home care industry has almost acted like order-takers. Somebody calls in and says, “Hey, Mom needs somebody for four hours every other Thursday.” If somebody asks for that, that’s what the agency thinks they need. But we’re the experts. We should be the ones who go in, listen to them, figure out what they actually need, and give them a proposal or a suggested care plan. That’s a big piece of it. We’re not order-takers; we’re the experts, and we should be giving our advice.

00:18:50 Romi Gubes: One of the owners I interviewed lately calls their care managers “care consultants.” He says, “We’re coming in to consult. We are the professionals and the advisors for care and aging.”

00:19:04 Alan Wikman: Yeah, that’s where it’s at. Even “home assessment” has a little bit of a negative connotation; we like to call them “home consults.” But “assessment” has just been an industry standard for so long.

00:19:18 Romi Gubes: Do you feel that today your team is operating in that way, or are you still working toward it?

00:19:24 Alan Wikman: We’re very close, yep.

00:19:28 Romi Gubes: So this is one box you can check.

00:19:30 Alan Wikman: One box checked, yeah.

00:19:33 Romi Gubes: When you’re looking at different revenue models, how do you think strategically about that? Are you diversifying, or are you more focused on one or two?

00:19:42 Alan Wikman: No, I think diversification is huge. Right now, I’m about 75% private pay and 25% insurance. I think if you have all your eggs in one basket, as they say, it’s not good. We have VA, we do a little bit of Medicaid, and we have private long-term care insurance. You need to be diversified.

00:20:10 Romi Gubes: Within this 15% growth rate, where are you looking to grow more?

00:20:16 Alan Wikman: I really don’t want my business to be more than 30% insurance-based. That’s one of the many metrics that I keep my eye on because if you get too high in insurance, that’s not healthy either.

00:20:32 Romi Gubes: A single point of failure.

00:20:35 Alan Wikman: Yeah, exactly. So a 70/30 split is really what I want to be at.

00:20:42 Romi Gubes: What kind of payers are you working with? You mentioned VA and Medicaid.

00:20:48 Alan Wikman: Yep, we use the GUIDE program and the Area Agency on Aging. I think that’s it.

00:20:56 Romi Gubes: So that’s also diverse. Within this payer bucket, you’re diversifying a lot.

00:21:02 Alan Wikman: Yeah, we don’t have… actually, now I have a new metric I need to track. Thanks.

00:21:06 Romi Gubes: You’re welcome! Do you have any tips or specific success stories you can share when it comes to opening doors with payers? I know that this is one of the hardest struggles, but it brings a very high reward when you’re successful. Anything you can share with the audience on how to make that successful?

00:21:28 Alan Wikman: We recently had a meeting with a hospital, and what is really getting us in the door is Sensi because they can see the benefits of it. We had a meeting with about 30 discharge nurses—or whatever they call them at the hospital—and went over the Sensi platform and how we implement it into care, as well as the fact that we take their insurances. That’s big. If I go in with a double punch like, “Hey, we take all these insurances and we have Sensi,” the hospitals are a lot more inclined to listen because we don’t just come in, take an order, and away we go.

00:22:05 Romi Gubes: You targeted these hospitals specifically?

00:22:08 Alan Wikman: Yeah.

00:22:09 Romi Gubes: Why?

00:22:10 Alan Wikman: Because they can be a very good referral source. But they’re also inundated with everybody wanting referrals from them. If you want to be a differentiator, you have to really figure out how you can benefit them versus just coming in and providing home care.

00:22:30 Romi Gubes: Can you help me understand the potential upside with such a referral? What is the best outcome you can get from it?

00:22:38 Alan Wikman: That they would call us with every discharge. Somebody is going home whether they need us or not. If we can have the opportunity to reach out to them, see what their struggles are, and prevent their hospitalization—which the hospitals are really big on as well—we can be that single point of contact for them. They don’t need to worry about whether we take a certain insurance or if we have a minimum amount of hours. They can just say, “Okay, we think this would be a benefit to you, here you go,” send the referral over, and we’ll reach out.

00:23:15 Romi Gubes: How many hospital discharges do they have in a month? How many clients are being discharged?

00:23:22 Alan Wikman: Lots. I don’t even know that number. Whether it’s hundreds or thousands, I would guess at least hundreds. Even just a small portion of those would be a huge benefit.

