Business Manager feature to be released soon

Business Manager feature to be released soon

 

The new Business Manager tool will give service providers a better overview of their customers and services.

Service providers will be able to check the performance of each service, have realtime view of all subscriptions and launch new services, to name a few functionalities.

The Business Manager will soon be available as a beta version and can be used by all service providers.

 

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Digitalisation of wellbeing services

Digitalisation of wellbeing services

 

In this article we explain what this magic word, digitalisation, means when we speak about wellbeing services and preventive healthcare.

Let’s start with digitalisation on a general level. Usually digitalisation means that we are using computers and software one way or another. Why this is done is actually pretty straightforward. You have no other choice. It’s where the world is heading whether you like it or not.

The goal of digitalisation is to improve something. We might want to improve quality, minimise costs, improve efficiency, provide easy access, improve communication and so on.

Before we dive deeper into digitalisation, let us first take a look at how wellbeing services without any digital platform might look.

Typically in a non-digital wellbeing service, the customer gets a printable program, tasks or exercises, which they are supposed to follow. This can be considered as self-service. Non-digital wellbeing services can also be instructor-led, either individual or group sessions.

Common for all non-digital wellbeing services is that there is no trace or history of what has happened, and usually very limited feedback. 

Service digitalisation

So, what happens when we start to incorporate digitalisation, in this case by using a software platform to delivering self-service or instructor-led services?

Well, first of all in a well-designed platform, the service content like programs, exercises, tasks, meals, messages, questionaries etc. should be easy to modify and re-use. This means better efficiency, we get more done with less work.

Preventive healthcare online mentorIn our experience, one instructor can remotely serve more than 100 clients. 

The key benefit is however, that digitalisation allows tracing and recording of what has happened during the service, historical data.

With data, a well-designed platform can provide useful information for the instructor about what’s going on, as well as provide feedback and indicate the need for intervention.

The instructor can also look at historical data and figure out what in the service worked well and what didn’t. This will undoubtedly lead to a better service quality and customer satisfaction. 

From the data we can also check if something can be automated in the service. Automation means better efficiency.

It’s important to mention that the instructor should not draw conclusions based on historical data alone, but  also ask feedback from everyone involved. Preferably in every stage of the service. This can easily be done with a digital platform.

When putting these two things together, historical data and feedback, that’s when the real magic happens. We can compare what we delivered and what was expected by the customers, and modify our program based on feedback.

In this article we opened up what digitalisation means and what the available data enables us to do. In coming articles we’ll introduce good practices when designing and implementing digital wellbeing for preventive healthcare services. 

And yes, the magic word digitalisation is now defined in our context. It means that we have access to data!

 

 

 

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How one of the biggest cities in Finland pilots wellbeing coaching as an online service

How one of the biggest cities in Finland pilots wellbeing coaching as an online service

How one of the biggest cities in Finland pilots wellbeing coaching as an online service

In this article we describe how the City of Vantaa is piloting wellbeing coaching directed to people in certain risk-categories. In this pilot the City of Vantaa is testing different online coaching tools to simplify the communication between the customer and the coach. Coach4Pro is one of the platforms in this test.

The Coach4Pro platform enables the coach to guide, encourage and share information about healthy habits with minimum effort. Writers of this post are project specialist Marianna Suonpää and project coordinator Inka Mannoja, both working for the City of Vantaa.

 

Co-operation between the City Of Vantaa and Coach4Pro

Background

In this pilot, the City of Vantaa and Coach4Pro test the effectiveness of long lasting wellbeing coaching. The working name for this coaching is Wellbeing Mentoring, and three target groups have been chosen as pilot clients for a two-year period, 2020-2021. Participants of the pilot falls into certain risk groups due to their health situation. They are identified among clients in public sector health centers, pregnant women and students in vocational schools.

 

Mentoring and the content

In the beginning of the mentoring participants physically meet the mentor. In this meeting the participant’s situation and habits are discussed and goals for the mentoring are set. The mentoring lasts for one year and consists of online coaching, one-to-one meetings and group meetings. After one year mentoring, there will be a one year long follow-up period. This period is to ensure that the new habits have been integrated as a part of their normal life.

One of the tools used in the mentoring is Coach4Pro. It’s used to assign tasks to the participants. Tasks are used to encourage participants to reflect on which factors affect the wellbeing. In addition, the mentor shares information about exercises, nutrition and sleep. With Coach4Pro this can be done wherever and whenever.

Ennaltaehkäisy VantaaScreenshot from the project’s website. (Preventive healthcare is investment for the future)

 

Currently one hundred persons are participating in the mentoring. Participation has been high, very few persons have dropped out due to health reasons.

The mentor in this pilot is Inka Mannoja, who’s guiding the participants throughout the programme. Among the participants that have been in the programme for nine months one can see improvement in health indicators. Activity has improved and some participants have lost weight. Participants themselves have reported that they are in better physical shape, their thinking has changed and they cope better in daily life.

What is typical to mentoring, is that the starting point and goals are different for different participants. This means that the content of the mentoring also has to be somewhat different. Things to consider are how to find time for daily exercise, how to find a new hobby, how to control one’s weight, how to monitor thinking habits and sleeping and eating well. All these have a big impact to the sustainable wellbeing, and that’s why they are key elements in mentoring.

 

From pilot to normal operation

Testing and development of this mentoring service continues till fall 2021. Feedback and experiences from the program are collected continuously. This data is used to evaluate how useful the service is and what the impact of the service has. The goal is to integrate this service as part of the basic services of the City of Vantaa.

