At Intrepid Ascent, we believe technology should simplify care coordination. Over the past year, we partnered with Hanna Center, a Sonoma-based nonprofit with a 75-year legacy of supporting youth, families, and communities, to optimize their Salesforce platform for universal intake and care management. Below is a comprehensive look at how we approached the project from the initial assessment, through data modelling and UI design, to delivery of a universal intake and care-management solution to help Hanna Center fulfill its mission more effectively.
About Hanna Center
Founded in 1945, Hanna Center has evolved from a residential program for boys into a comprehensive system of care offering mental health services, community resources, and family support across Sonoma County. Guided by trauma-informed principles, Hanna Center provides therapy, navigation, and wrap-around services that strengthen wellbeing for those who need it most.
The Challenge
As Hanna’s programs expanded, staff were spending a lot of time on manual data entry, navigating multiple records, and piecing together client information from different systems. They needed a single, streamlined Salesforce solution to manage intakes, track services, and coordinate care across programs.
Intrepid’s Approach
After completing a Tech Gap Assessment in early 2024, Intrepid collaborated closely with Hanna Center to design and implement a more efficient, user-friendly system using Salesforce.
- Discovery & Design: We learned how staff used Salesforce, identified pain points, and created data models and wireframes to visualize the future system.
- Agile Development: Through weekly sprint cycles, we built features, gathered feedback, and refined functionality in partnership with program managers and intake staff.
- Universal Intake: We built a public-facing form where prospective clients can apply for services. Submissions now automatically create records in Salesforce, notify staff, and trigger workflows—reducing administrative work and expediting follow-up.
- Care Coordination: We developed a new Care Plan view that consolidates goals, services, incidents, and meeting notes on a single screen, giving staff a full client snapshot without endless clicking.
- Automation & Dashboards: Automated record creation and refreshed dashboards now display real-time program data and help leadership monitor performance.
- External Systems Integration: We defined key data fields to align with Hanna’s mental health EHR, ensuring clients receive a unique organizational ID across systems. We also built an API connection with another external platform and created automations that allow for service provision data to be ingested and updated within Salesforce on a daily cadence.
The Results
Hanna Center now has a centralized, efficient, and scalable Salesforce platform that:
- Reduces administrative time for staff
- Simplifies and streamlines the client intake process
- Provides real-time visibility into programs and outcomes
- Enables staff to spend more time directly supporting clients, which is the ultimate goal!
The project also reinforced the importance of collaboration and iteration—Hanna Center’s engaged team was instrumental in shaping the system every step of the way.
This partnership demonstrates how thoughtful Salesforce optimization can transform the ways in which community organizations work, and our intentional process rooted in assessment, co-design, agile delivery, and user-centric workflow development can transform operations, free up staff time for mission-critical work, and ultimately create better outcomes for clients. By aligning technology with their mission, Hanna Center can continue to expand its impact—while keeping people, not paperwork, at the center of care.
For more information about Hanna Center, visit their website at https://hannacenter.org/.
If you’re interested in exploring how Intrepid might support your organization in similar ways, please contact us at info@intrepidascent.com.