Today's post was written by Ligia Soileau, Executive Director, Livingston Youth and Family Counseling

Office 365 Customer Stories - Livingston Youth and Family CounselingLivingston Youth and Family Counseling (LYFC) has provided affordable mental health care to the people of Livingston Parish, Louisiana, for 30 years. Although we're a nonprofit organization, we're still a business and recognize that the more efficiently we run, the more community members we can serve.

That's why we've adopted Microsoft Office 365. There's a lot to like about it, but the component we really love is Microsoft SharePoint Online, which has absolutely transformed how we work at LYFC.

Before Office 365, we had a paper-based system, and every time a prospective client called, we had to fill out paper forms. Our counseling supervisor then would sift through those handwritten forms and assign the new case to one of our five counselors. We're human, so sometimes we didn't fill out forms completely, accurately, or even legibly, which slowed down the case assignment process.

We also used the forms to track and report our demographic data to our board of directors and to funding organizations like the United Way. Anytime we were asked to report on our types of services, number of people served, various kinds of trauma addressed, and so on, I had to spend hours digging through the paper forms and compiling numbers, which took me away from my other work.

That's where SharePoint Online came in. A volunteer helped us design and build a case management tool in SharePoint Online. Now, intake counselors complete an online form right in the case management tool, and built-in controls ensure that required fields are filled in, key data isn't overlooked, and handwriting errors are a thing of the past. It is easier for the folks on the phone to capture accurate client information, and it's faster for our counseling supervisor to assign cases and balance workloads.

Not only have we minimized the lag time between a counselor closing one case and receiving a new one, it now takes me no more than 15 minutes to run comprehensive reports for our stakeholders. I can spend more time writing grants, seeing my clients, and caring for the health of the organization.

We also created a referral and outreach tracker using SharePoint Online so that we can capture new data about how many referrals we make and the people in the community we serve. Before Office 365, we were selling ourselves short, and now we're able to share the whole picture of what we provide to whom. Today, we feel better poised to take advantage of the opportunities that present themselves because we have business intelligence like this at our fingertips.

I foresee Office 365 playing a key role in Livingston Youth and Family Counseling as we grow, especially because we can take advantage of the special nonprofit pricing. Our long-term goal is to open a satellite office to better serve our rural clients, as using Office 365 would make it possible to stay connected to the rest of the team while serving that population.

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--Stephen Bury

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