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All It's Quacked Up to Be
All It's Quacked Up to Be
2024 Trends & Insights for Scaling Australian ECE Businesses [Expert Panel]
Get ready to unlock the secrets to scaling and growing your early childhood business in this eye-opening episode! Join us as we dive into the dynamic world of the ECE industry and gain invaluable insights from our panel of experts. From the latest strategies in compliance and best practices to leadership training and team building, our esteemed guests share their expertise to help you take your childcare business to new heights.
Plus, we'll explore the innovative role of technology in enhancing operational efficiency, and discuss the robust demand for quality childcare services. Don't miss out on these game-changing tactics to revolutionize your business!
Gain the insights you need to navigate the challenges and opportunities in the early childhood industry.
Don't miss out on these actionable insights to improve workflows, accountability, and leadership in your childcare business. Tune in now to revolutionize your operations!
All right. Well, thanks for joining us today. Brett Neller, CEO of Line Leader. For anybody that doesn't know me, I've been in the seat since October 1st, so been a wild ride to close out 23 and excited for 2024. But today, talking a little bit about scaling success, key takeaways from the benchmark report that we released here in the first month of the year, but have some really special guests with us today. I'd love to go around the horn and introductions, tell a little bit about yourself and then maybe a little bit what you do today as it relates to early childhood education and your company. So I'll give it to Jason first.
Speaker 2:Yep, my name's Jason and I am the founder of Sector Early Education News Platform, which I hope everybody knows. I also help lead a small group of long daycare services in and around Sydney in New South Wales, australia.
Speaker 1:Awesome thanks for joining us, jason Ash Hi.
Speaker 3:Brett Ash from Care for Kids. In Total, we run a childcare search comparison website across Australia. We have now about 35% of the long daycare market as partners and continue to extend that out. We've just ticked over now 3 million unique users of the platform. Wow, congrats, thank you. So it is growing from strength to strength.
Speaker 1:Awesome thanks for joining us, salyn.
Speaker 4:Hello, thank you, Salyn DePrisco from Line Leader, Head of Business Operations in Australia, formerly a user of the Line Leader platform so big advocate, and previously worked at a fairly large organization in Australia as an operator using the platform, so familiar with some of the pain points that some of our operators are facing today and always open to discuss strategies for success in that space.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Well, thanks for everybody for joining us, Excited to power through some of these questions, get your thoughts. You all have a little bit of a different experience and flavor you can add and hopefully those listening get a lot out of this and can take or have some good takeaways to take back as an operator, as an owner. I think it'd be really great. So we'll do a little bit of a round-robin question here. Give each of everybody a little bit of a chance to speak. First question there's been a lot of changes and I think if you look past the five years, over the past five years the space has evolved in different ways, from legislation, operators, even technology platforms.
Speaker 2:But from your perspective and I'll throw it to Jason first, how have you seen the industry change in the last 12 months specifically, Well, there's one thing that we know about the early learning space in Australia I can't speak for the US, canada, uk, et cetera is that it's always changing, there is always something going on and it's always forcing us to evolve. There's no doubt that 2023 saw a continuation of the challenges around attracting and retaining staff. That was a key issue. There's no doubt, in 2023, demand for early learning services was quite robust, quite solid. However, despite the government being very generous with a new childcare package, it did not stimulate particularly large additional demand, which was very notable Yep. And the third thing that we've all been struggling to a degree with is inflation. It's the cost of running our services which impacts us Yep. So the operating environment needs to be more re-engineered with all the workforce demand, workforce and costs.
Speaker 1:They've changed a bit as part of that, yeah, really interesting, I think, ruth, I'll let Ash anything additionally you'd like to add to that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think, just echoing what Jason has said, is in the five years I've been part of the sector, the biggest change I've seen is the focus on staff and it was quite easy to get staff five years ago, pre-COVID. Now people are paying $5,000 sign-on bonuses without hesitation for some roles and I think there's a really big investment now to keep employees and staff motivated and rewarded within the actual services and I think we're now seeing that culture is no longer a buzzword but it's a requirement. The other point, touching on again what Jason said, is there was significant change in government investment into childcare over the last 12 months and the subsidy has been a huge, huge improvement for families. But there's two camps here. There's the more affluent families that are seeing this as a bonus and they're really going through their selection list and looking at their criteria and they're happy to have a larger payment as long as it's a quality offering that fits their needs and their location.