00:23:38 Romi Gubes: If it’s not Senior Synergy Home Care, what is their way to make sure that the client stays safe in their own home?

00:23:45 Alan Wikman: A lot of times, they’re going home with home health. The home health agency will step in. That would be a secondary place to get referrals from, which we do. When they get them home, they want them to stay home as well. So, home health would be the secondary.

00:24:16 Romi Gubes: So the secondary would be home health, and the primary?

00:24:20 Alan Wikman: The secondary would be home health if the hospital doesn’t refer to us directly, because a lot of them still don’t really recognize the benefit of home care. Home health is covered, of course, by Medicare, so they’ll send them on home health. But if they need additional services, the home health agency or hospice would reach out to us.

00:24:40 Romi Gubes: It’s crazy to think that way, knowing home care and how impactful it is on care outcomes, and how much potential all sides have from having home care in terms of preventing readmissions and escalating events. Do you feel like you need to educate the hospital sometimes on the importance of home care?

00:25:02 Alan Wikman: Yeah, and I think that’s really our ultimate sales or marketing goal for the rest of the year: to be educators, not sales-driven. We want to educate people on the benefits and what home care can do. It’s not just preventing readmissions; it’s preventing hospitalizations to begin with, as well as emergency room visits. The emergency room is a huge drain on our local hospital anyway, and it’s always packed. A lot of those conditions could be identified early. Instead of waiting until a UTI is so bad, if you can catch it early, you can prevent that ER visit.

00:25:45 Romi Gubes: When you approached the hospital discharge planner, were you the first agency approaching them or the tenth agency approaching them?

00:25:52 Alan Wikman: Oh, at least the tenth, I’m sure. But without having the backbone of Sensi and taking their insurances, there really was nothing different about the others. The planners weren’t motivated to find a new home care agency; they already had all kinds of others approaching them and had names to give potential clients. There was no real relationship between the hospital and another home care agency.

00:26:30 Romi Gubes: Can you share some more color on the process? Who did you speak to? How did you get to them, and what was your pitch?

00:26:40 Alan Wikman: It was the manager of the care managers or discharge nurses. I can’t think of the exact title, but it was the care manager supervisor. It was the manager, and before you even get to them, there’s a gatekeeper. But keeping a consistent, clear, no-fluff kind of message is key: “This is why you would use Synergy Home Care.” We talked about Sensi, the different insurances we accept, the benefits of it, and the fact that we don’t have minimum hours. A lot of companies do have minimum hours, but there’s nobody we won’t help.

00:27:26 Romi Gubes: So you just came in cold to the gatekeeper and you were able to open the door? It’s pretty remarkable.

00:27:35 Alan Wikman: Yeah. Well, I think if they hear something that is actually going to help their patients and help them do their job, they’re a lot more likely to open the door than if you’re one of 30 other home care agencies telling the exact same story without the teeth and the backbone to back it up.

00:28:01 Romi Gubes: Was it you yourself who went in, or do you have a business development representative?

00:28:06 Alan Wikman: I do have a business development representative as well, yeah.

00:28:10 Romi Gubes: And are they doing most of it, or is it you specifically?

00:28:14 Alan Wikman: They do most of it, but I also do follow-ups with them. They know who I am and who we are.

00:28:22 Romi Gubes: How do you make sure these processes are optimized for the business development representative so they know how to detect the right referral sources and how to open the door?

00:28:35 Alan Wikman: We’re going to be focusing more on education, which makes it a lot easier to open the door. We have specific requirements for her; she needs to reach out to a certain amount of referral sources, and then we track where the referrals are actually coming from to see whether or not her time is being spent in the right areas.

00:28:55 Romi Gubes: Are you checking activities or are you checking outcomes?

00:29:00 Alan Wikman: Both. Activities to begin with, and then outcomes. You don’t want to have a ton of activities and not very much outcome, or vice versa.

00:29:12 Romi Gubes: Yes, you want to have tons of outcomes with less activity.

00:29:16 Alan Wikman: Yeah, exactly.

00:29:20 Romi Gubes: And this person is directly connected to billable hours too?

00:29:25 Alan Wikman: Yeah, we also track what we have in the pipeline as well, like referrals that are waiting.

