Enquires & Customer Management

Anchor Hanover Group is England’s largest not-for-profit provider of housing and care for older people, operating 120 care homes across England. These services support over 6000 older people with a range of residential care needs where safety, dignity, independence, accessibility and regulatory assurance are central to day-to-day operations.

Purpose of this notice

Anchor Hanover Group is undertaking preliminary market engagement to understand supplier capability and market approaches for enquiries, admissions, occupancy and relationship management across its care home business. This notice is intended to alert the market that engagement is taking place, describe the opportunity at a high level and invite relevant suppliers to participate.

This notice forms part of a wider care technology pre-market engagement exercise that also includes nurse call and incident management. Anchor is considering these areas together to understand the market landscape, potential integration points and future delivery options across its care technology roadmap.

This activity enables market research to help Anchor define requirements, build the business case and design the target state architecture, by determining the extent to which enquiry management, CRM and customer financial management and/or workforce management is a specialist application that integrates to other systems or could be consolidated into a core care platform . It does not start a procurement process, does not commit Anchor to any future competition and supplier responses will not be scored or used to select or exclude suppliers.

Problem and opportunity

Anchor wants to improve the experience of prospective residents, relatives, representatives and colleagues from first enquiry through to accepted admission. The opportunity is to strengthen enquiry capture, qualification, marketing campaign attribution, home matching, assessment coordination, admissions progression, occupancy visibility and relationship management across a multi-site care home environment.

Anchor is seeking to reduce avoidable duplication, improve pipeline and conversion insight, support more consistent ways of working, increase occupancy and ensure that accepted admissions can transition effectively into downstream care, finance and reporting processes.

Likely scope and areas of interest .

The likely scope includes the capabilities needed to manage enquiries, admissions and occupancy from initial contact to accepted admission. Anchor is interested in understanding whether the market can meet this need through dedicated enquiries and admissions products, CRM-led approaches, broader care technology platforms or integrated partner models.

Anchor currently expects some care technology systems to be retained in the immediate future, including its care planning platform. Suppliers should therefore explain, at a high level, how their proposed approach would integrate with retained and future systems without creating unnecessary duplicate records or unclear ownership of care, resident, finance or reporting data.

Anchor may also need to consider a future customer financial planning capability alongside the shorter-term priority for enquiries management. Suppliers should explain whether their approach could support or integrate with future processes for indicative fees, funding arrangements, payer information, financial planning and handover into customer finance, without extending the immediate engagement into a detailed finance specification at this stage.

Anchor's target state architecture will also review workforce management and consider potential solutions to support rostering and time and attendance capabilities. Whilst not an immediate priority suppliers responding to this notice are welcome to highlight if this is included in their wider offer and the degree to which Anchor could consolidate applications into a core administrative platform.

Headline capability domains

1. Enquiry capture and qualification: consistent capture of enquiries across relevant channels, with appropriate qualification, prioritization, campaign attribution and source tracking.

2. Prospect, contact and relationship management: a clear view of prospective residents, representatives, relatives, referrers and other contacts involved in the decision-making journey.

3. Home matching, availability and occupancy: support for matching prospective residents to suitable homes and services, understanding availability and managing occupancy opportunities.

4. Journey, workflow and pipeline management: clear stages, ownership, actions, service levels, escalation and visibility from initial enquiry to admission or closure.

5. Assessment, decision and admissions coordination: support for pre-admission assessment, suitability decisions, approvals, room reservation and controlled progression to admission.

6. Communications and digital engagement: timely, accessible and appropriately branded communication with prospective residents, relatives, representatives and referrers, including digital and assisted-digital options.

7. Fees, funding and financial handover: capture and handover of indicative fees, funding arrangements, payer details and related information needed for downstream finance processes.

8. Integration, reporting and insight: interoperability with retained and future systems, data quality, reporting, conversion insight, performance management and enterprise-level visibility.

9. AI, innovation and advanced insight: capability to leverage AI, advanced analytics and emerging technologies through the solution itself or via partner ecosystems, enabling continuous innovation, improved decision-making and enhanced business outcomes.