Speaker 3:Now this is benefiting the newest style centers with all the bells and whistles, or the centers that have a really strong reputation by brand or service offering. So my standout brands here are people like Harmony, ELC, your Montessori Academy or even Eden Academy. The second group of the families that are feeling the strain of the cost of living and they're spending more time online searching for the best value for money, childcare, looking for the lowest gap payment, while still ensuring that a large part of their criteria list is being met and what this is resulting in. There's a lot of centers that sit in the middle that aren't the most value based, or they aren't the best branded or have the strongest value proposition, and these centers in the middle are the ones with the biggest occupancy issues.
Speaker 1:Interesting. So do you just follow up on that from the gaps that you've seen? The biggest occupancy issues. What are they doing to mitigate that? Are they doing extra incentives? Are they getting a bit more aggressive from a pricing perspective? How are they looking to remediate a little bit?
Speaker 2:of that.
Speaker 3:It's quite interesting. I think a lot of people aren't using price as a lever. To Jason's point there is a lot of inflation costs within the business and I don't think anyone is looking at cost cutting from a daily fee perspective as a growth perspective. I think what people are doing is they're doubling down and tripling down on marketing and they're doing so without really understanding the community that they serve and what they need to do to tailor that offering. So if you're again on one end of the spectrum, you're either a low cost operator or you're a high value operator. You're attracting parents in the marketplace. But if you don't really stand for anything, if you just have a childcare center, that's still a quality operation but you're not really calling out your strong value proposition or providing points of difference, that's where they're really starting to struggle. So it's not just about throwing more money at marketing. It's about really looking at your service offering and how you can reposition that in market.
Speaker 1:Got it, thanks. And then Salin from your perspective, you do a lot with our customer base and from a technology platform perspective, talks a lot of different operators. Anything you've heard from them or you're seeing over the past 12 months.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think it connects well with both Jason and Ash's point, in the sense that parents' expectations are higher than ever. So not only is the cost of living higher, but the expectation is that they want bang for their buck with these services. And so what are they offering to these parents and making sure that they're getting quality for how much they're paying? And the staffing crisis is no secret to these parents as well, and so that plays into that. Parents are asking about the longevity of the staff and how satisfied they are and the benefits that they're getting. So it does trickle down all the way to the parents as well and their feeling that they want to get value for what they're paying for.
Speaker 1:Awesome, great answers. Thanks for sharing, I guess looking forward. Talking about the last 12 months, but forward looking any other additional themes you see from like the industry evolution taking place the next five to 10 years. If you had a glass ball, you could look in and see hey, this is what's going to change. Is it still marketing? Is it still flushing in the subside? How are operators going to approach the industry and business a little bit in a different way? I'll start to Ash.
Speaker 3:Maybe you have any thoughts on that first, yes, a few points on this, which I think you know. Since 2004, we've seen more parents searching online and that's obviously where our data is quite strong. But this is based on data from the Australian Institute of Family Studies, which indicates that in 2022, the parents, the percent of parents who were both employed, with 71% of couples, and this is up from if you compare it to 2,056% of families, and from 1979, 40%. Now we're seeing a big shift in those working requirements and the shift towards attitudes in the importance of early learning in a child's development, which means we're going to see search volume still continue to increase and the utilization of childcare in the medium term still continue to increase.
Speaker 3:I think one big trend that we are starting to see is that more parents are now paying attention to the particular learning style, and this is seeing a rise in popularity of styles such as the Reggio Emilia and Montessori, and Montessori is probably one of the most sought after learning styles that we can see online on our website. I think that the other thing is that it's a bit of a gut feel, but I think building design will start to shift and change over the next five years as a result of high property cost and building cost. Many developers we speak to a consistently saying that sites aren't stacking up and I think the answer is going to be mixed sites where you have an increased number of childcare centers downstairs with co-worker offices upstairs, and this is going to help again the flexible work environment of parents, along with change that the supply side within the childcare industry.
