Gary Griffin, Senior Account Executive, and Jack Dillon, Business Development Executive from Advantage Business Systems, discuss the operational pressures behind the development of EdgeCare, the company’s care management platform.
The Administrative Burden
Billing across multiple funding models, fragmented reporting, and reliance on agency staff remain among the most persistent administrative burdens facing care providers. According to Gary Griffin, resident billing is often the first pain point providers raise: “It’s the management of resident billing across multiple funding models, including local authority funded, privately funded, NHS funded and mixed funding arrangements, often across multiple care homes within a group.”
These pressures, combined with manual workforce scheduling and reporting that sits across disconnected systems, prompted Advantage Business Systems to develop EdgeCare, a configurable care management platform built on Microsoft technology. Griffin describes it as an accelerator rather than a bespoke build or an off-the-shelf package: “EdgeCare provides a proven foundation that delivers the majority of the functionality care providers require. We then work with care homes individually to tailor and extend the solution to align with their specific operational, regulatory and reporting requirements.”
Security By Design
Security was central to the decision to build on Microsoft’s stack. Care providers hold highly sensitive personal and medical data, making them, in the words of Jack Dillon, “a massive target for hackers and ransomware attacks.” Housing business applications within a single Microsoft tenant, rather than across multiple disconnected systems, is intended to give providers enterprise-grade security and compliance credentials from the outset, supported by tools such as Microsoft Purview, Defender for Cloud, and Sentinel.
Doctor helping to retired man, getting up from sofaReadiness and Reporting
Dillon identifies four recurring inefficiencies among the providers Advantage works with: cybersecurity and resilience, revenue leakage linked to inaccurate billing, compliance and inspection readiness, and workforce planning amid a growing reliance on agency staff. Delayed reporting compounds these issues, Griffin adds, as providers frequently resort to exporting data into spreadsheets to build a clear picture manually, leaving decisions based on outdated information. Centralising records is also positioned as a compliance tool: with CQC scrutiny of digital readiness increasing, Dillon argues that being able to produce audit information immediately has become a genuine operational advantage.
Preparing for AI
Both point to artificial intelligence as the next stage of development, though they frame it as dependent on existing infrastructure rather than a standalone fix. “Introducing AI into an already fragile solutions landscape doesn’t create efficiency; it simply accelerates the rate at which things break,” says Griffin. “Responsible AI governance begins long before model selection; it starts with building the right foundational systems, the right architecture and the right operational discipline.” For providers weighing up their next technology investment, the message from Advantage Business Systems is consistent: data architecture, security and governance need to be resolved before AI can deliver meaningful value.
