Baldwin Living
Eight villages, four end-of-life systems, nine months. TechnologyOne, AlayaCare, Employment Hero and Power BI implemented and integrated without interrupting resident services.
How Baldwin Living replaced its core systems across eight retirement villages in nine months, and what it took.
Baldwin Living operates eight retirement villages and a home care service on Australia's east coast. Its core systems were at or past end of support, with a new Aged Care Act and its reporting requirements approaching. Over nine months, Baldwin Living replaced those systems while every village and the home care service kept running as normal.
The work covered:
The program, known internally as Project Phoenix, deployed TechnologyOne, AlayaCare Cloud, AlayaCare Residential, Employment Hero, a ProMaster upgrade, Extract, Transform and Load (ETL) interfaces between TechnologyOne and both AlayaCare systems, a new data warehouse with a Zoho flat-file interface, and Microsoft Power BI.
Baldwin Living's legacy ecosystem - Microsoft Dynamics AX, Procura CS, PeoplePoint and Sage MicroPay - had reached the point where several systems were unsupported or close to it. No vendor support meant no security patches, no updates and no help when something broke. Information was fragmented across the four systems, and the new Aged Care Act and its regulatory reporting were approaching.
Two constraints shaped every decision. Resident and client services could not be disrupted while core operational systems were replaced. And only 24 of the 84 staff were available to carry both the transformation and daily operations across eight locations.
The pressure to make quick, expedient choices was real, given the time available and a limited budget. With the CEO, Paul Burkett, and the CFO, Godwin Muscat, leading from the executive, Baldwin Living chose to select the right systems for the long term at a reasonable budget rather than accept quick fixes.
Emergent is vendor neutral and takes no commission, which mattered here because the selection ran across ERP, home care, HR and retirement living platforms at the same time. This stage covered:
With all systems selected, the implementations ran in parallel across six platforms. Emergent designed, governed and managed the work; each vendor configured its system to the signed-off design. The work included:
TechnologyOne - Enterprise Resource Planning
AlayaCare Cloud - Home Care Management
AlayaCare Residential - Retirement Living Billing
Employment Hero - HR and Payroll
ETL interfaces
Power BI - Business Intelligence and new data warehouse
Baldwin Living's staff, led by the CFO, Godwin Muscat, kept every service running while taking part in system design, testing and training. Village managers, finance teams, HomeServe care coordinators and corporate staff carried transformation activities alongside their daily duties, which kept the solutions practical and grounded in how the organisation actually works.
Several systems were out of support, which created constant pressure to replace them fast. Every selection still prioritised long-term fit, scalability and value over speed of implementation. Emergent's vendor-neutral position meant each recommendation rested on Baldwin's needs, not on commercial arrangements with any vendor.
Managing several vendor relationships at once was central to the result. That meant coordinating between TechnologyOne, AlayaCare, Employment Hero and the other vendors, having frank conversations when delivery commitments were not being met, keeping the focus on Baldwin's outcomes while respecting each vendor relationship, and holding every partner accountable for delivery.
Baldwin Living's stated aim is to be Australia's leading mid-sized retirement operator. The new platforms are the technology foundation it has chosen for that, with scalable systems and an API-based architecture that can take further systems as the portfolio grows.
1. Strategy before execution. Selecting all systems up front and setting the digital strategy before implementation began removed architectural conflicts and kept the design coherent.
2. Right decisions over easy decisions. With several systems out of support, the temptation to take quick fixes was real. Holding the discipline to select the best long-term solutions is what made the result last.
3. Critical path discipline. Every dependency was mapped, every risk identified and every delay addressed the day it appeared.
4. Pragmatic phasing. Deferring complex integration to a second phase meant the operational systems went live on time rather than perfect systems arriving late.
5. Frank conversations build trust. A willingness to have difficult conversations when needed, whether with vendors about delivery or executives about risk, meant issues were addressed rather than hidden.
Faced with several systems out of support, Baldwin Living could have opted for quick, easy replacements. It chose the harder path of selecting the right systems for the long term, and its team, led by Godwin Muscat, carried the organisation through nine months of change without a break in service to residents.
As CFO Godwin Muscat reflected: "The partnership with Emergent Consulting was instrumental to our success. Their expertise in aged care digital transformation, combined with their ability to orchestrate multiple vendors while maintaining focus on our outcomes, enabled us to achieve what many considered impossible. The dedication of our Baldwin Living team, working alongside Emergent's consultants, proves that remarkable outcomes are achievable when you have the right expertise and partnerships."
Baldwin Living is an Australian family-owned organisation with over 40 years of heritage in providing support and care for seniors. Operating eight boutique retirement villages across Australia's east coast and a home care business of more than 200 participants, Baldwin Living pioneers the retirement living experience through its unique model of privately sponsored villages.
A 30-minute conversation with a senior consultant.