Speaker 1:I mean that makes a ton of sense. I mean they do it with retail and living right, so it's interesting content. I haven't heard of that but that makes a ton of sense, jason, I guess forward looking, any thoughts there on trends versus the past 12 months? More forward looking.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, the big thing that we're thinking about or coming to understand is that we have an election, more than likely will be called around this time next year. It has to be completed by April, may next year and, in the run up to an election, childcare, more recently, has been thrust into the limelight Yep, and the current government will not want to do that without having some wins under its belt, yep, which, in my view, or our view, raises the probabilities that we're going to see some meaningful policy announcement announcements at some point in the next six months. The main one that comes to mind, of course, is the wage negotiations that they're currently ongoing between employee and employer representatives and the government. We think it's likely that there will be a resolution on this and they will announce a pay rise with the government funding it, and that will be one of the big election narratives that the government will use going into the back end of this year and into next.
Speaker 2:We also have to be aware that the Productivity Commission are about a third of the way through their process and producing a very meaningful analysis of the broader sector with a specific mandate to determine and include as to whether the current system is fit for purpose, yep. That could also be very meaningful with regard what the sector looks like on a three to five years view, and I will remind listeners that we had a Productivity Commission report in 2014, which was commissioned by the government at the time, and four years later we saw the childcare subsidy introduced. So these reports often precede quite meaningful changes. We don't know what those changes look like, yep, but they tend to precede meaningful changes. So for us as operators, at this point in time, we're very much business as usual and we drive into much of the narratives that are shared, but we're also aware in the back of our mind that there could be some changes. Some of them might be good for the sector, some of them might be less good for the sector. We don't know, yep, so we're just waiting and watching.
Speaker 1:Interesting. Yeah, politics always have some sort of impact on all this. Right Same across all geographies?
Speaker 2:Absolutely, it's just remarkable, and I don't believe it was as extreme as it is now, as it was, say, 10-12 years ago. But that being said, if you look back at the history of the sector back to the 90s, it was also politicized back then. So, like it or not, if you're working in early education, there's always going to be a political dynamic to what we do as operators. We try not to get caught up with that. We're kind of like let's deal with what we've got in a moment. We've got to fill our centers, we've got to manage our staff, we've got to manage our costs. That's what we're doing. But in the back of our minds we're very aware that there could be meaningful change on the horizon.
Speaker 1:Yeah absolutely. Not necessarily what you can plan for today, but just be mentally prepared for some sort of change down the road.
Speaker 4:Interesting and that's Lynn.
Speaker 1:So forward-looking, next five to ten years. Talked a little bit about how maybe it changes from a spatial type of planning perspective politics anything additional.
Speaker 4:That's really interesting feedback from you, jason and Ash, about what you're seeing in the sector, specifically, ash, what you had said about the spaces and those co-working spaces, because I do think we'll see the trend of hybrid working will very much continue and so that aligns, I think, fairly nicely there.
Speaker 4:Of course, I think there is a bit of a trend with a younger generation in that space, more specifically as operators and leaders in the space, and with that, I think, from the technology space. That is advantageous for us especially, and Ash as well, in the sense that operators are looking to move away from pen and paper. They're looking at very data-driven decisions, I think, and so having software and technology that supports those decisions will be something that I think a lot of operators are now no longer seeing as nice to have, or cherries on tops, but absolute expectations and, especially if they're reporting to any sort of board, the expectation there is that they'll be able to have some real data and some numbers to be able to report on. So very much seeing the software and the technology space driving the sector for growing organizations.
Speaker 1:I think Jason and I have actually talked about that. There's a lot of investment in child care, whether it's private equity or public companies going public, and it's kind of a different dynamic in the space. It's a lot of data consolidation for board meetings and metrics and it's really interesting how it's all shifting that way. But I'd like to maybe shift and ask the question about competing priorities. All these things are happening right. There's politics, there's inflation, there's macroeconomic factors and all those put a little bit of different type of pressure on the center operators and owners. So how would you suggest or recommend leaders and operators look at balancing growth versus quality loss or program quality loss or innovation versus risk management? How do you balance that and what do you have to look at as an operator? Any thoughts on that, I think, would be interesting to bring up. Jason, if you have anything to start, I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I can speak from experience, given that we have a small portfolio of centers and the way we're approaching things at the moment is that we are segmenting them. We are understanding precisely what we need to do to optimize the particular center. In some instances it might be labor-focused, some instances might be cost-focused, some instances it might be enrollment-focused. So if we've got six centers, three of them have got labor tightening opportunities, then we will embark on that. The other three, if it's a top-line situation, then we will focus very much on that. So what do we do? Well, one area is that we allocate budget to support performance marketing. We also allocate budget to support content creation which we can use online for SEO. We also allocate budget to explore lead management. The centers we own are not particularly sophisticated. We don't have a CRM system in there. We're actively looking at it now. The reason is is that we want to optimize our business and we recognize that the centers we're bringing on are not optimized and there's lots of runway to do that.
