Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - FAMILIADOS (familiados.com - a marketplace for professional caregiving)

Teaser

Care is a global need without geographic or demographic boundaries. At some point, every person and every family will need care, due to seniority, disability, sickness, hospitalization, etc. Here in the UE the population is quickly getting older, and care is a major concern...

Summary

Care is a global need without geographic or demographic boundaries. At some point, every person and every family will need care, due to seniority, disability, sickness, hospitalization, etc. Here in the UE the population is quickly getting older, and care is a major concern. This trend will continue over the next few decades, with dramatic economic, political and social implications. The current care system is already struggling to cover the basic needs.

Chronic situations requiring long-term care are somehow covered, either formally by the public or private sectors (residential homes, day-care centres…), or informally by the family or independent professionals.

Temporary care needs (emergencies, substitutions, holydays, specialized care situations…) requiring a few hours or days of care, are harder to solve due to the difficulty of finding someone skilled and available for short periods. These services are usually covered by relatives and individuals that are found through classified ads, hospital boards or by recommendation. Such methods are poor as they do not provide much information about the care giver before hiring him/her, and often lead to bad experiences.

The existing situation lacks the necessary flexibility and transparency, ending up with citizens and families unable to cover their specific care needs, with the necessary confidence and satisfaction. A change is necessary to provide balance of offer and demand, flexibility, immediacy, affordability, professionality and overall confidence.

To address this need, we have developed familiados.com a caregiving marketplace specialized in temporary care (emergencies, substitutions, holydays, special care) where families and individuals can find the specific caregiving they need, from wherever they are (mobile) and in under one hour.

Work performed

familiados.com is a caregiving marketplace specialized in temporary care (emergencies, substitutions, holydays, special care) where families and individuals can find the specific caregiving they need.

The SME Instrument Phase 1 has been used to plan product improvements, realign our business plan, adjust our revenue model, reconsider the commercialization strategy, check legal and market assumptions for different countries…

Main conclusions from the following WPs in which the work has been structured are summarized here:
(1) Consumer Test > done. The website is already open since February 2016 and trades take place every week. We have gathered data that has been evaluated using a new system based in Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that has been prepared to obtain better and more precise results.
(2) Product Roadmap & Escalation Needs > According to the results obtained in the consumer test phase, we have enhanced our website and have identified several points of improvements to be implemented during the following months. Changes will be prioritized accordingly. Besides, the escalation needs for the following phases has been planned and finetuned.
(3) Business Plan rework > the business plan has been completely updated. Market assumptions (particularly at the international level), business model, marketing mix, resources, commercial and exploitation plans have been be finetuned. Financial needs have been reworked too.
(4) Legal Boundaries & FTO > a preliminary legal & FTO analysis for some target European countries has been performed to assess the legal requirements for aspects such as contracts, data protection, insurance or payment.

In short, H2020 SME instrument Phase I has helped us to gather all the results from customer testing of the initial 12 months, complete them with some further work, organize them, extract KPIs and conclusions… And from that standpoint make a full rework of our business plan, financial projections, marketing needs and all the necessary accommodations to the reality seen in our initial activity.

This has allowed us to realign our business plan with a more realistic approach that will clearly improve our possibilities of success in the next phase of the business and will guide our steps to reach the market position we pursue in the European landscape.

Final results

familiados banks on that same concept and gets caregivers directly in touch with people who need them. The advantage of the aggregated offer, the diversity of profiles, the immediacy of the interaction, the possibility of secure online payment, the rating of the service, the advantage to use previous user experiences, the ranking by proximity, skill, profile, experience… It all adds up to provide an excellent user experience and the necessary confidence to change what used to be a painful and stressful experience, into seamless and pleasant.

The tool allows completely flexibility, letting the user to cover his/her weekly and monthly needs “à la carte”, with the specific caregiver for the specific need. It also allows them control of the budget as they can hire caregiving by the hour, not by days or weeks, and thus they can cover their needs with few hours.

There are 4 main differences between familiados and these other solutions:
(1) familiados is a real marketplace, where you can directly access profiles and contact the caregivers without being asked subscribe or pay fees. In other platforms you have to pay a monthly fee access the profiles and choose. In our platform you only pay if you hire, and you hire what you want.
(2) familiados is focused on senior, disabled and sick people care needs. No children, no pets, no cleaning. Only care. We are the marketplace for care professionals.
(3) familiados covers temporary needs and short term care only. We are there to cover the gaps left by families and professional caregivers, to allow some time off, vacation, cover up unforeseen issues…
(4) In familiados you get a caregiver in under one hour. Guaranteed.

Website & more info

More info: http://www.familiados.com.