00:29:40 Romi Gubes: Is there anything you feel is worth sharing with our audience in terms of tips on that aspect?

00:29:50 Alan Wikman: Home care is an interesting business because we’re really not selling; we truly are educating. I think if a salesperson goes in with a standard sales pitch, it’s not going to be received as well as an approach focused on educating them on how we can help the referral partner, their patients, residents, or clients. It’s all about education.

00:30:20 Romi Gubes: Yeah, so everyone should just keep in mind that they are educating and helping people age better in their own homes.

00:30:26 Alan Wikman: Yeah.

00:30:30 Romi Gubes: What is the room for improvement for you now going into 2026? You spoke a little bit about processes, but what exactly in the processes are you looking to improve?

00:30:42 Alan Wikman: I think my processes are pretty well set up, so now it’s going to be really diving into what the numbers are telling us and coming up with solutions, which I like to do as a team. We have a quarterly meeting where we look at the data, identify what the root problem is, and then backward-engineer what a solution might be.

00:31:15 Romi Gubes: Can you walk me through an example of that?

00:31:20 Alan Wikman: At our last quarterly meeting, we realized that our ratio of phone calls to client in-home consults was very low. We had to dive deeper into the reason why we weren’t scheduling those consults. We found out affordability was a big factor, and not responding quickly enough was another big thing. So, our big push for this quarter involves our Chief Growth Officer, who is handling specifically the growth of both caregivers and clients, and our Care Services Director. That’s one big area that we recognized through data that needed to be focused on. I’m really looking forward to next quarter to watch the metrics and see if that worked, or if we need to pivot or adjust something. Without data, you can’t make those calls.

00:32:45 Romi Gubes: It’s incredible that you’re measuring that; many agencies are not. Are you using a specific software for that?

00:32:55 Alan Wikman: Those are all systems that I developed. Like I said, we use Jotform. Those entries go into spreadsheets, and then I can pull and calculate the data from there.

00:33:05 Romi Gubes: So they are in-house workarounds to make it work?

00:33:10 Alan Wikman: Yeah, to make it work. But that goes back to “garbage in, garbage out,” which my Chief Growth Officer and Director of Care Services get sick of me saying. When a number isn’t right, it’s garbage in, garbage out. That’s the challenge too—being able to make sure that the data is entered and calculated correctly, since today it’s a manual process where people have to enter it. Every week, every position has what we call a snapshot report. Scheduling reports how many open shifts and total shifts we have; the care supervisors report how many QAs are overdue; business development reports how many visits they did and how many referrals came in. Everybody has their own data, but again, you’re relying on them to make sure that they didn’t put a 10 instead of a 100, because that’s a huge difference when you’re calculating numbers.

00:33:32 Romi Gubes: Manual errors are a big problem. Is there one metric that keeps you up at night—one thing that you’re not happy with today?

00:33:40 Alan Wikman: Hours scheduled for the next week is a big thing. That can change on the fly, but if the scheduled hours aren’t going up, that’s not a good thing.

00:33:55 Romi Gubes: It’s super interesting to hear about your data-driven approach. I think that this is one of the things we started focusing on at Sensi two years ago as part of our journey to help owners understand the state of their business. You’d be surprised, but sometimes they’re not even able to speak about their billable hours, and they’re not sure what their growth rate or trajectory is—not to mention more complex metrics like length of service, lifetime value, or churn rate, which also impact your business and growth at the end of the day. I’m inspired and happy to see that you’re following all of that, even though it’s really hard today. We are actually putting our data scientists to work to generate those metrics for businesses today because the data is inconsistent, broken, and spread across different systems. You need to collect everything into one place. Not everyone is capable of or wants to go build their own in-house solutions for that. Do you see any low-hanging fruit or quick wins someone can implement to be more data-driven?

00:35:27 Alan Wikman: Well, we use AxisCare. AxisCare has some very high-level reports that you can run to get high-level data, which is better than nothing, even if you eventually need to dig deeper. I would definitely start with AxisCare, WellSky, or whatever system they might be using to pull at least the high-level reports, gross margins, and things of that nature.

00:35:54 Romi Gubes: You’re saying it’s a good starting point.

00:35:58 Alan Wikman: Yeah, but it’s a slippery slope because if you’re like me, once you get one little thing, you get addicted to digging deeper.