Speaker 2:I'm not concerned about innovating at this juncture. In terms of program, our programs are absolutely fine. I am concerned about growth, but that's a separate discussion. It's about finding new centers. What I'm concerned about is getting those three services up to where they need to be. So what do I need to do? I need to explore marketing. I need to explore leverage technology. I need to explore training my team. There's work to be done. Where do we fit in that segmentation that Ash shared about? We're in the middle. We're in that middle. Our job as operators is to find the pathway to bring us up. We see marketing and technology as an important mover in that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, every operation has its own equation, right, and it could be a little bit of revenue, it could be a little bit of staff, it could be a little bit of consumables. Whatever it is right and it's just trying to figure out, dial it in and calibrate each of the components of that equation to make it work.
Speaker 2:And that's what makes our sector so extraordinary to be involved in, because it's a puzzle, yeah, and there's a finite number of pieces, yeah, and it's up to you, as the leader whether you're a center leader, a room leader or an organizational leader to identify the puzzle pieces and start to gently put them together. Yeah, and that's the skill, that's why we do what we do and why we're still here, and so, really, really well said, that's the way we look at things?
Speaker 1:Yeah, 100%. And then you got to look at the pieces. How do you amplify certain pieces and how do you to work to optimize others? So that's, I mean, that's every business. So we do too right and we do technology. So it's like what's the equation, what's going to move the needle on the variables in that equation? So that's how I look at. I think it's super applicable across childcare ECE as well. So so, lynn, what about you? What thoughts on balancing? You know, quality innovation versus risk management and growth versus program quality loss?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean, I think, Jason, you highlighted it fairly well. I think there's many levers you can push and pull, and so it's understanding which ones you do need to push and pull and maybe not being distracted by the shiny new trends, but maybe focusing more so on similar to what Jason said what is really important to your organization or to your center, specifically setting clear values and goals and making sure that comes from the top down and everyone involved in your organization understands what's involved there. I think there are, like we said at the very top of the call, the ECE space is constantly changing. There's always new technology, there's always new trends, there's always new things happening. But setting clear goals and priorities for your organization and then, rather than changing everything at once, right, making fine tuning that process and pushing and pulling the very specific levers, I think is how I would tackle that.
Speaker 1:Excellent. And then, ash, I'll let you close up. Any thoughts for this question relative to risk versus innovation.
Speaker 3:Link. Jason and Selenium nailed it in my mind. So everything they've said I agree with. I think just adding is really with anything that you roll out from an innovative point of view, for me there's kind of three guiding principles, which is ultimately it's child safety and well-being, child growth and parent communication. So in anything you're doing, if you nail those three as guiding principles or as values as Selenium was saying and Jason was saying you'll be in a good space. I think that the other key point for me is it still surprises me that operators have great ideas and they think of things from a new innovation and a growth perspective, but they're so afraid to bring parents on that journey and chat to them. And I think this is imperative in the sense of getting things right and mitigating some of those risks of adoption is really start the process with having quality conversations with your parents, understand what quality looks like for them and have a really strong change management approach to rolling that out, and I think that's a key addition for me as well.
Speaker 1:Change management is the hardest thing, I think, across the board, if you're trying to do anything right because you're worried a little bit about the staff and how it's going to impact them.
Speaker 1:You're worried about the unknown and if it's going to have a positive impact or negative impact. But sometimes you got to take a chance and take some risk on to evolve and move forward. So I think that's really important point Interesting. So that's kind of current state of ECE in Australia. I want to turn it to enrollment and growth a little bit and talk a little bit about trends that are emerging in 24 and what trends are you seeing and what do you expect to change throughout the year? And how do you expect enrollment trends coming out of 23, enrollment trends in the 2024 and how do you see that evolving throughout the year? And, ash, if you could take that one and start off, I'd appreciate it, yeah, perfect.