 

Link to the pages of pilot: https://kunnolla.fi/

If you want to get more information, please contact:

Project Specialist Marianna Suonpää, 043 826 8121, marianna.suonpaa(at)vantaa.fi
Project Coordinator Inka Mannoja 040 190 7136, inka.mannoja(at)vantaa.fi

Friends-feature released on Coach4Pro

Friends-feature released on Coach4Pro

Friends-feature released on Coach4Pro

 

The latest software update provides a new home view and brings us Friends-feature.

The home view

We have improved the logic and look of home view. The user interface, both in mobile and computer, is now much clearer. Together with the new information buttons explaining all the main functions, home view is now easier than ever to use. As a coach, your clients will now have access to practically everything they need from the home view.

Friends

Now you can connect with your friends on Coach4Pro.
Friends enables creation of connections between people, regardless whether they are in the same team or in the same service in Coach4Pro. The Friends function makes it easier to build social networks, and makes the coach-client relationship more straightforward.

“This release is based on the feedback we get from coaches using the platform. Since we want to be the best online platform for health care experts, wellness coaches and personal trainers, we continue to challenge ourselves constantly. The feedback is essential for us to improve the platform.
– Mikko Koskela, CEO.

 

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The City of Vantaa is offering a health and wellness application for free to all its residents

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the City of Vantaa has been forced to suspend a number of the city’s health and wellness services. To support its citizens during the pandemic, the City of Vantaa has decided to offer the Coach4Pro health and wellness application free of charge for all of its over 230 000 residents.

– Once it was clear that we would have to cancel all of our instructed exercise groups, we started looking for alternative services that we could offer to our residents, says Anton Ahonen, Sports Manager for the City of Vantaa.

– We offer our residents live trainings online and a wellness program on the Coach4Pro platform. The residents of Vantaa can log into the wellness program through the steps published either by the City of Vantaa or by the local news paper Vantaan Sanomat.

How to coach online – Requirements and ideas

How to coach online – Requirements and ideas

 

If you’re new to the world of online coaching or if you just want to get some ideas on how to enhance your coaching business, then you have arrived to the right page.
In this article we’ll go through the basics of how to coach online and what’s required to have a chance to succeed in this fast growing market.

 

The plan

If you want to make a living as a coach, you need to think about your coaching as a business. Regardless if you’re doing coaching online or face to face, you need to have a clear business plan to be successful. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy, just try to make it simple and scalable.

Let’s start with your product, your coaching service.
You need a good description of your coaching service. What does it include, what does it not include, for how long will it last, who is it made for, is there people that shouldn’t buy this product, what is the target of the service? By answering these questions your potential clients will be able to decide if your service meets their needs.

So now you have your service description. The next question to answer is how will you produce it?
Regardless of what type of coaching content you will provide, it needs to be accessible online, so using some kind of online tool is recommended.

The next step to think about is how you will get your coaching content to your clients. Since we are talking about online coaching, you obviously need an online platform that allows you and your clients to connect. This platform should be the same as the tool you used to create your content with, so that you don’t have to use several different programs.

Your business plan should have a clear client path, where you describe step by step how the clients access your service. This has a great impact on the quality of your coaching service, especially when you start to get more customers.

 

The place

Now you have created something that your customers can buy. But where do they buy it? That’s the next question to figure out.

Most online coaches have their own websites. On the website your customers can read about you and what you are offering. It should also be made clear how the purchasing of your service is done. Creating a website doesn’t have to be something to loose sleep over, but if you think that it’s a too big step for you right now, you can try to manage with using social media only. Which takes us to the next step.

 

The promotion

Fantastic! Now you have a service and a place from where to buy it.
What you need now is visibility. You need the right kind of people, people that are interested in your services, to visit your website.

The most common way to get visibility nowadays is being active on social media. We would even go so far and say that your coaching company can not succeed without you being on social media. There are a lot of different medias available, but you do not need to be active on all of them. (Or you can, but then you won’t be doing anything else…) Try to figure out on what media your customers spends time on.

Not many coaches use solely social media to promote themselves. It’s also a good idea to visit discussion forums, exhibitions or events to meet potential customers. There are also coaches that use paid advertisements in a way or another.

Once you get famous enough though, you won’t actually need any of the above mentioned solutions to give you visibility. The word of mouth will take care of it for you. But that won’t happen over night. It takes years and years to create a successful customer retention.

 

The money

Now we have arrived to the most interesting but also the most challenging area. How to make a living on online coaching.

We can divide this into three segments. The cost of producing your service, the service price and the number of customers. They are all connected, and the only way for you to be successful is to make sure there’s a good balance between them.

We at Coach4Pro think that the first one, the cost of producing your service, is the most fascinating one but also the most challenging one. This has resulted in two articles about how to produce quality coaching for large amounts of people. Since we have written about this before, we will only touch this with a few words. Basically you should try to pre-create and automate as much as possible without loosing the personal touch with the clients. And instead of trying to offer your services to everyone, try to focus on a segment where you can grow.

It’s better to be the best at a specific thing than to be average at everything.

The service price can be very difficult to set. It’s a good idea to do some research and find out what prices your competitors with similar services have. But in the end, it’s a matter of supply and demand.

If you want to compete with low prices, you need to either have very low production costs or be ready to earn less per sell. If you put a higher price than your competitors you need to make sure that your clients are buying something extraordinary. Bear in mind that there is nothing expensive or cheap when it comes to online coaching, only value for money.

The number of customers is the single biggest factor in making money as an online coach. More customers means more money, as long as you can produce. A big challenge here is how to keep the quality of the service high when your customer numbers increases. Again, we have great content written about this already, so make sure to check that out.

 

Summary

  1. You need a business plan and a client path.
  2. You need a place from where to buy your coaching service.
  3. You need an online tool from where you actually do your coaching.
  4. You also need a place from where you get visibility.
  5. And you should always reflect on if what you are doing is earning you money.

 

 

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