00:36:05 Romi Gubes: I know, tell me about it! To this day, I have at least five different tabs open on my desktop for different systems, constantly looking at reports every day. But it gives you a sense of control over the business to know where you should focus next.

00:36:30 Alan Wikman: Absolutely. That’s huge, and that’s what data does for us.

00:36:44 Romi Gubes: Yeah, and it’s super important as we scale and navigate different market dynamics that we need to be aware of. Sometimes data tells the story before we even understand what’s happening in the field. One of the things we learned recently from data relates to what we call “AI fatigue.” We understood this from analyzing our sales calls. We heard all kinds of different phrases regarding AI coming up over and over again, unlike before. We were seeing the trend and the introduction of new systems coming in that weren’t as present before, and we felt that this was the situation, but we couldn’t justify it until we had the data.

00:37:30 Alan Wikman: Well, it’s interesting that you felt that before the data proved it. That says a lot about you and your team.

00:37:40 Romi Gubes: We are spending a lot of time in the field. I first sensed that at the national conference of the Home Care Association of America back in October of last year. Because we’ve been in this market for so long, it’s very easy for us to see trends and changes. When we just started, we were maybe one of a handful of vendors bringing technology to the market. When I was there recently, I was overwhelmed. I was shocked to see maybe 80 different booths of different vendors, each automating a different area of the business. I saw owners passing by who were completely overwhelmed. They didn’t even approach the vendors because they were shocked. This is the kind of thing we’re seeing in the field and at conferences for different franchise networks.

00:38:40 Alan Wikman: We just had our conference in Florida, and it was the same thing—a lot of different solutions for one specific little piece of the puzzle.

00:38:47 Romi Gubes: When you’re speaking about that on the network level—either with corporate or other providers—what is the main sentiment? Is it more like your approach, or are people staying still because they don’t want to mess up their teams?

00:39:07 Alan Wikman: My message to anybody—and they know how involved I am with Sensi—is that I’m not looking to hire an AI agent to manage my AI agents. At some point, that’s what it feels like you’re going to wind up having to do. That is why my decision has been to wait for a consolidated solution rather than piecemealing it all together.

00:39:33 Romi Gubes: With that in mind, if you had to envision home care three to five years from now, what are your thoughts?

00:39:42 Alan Wikman: That’s what makes me most excited about the industry. I think we will be able to provide proactive care for our clients and treat our caregivers well because we’ll have the technology piece to back us up with accurate data. They’ll be able to focus on relationships, which is what home care is all about. It’s a big missing piece right now with legacy systems—too much time is spent on administrative stuff and not enough time focusing on what matters.

00:41:00 Romi Gubes: That’s true. We spoke a little bit about changes in tasks rather than changes in headcount, meaning how we can repurpose our teams to focus on strategic, high-value initiatives rather than filling out another report or another field in a system.

00:41:15 Alan Wikman: 100%. That’s exactly what it’s about. One of the things that drew me to home care to begin with is that you can make money while still doing good, and we all need to make money. At the end of the day, if we’re able to make more money, pay our caregivers well, and our clients receive better care, everybody wins. I think the only way to get there is with technology.

00:41:40 Romi Gubes: The way we call it at Sensi is the equation of “better care leads to better business outcomes.” If you blindly believe in that and let it guide you, growth will follow.

00:41:52 Alan Wikman: 100%. Yep.

00:41:54 Romi Gubes: And I think it connects very well to what you spoke about in terms of education and consultation—really looking at every older adult, their specific journey, and their specific needs instead of just order-taking.

00:42:00 Alan Wikman: Yeah, because sometimes they don’t even know what is good for them. Most of the time they don’t, right? This is likely the first time they’re calling for home care.

00:42:04 Romi Gubes: Yeah, and this is a challenging conversation to have, but perhaps the most important strategic one for their journey. Is there anything I didn’t ask that you feel like sharing? Any final words?

00:42:06 Alan Wikman: No, I can’t think of anything.

00:42:12 Romi Gubes: Okay. Thank you so much, Alan. I enjoyed speaking to you very much. Thank you for coming.

00:42:18 Alan Wikman: Thank you for having me.

00:42:20 Romi Gubes: Thank you for letting us at Sensi see your growth firsthand. It’s super exciting, and good luck in all of your future success.

00:42:30 Alan Wikman: Thank you.