Speaker 3:So what I'm starting to see is the best operators in my mind are evolving their businesses from just childcare and early education to really understanding parent experience and how you sell to parents. So some groups and they're not big groups, we're talking five or six centres They've now got dedicated relationship managers who conduct the centre tours and try to convert to an enrollment. They're preferring their centre directors to focus on the day-to-day operations and build the relationships with the families once they're in the centres and they're taking that pressure off by having relationship managers who essentially float around the centres with the sole focus of new parents. I think groups are realising as well that centre managers don't always have a sales skill set. Their job is to look after the children in the centres, work and look after I guess you know the staff and grow that business. But we've got more and more people starting to look further afield and come to us and go to sales coaches and look to really skill up their front-line centre directors if that's their model, to look at better conversion rates or getting people from a tour converted to an enrollment. And groups are understanding that there is a huge weighting on understanding parents wanting to understand communication. So it's not just about you know. Looking at the learning philosophies in the centre, they want to know on a daily and weekly basis how are they going to be communicated with, what information is going to be shared, what they can expect and that's a really big one, because it's really important that parents understand this and obviously centres understand this, as it creates a good expectation, understanding that, if well managed, you should see less and less parent issues.
Speaker 3:The last thing I'll add as well is from a marketing point of view. In the last three years, I can honestly say that it feels like the spending online has doubled or tripled. Everyone's now talking about SEO, sem, spending on meta and, yes, this is all very important and yes, I put up my hand, I'm biased, I run care for kids. Parents are hungry for customised information and the reassurance from other parents are really around the current experiences that they've gone through. There needs to be multiple touch points to build trust with parents, and more parents are really, you know, these days have grown up with that Google age of just researching it and not jumping to the most convenient or best known option. So I would suggest be present on all channels, be authentic, show unpolished and unfiltered content. That's what parents want. They want something that's realistic.
Speaker 1:I agree, I'm a parent and I can relate to everything you just said, so I think that's really genuine and important. So people want to feel comfortable, they want the experiences. They don't want to be tricked or sold in a bad way, but they want to send their kids to a safe place where they're comfortable with, they trust the people that they're, you know, allowing them to take care of the kids every day. So it resonates with me. Until I get it, I guess Salin from Enrollment Trends 2024, anything you know from you get a lot of interaction with many different customers that do it in different ways. But from your perspective, what do you see changing or expanding in 24?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think Ash is right in the sense that it is more parent. It's more of a parent led experience. Even one to two years ago, working with operators and promoting and suggesting tools and services that allow for families to self serve, there would be some operators that were more reluctant because it didn't necessarily align or work perfectly into their schedules, and there's been a massive shift where operators are understanding the importance of catering to the family's preferred experience and that is self service. We know that for a fact that families do prefer to self serve. We're seeing that online quite a bit.
Speaker 1:Jason, Enrollment Trends expanding and emerging in 24. Any thoughts there?
Speaker 2:So from a top down perspective, one has to be a little bit troubled that the 23% increase in entitlement spending funding childcare funding into the sector that was precipitated by the cheaper childcare changes in July didn't yield a particularly large uptick in demand. Yeah, and it's just notable there. So what does that mean? That basically means parents, rather than committing more time in care for their children, are electing to pocket the savings to either pay down their debt or use to fund their lifestyles. So against that backdrop, there is a little concern in my mind's eye that the structural demand for care may have peaked for the moment. I mean, if $2.6 billion can't do it, what can?
Speaker 2:But then, on the other side of the coin, if you're an owner of a service or leading a service, there is always opportunities to stand out from your peers, to engage families, to love your staff and ensure that your facilities are well presented. All of these things together combined create a value proposition which will attract families. Yeah, so it's really down to us as operators and back to that puzzle. To complete the puzzle, yeah, make sure that you're projecting the true essence of your service, whether it be online or not, and the demand will come, and we've always followed that motto in our service If we do the right things, the right things will happen. You do good things, good things will happen. If you present correctly to the parents and care for the children and team, the parents will come and that's the way we're approaching it at this moment.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's good, it's an awesome perspective. So, I guess, shifting to growth, right. So it's hard to grow if you don't have that equation or that puzzle figured out or have an idea how to optimize it and make it work. So where have you seen mistakes from executives when trying to grow by acquisition, right? Not just fill up a center, right? And how can those in the audience that are listening think about that and make sure that they don't have, you know, trip up by thinking that the only way to grow is through acquisition? Or how do you grow effectively through acquisition? I guess that's the question.
