Case Study: Mantelaar

A solution with results at a strategic, content-related, and practical level.

Mantelaar in a nutshell

Mantelaar is a company that makes a real difference every day for hundreds of care recipients across the Netherlands. Care recipients include people with dementia or disabilities. Mantelaar works with 700 (para)medical care students who are available for various types of care, such as informal care, dementia care, respite care, and night care. The care students working at Mantelaar, known as "mantelaars," are matched with an informal caregiver and the respective care recipient (the person being cared for). The mantelaar supports the informal caregiver as needed and relieves them of various (care) tasks, allowing the caregiver to take a break. In this way, Mantelaar enables people in need of care to live longer and happier at home, while also relieving informal caregivers wherever possible. In short, important work that is much needed.

Learning while working with the Mantelaar Academy

Within Mantelaar, an Academy has been established for the care students. This Academy is available in app form based on the Microlearning platform Primio. It makes workplace learning and following a learning path very accessible for students. Various modules are available for students to delve into topics they find interesting. When a student successfully completes such a module, they become more competent and skilled in a particular field. In practice, this means they are more versatile and can also work in a more specialized way. Moreover, they directly apply their gained knowledge in practice at their workplace. A win-win for both the student and the care recipient! Additionally, Mantelaar has incorporated the application and onboarding processes for new students into the Academy app, through integration with Harmonizer. This further contributes to creating the Mantelaar ‘experience’. Mantelaar also offers live masterclasses to students via the app, facilitating students through a blended learning process.

The problem in practice

In practice, however, Mantelaar encountered a significant issue. All the progress made by a student in the Academy app had to be manually transferred to other systems, such as the CRM system, Marketing Automation program, and email platform. This was obviously very inconvenient, as manually transferring data is highly error-prone, time-consuming, and leaves less room for other, more important tasks. Furthermore, the students' salaries had to be automatically assigned or increased based on the progress they made in the Academy app, but this assignment or increase was only processed after the progress was manually transferred. By the time that was done, a lot of time had passed. In short: not practical, not scalable, and not ideal for the students.

Goodbye manual work

Mantelaar decided to make a change and approached Harmonizer. The concrete request was to create an integration between the Microlearning platform Primio (Primio.app) and the ERP system Interleave, so that internal processes could be automated. For Mantelaar, it was important that the back-office staff no longer needed to spend time on manual tasks, such as creating accounts in Primio and processing results in Interleave. So, we did just that. With the created integration, we were able to automate this process to a large extent, resulting not only in time savings in the back office but also positively contributing to the 'employee experience'. All progress and information entered in the Academy app is now transferred to the other linked systems within 15 minutes. Long waits for the information to be updated or correcting errors are now a thing of the past.

The process: functional, affordable, and service-oriented

At Harmonizer, we are always curious about customer experiences, as well as possible feedback. We therefore asked Milko, Head of the Mantelaar Academy, with whom we worked closely, for feedback. Milko said the following: "The integration went very smoothly. I found the contact with Harmonizer to be particularly good. There was a high level of service orientation; for example, Guido was always available and always willing to provide feedback or advice when needed. In that sense, Harmonizer was a real sparring partner for me, with whom I could discuss what would or wouldn’t be a good idea for the Academy. I highly value the knowledge and expertise of the Harmonizer team. And yes, of course, I would recommend them to others. The speed, service orientation, affordability, and the final functionality of the integration have made me a big advocate for Harmonizer!"

When we ask Milko what the integration has delivered in practice, he is clear about it: "Manual work is finally gone, the system is less error-prone, staff can now focus on other tasks, and the student is happy to use the Academy app, which is strategically very beneficial for us."

And... there's always room for improvement

For us at Harmonizer, this case was particularly instructive. It was our first joint project with our partner Primio, and it gave us the opportunity to learn a lot about the application. We were also able to jointly add valuable improvements (in both Primio and Harmonizer). We are now working with Primio on 2 to 3 other projects to realize similar integrations as those at Mantelaar. Therefore, the project has added significant value to the partnership, which is now truly taking shape.

There's always room for improvement, as far as we're concerned. If we specifically look at the lessons learned, they mostly relate to the duration of the integration. It took slightly longer than initially planned. Fortunately, Mantelaar gave us their full trust. We are happy that we worked together to create a workable, sustainable solution.

Curious about all the ins and outs of system integration? Check out our article where we take you into the world of system integration.