Speaker 2:The early learning sector is a really interesting sector because if you buy a center, you know there's no room to grow over and above your license places. It's just a fact, yep. So you can buy a center that's a turnaround at 25% occupancy and you can apply your skills. And there's a lot of very skilled leaders out there who can take 25% to 100% in 18 months, no problem. But once you've reached 100%, you've maxed out, you've got to pay your team and you've got to pay your team well, because you love your team. With no team, without your team, you can't do anything, yep. So the idea of cost cutting at labor's, at the labor line, forget it, it ain't going to happen.
Speaker 2:It's just not good good sense. Yep. And elsewhere, the P and L. There's not much to play with Yep. So I can see why ambitious early learning leaders look to grow their networks and footprints, because if they have success in one center, they've got nowhere else to grow, so the right thing to do in their mind is to buy another. Why not? That's what happens. However, buying a center sounds a lot easier than it actually is.
Speaker 2:The key to successful acquisitions, in no doubt, is the work you do prior to signing that contract, yep. You need to understand the location, you need to understand the team, you need to understand the vendors. You need to understand the competition. You need to understand the policy arrangements, accs, incentives for labor. It's a big job and I would encourage all aspirational or ambitious early learning leaders out there to ensure that they do their homework, because there is nothing more difficult than acquiring something that you thought was something and ends up being something else, particularly if you lack experience. If you're very experienced, you can turn things around quickly, but if you lack experience, it's really challenging, yep. So yeah, there's a lot of myth making around growing networks, how quick and easy it is. It's very difficult. It requires real attention and real work, but if you're prepared to do it. I mean how meaningful. You're supporting more families, you're supporting more children, you're empowering team members at scale. It's a beautiful space to be Yep, and getting there is not easy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a smile, because acquisition is challenging. It is never what you actually purchased or you thought you were purchasing. There's always some sort of variance to what you thought you were going to experience. But the acquisition playbook we call it acquisition playbook right, it's part of the diligence process. You need an acquisition playbook. You need to think through all these different parts of the operation and make sure you have your checklist before you go into even considering it. I think is really really important. So, ash, what about your any thoughts on acquisition and making sure mistakes that you've seen or you've heard from the executives and what you have to have in place before you actually take the plunge on the acquisition?
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely, and I think, touching on what Jason was saying, on the flip side, there are a lot of again, very smart people who go out there.
Speaker 3:They buy an amazing center.
Speaker 3:It's at 90% plus occupancy, it's got a stable staff base, it's making money.
Speaker 3:They buy it, they try to make it more efficient, they try to streamline it to fit the structure of the other centers.
Speaker 3:They roll out new policies, new procedures, they change the communication style, sometimes they rebrand it because it increases the valuation and the multiple of having a branded portfolio, and what they do is they take everything that they, that made that center a success, and they strangle it with this generic approach to running a childcare center that, on paper, should actually make more money and should be more efficient.
Speaker 3:But what they fail to understand and this is what Jason touched on is they've now destroyed the culture, they've removed that community connection and the value proposition changes and parents end up leaving, and so we've seen centers that were at 90% plus occupancy and two years later they're trading at less than 45%. And so what I'd say to people is sometimes just take a step back and have a look at the actual center and what made it successful, and don't I'm not allowed to swear it. But don't tinker with it too much and try to get it to fit your exact mold. Sometimes you've got to keep those little bits of points of difference and uniqueness in those different communities and regions that the centers operate.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'd just like to reiterate that's absolutely bang on the money. I mean, it's absolutely bang on the money. And how do you manage that in the moment? And the way we do it is that we conduct serious due diligence beforehand so we know what we're getting, and then we have a post-settlement implementation plan Yep and that plan is really explicit about the strengths and the weaknesses and the opportunities and the threats. So we're all absolutely clear that that stuff we don't need to tinker with. It's going beautifully. And that stuff might lead a little bit of tweaking, it needs some help, but this is all work, it's all effort and commitment and again underlines that the more you put in, the more you get out. And that's the way I believe it and that's a really important part of our business and I suspect with you guys as well, it's like you put in the work, you'll get the results. But it is work post-pre-settlement and post-settlement. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely right.
Speaker 3:Can I add one more thing, which is communicate with the team and the team members, because I think there's often this view of you know we communicate with them last because we're afraid that you know they'll leave and they'll ruin the business. But they know what's happening, they can feel it, they can sense it and by not communicating you're actually, you know, causing, you know disrupting their day to day and you know it leeches out into the parents. I think bring team members in on that journey and communicate with them as early as you can and start to reassure them, start to bring them in and help them build some of that transition plan with you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, over. Communicate, take care of your people, right? That's kind of two most important things from acquisition and growth. Well, I'm going to shift a little bit to technology and automation. You know that's part of growing and you think about that through acquisition. But I get Salin, I'll throw it to you first. But are there new ways? You've seen multi-site childcare brands rely on technology and you know today that they weren't doing five years ago. I mean, you worked for a big operator. Now you work and help a lot of other different profiles of operators. But have you seen how, you know, multi-site brands have relied on technology and what opportunities you know? Do you see that they're facing today?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think the idea of a tech stack is more present than ever, and what I mean by that is different tools have dedicated intentions and they, you know, would fit together. So lead generation tool, crm tool, your CMS and your parent engagement. So I think that was maybe not something we previously saw. Having that tech stack and having tools that are dedicated to doing a certain job and doing that job in a really functional way, and the opportunities there really are endless. Specifically, staff time saving right.
Speaker 4:A lot of the reason we are implementing these tools is to save our staff time, is to remove any of that manual menial work and have them going back to focus on the basics. We've highlighted that maybe we're introducing more sales centric folks into the industry and into the services and, at the end of the day, families are sending their children to these services to be educated and cared for, and so introducing tools that take care of these jobs so that they can go back to why they even join the industry in the sector in the first place is because they love to care for children and educate children. So I think using these tools that were initially designed in our own place is a big game changer, and then also having these tools integrate with each other is another fantastic opportunity. We're seeing that space happen more and more, with integrations, of course, but programs working together or understanding that tech stack idea and where they fit alongside each other.
Speaker 1:Yep, love it. Ash anything to add on to that piece?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I sort of. I spoke to an operator to get a real understanding of this. So a shout out to Brett Stokes from Beach Kids Early Learning. I think he talked a lot about the fact that artificial intelligence has started to impact the ECE sector, like every other industry, and there's opportunities from your rostering, your payroll system, documentation, your policy procedures, questionnaires and so on, and I think that's all great. I think one of the challenges is there's the potential for over automation and it's really important for operators to ensure that there is still a personalized reflection or personalized observation on each child and we don't just rely on AI and these new innovative tools doing everything for us.
Speaker 1:Yep, I agree. There's a lot of buzzwords around AI and people don't necessarily understand everything that that means and entails. And the personalization piece is really key. Jason, do you believe that too? Or are you trying to figure out how AI optimizes the business? Or are you looking at technology? I mean, you mentioned that you don't have a CRM today, but maybe down the road. How are you looking at that to enable you to run a better operation and a better service?
Speaker 2:Yeah so we think that there are. We try and buck it. So how do I phrase it? We try and segment our broader business into areas which can be served with specific types of solutions. So the enrollment piece, the parent engagement piece, the lead management piece, the tool piece, that's one bucket, yep. And having an effective CRM system to manage that is logical in this day and age, yep.
Speaker 2:The challenge is that many of the service managers across Australia may not be ready or prepared to digitize that process, yep, but from a management perspective we love to see it. The other big bucket is workforce labor management. Yeah, and there are a number of pretty extensive programs out there which can help with the human capital management essentially awards, pay, professional learning, tracking, qualifications, a whole bucket of uses. There's a lot of automation in there which certainly makes our life easy. We're about to employ a new system to manage exactly that. We're ready for that now, yeah. And then we have the booking side of things. We need a childcare management system, which is the heart of the business, no doubt about it. And some of the more progressive systems at the moment extend down into the classroom and help manage the quality piece, documentation, ops and reporting, et cetera, and then extend out of the center into the parents. Yeah, so that's how we think about our technology stack.
Speaker 2:Where are we on that journey? Well, we're probably around 60% there, yeah, and the nature of our business is that we buy smaller, formerly mom and dad operated services, so they're very paper-driven, they're very traditional and it's a journey to get them to buy into Yep. The fact that if you use this platform which we'd encourage you to do it will save you X number of hours a week. If you use this platform, which we encourage you to do you can hold your team accountable for X, y and Z Yep. But that's a journey, yeah, and hence why we aren't 100% automated and tech-led across the organization. But we will get there and once we're there with those three main buckets three to four yep we will then put an overlay on top, yeah, and we will be able to draw out the relevant data and insights we need into a business information system Yep. So we know where we're going, we know what the market can offer us to help us do that. It's just a question of calibrating our aspirations to the reality of the centers we've acquired and operate.
Speaker 1:Yeah, makes 100% sense, and you got to do it when you're ready, right, and the system can handle it and the team can handle it and you're ready. You don't want too much disruption, so I totally get it.
Speaker 2:Sorry to interrupt, but the smarts are out there the roots and bounds in the user experience yep, and the outcomes that come from engaging with modern, contemporary technology stacks, it's there. It's just a question of whether our workforce, our parents, are ready yep, and as a leader, I've got to manage that tension. I know what it can do, but I know what we can handle. And I've got to gradually bring everybody together at some point in the future yep, but the future is clear. It's just getting there.
Speaker 1:Yep, 100% makes sense. Well, to wrap up the podcast in question, I got one last question for y'all to close it up. Safety and security right Always number one when you're in the space and dealing with education and children. What are your tips for maintaining child safety and mitigating any security risks? Especially when you have multi-sites, it's a little bit harder. So, Ash, do you have any comments? To close up the podcast on safety and security and tips?
Speaker 3:I don't really have a strong point of view to comment on this, just not being a center operator, so I'm actually getting to hear what Jason has to say on this.
Speaker 1:All right, Jason.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, thanks, ash. There's two things that we focus on really clearly is that we try to develop a culture of responsibility in our centers Yep. The interesting thing about the childcare space is we know what we need to do. It's called the national quality framework, yep. It's all there, yep. So when we're thinking about compliance related matters, we're thinking about delivering a quality program, we think about ensuring supervision and mitigating risk. It's all there, it's all stepped out.
Speaker 2:The question is is your team sufficiently engaged to be adhering to the various requirements? So we try and manage that by creating responsibility Culture. You, as team members, are responsible, yep. You therefore need to own your program, you need to own your practice, yep. It's not nobody else's fault, it's not nobody else, it's you, yep. And we do that by creating we've got a head of safety, we've got a head of evacuation plans, yep. We've got a chief of rostering, yep.
Speaker 2:So we try and allocate responsibilities amongst the team which create that sense of ownership and responsibility which help us, as an organization, sleep well at night because we feel we've got it covered, yep, now we may not. So, combined with that, cultural responsibility has to be an oversight level, yep. And technology is really helpful for that Checklists are really helpful. For that we can track checklists through our various platforms as to whether people are doing what they're supposed to be doing or not. Yep, we can see from tracking ratios on a real-time basis yep, whether we're adhering to our obligations or not. Yep, but it's two-fold you can put in the systems and the team won't respond Yep, so you need to create the culture of responsibility and then have oversight as to where they're managing their rooms. Yep, and that's the way we're approaching things. It's two-fold people and tech.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Love it. So, Salina, any closing thoughts on that?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think the only thing I would say to complement what Jason said is practice, and training is, of course, really important in that space as well. So I really like the piece about ownership of the specific responsibilities but also having training that goes to cybersecurity, but also evacuation plans or off-site excursions and then practicing those so that there's accountability, but also so that everyone is familiar with the processes, because you can have all the processes in the world, but if people aren't familiar with them, then when they're, you know having forbid, there's an event people aren't prepared on how to actually behave properly. That's so right.
Speaker 2:Training, training, training. I didn't mention that, but you're spot-on to raise it, salina. That's part of the culture of responsibility. It's that we got to set the team up for success, yep. To be owners, to be responsible, yep. And in order to do that, you need to communicate and try spot-on.
Speaker 1:Yep accountability framework. That's perfect so well. Thank you for taking the time. I think this was great. I hope Salina and Ash Jason really appreciate you taking the time out of your day. Hopefully those that listen have got a couple good takeaways and hopefully, if you have any questions for us listeners, please send us your feedback and we'll distribute. You know some responses via Ash and Jason down the road, and Salina as well, but thank you so much. Thank you for all that you do in the space and excited for everyone for 2024.
Speaker 1:Thank you Thanks very much for your time. Thank you so much.