Family-run and based along Wales's M4 corridor, Seren has spent 15 years building a business on values as much as on care quality. It was the first care provider in Wales to sign a Unison recognition agreement, a decision Nick Pambianchi, Seren's CEO, ties back to a simple ambition: to be the trendsetter, always a step ahead.

Before Birdie, Seren ran two care platforms side by side, and neither gave the team a full, ready-to-show picture of the care they were delivering. "For the carers having to log in to two different apps when they're out in the field, they just want to go one place to look for the information," Ellie says. "If one app didn't talk to the other, there was that lag in between, which was room for error." Pulling together evidence for an inspection meant assembling it from scratch, under pressure, rather than having it already there.

Seren moved onto Birdie in March 2026, drawn to having everything in one place and to hands-on onboarding support from the Birdie team. "It's a very innovative company," Shelly says. "Everything's at a touch of a button."

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One change stood out to Ellie in particular: each of Seren's care assessments is scored individually, area by area, rather than being rolled up into one overall result the way Seren's previous system did. "It's easy for the carers to just log in, see each one. I do like that." 

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That same everyday visibility is what builds Seren's compliance evidence before an inspection is on the calendar, rather than scrambling to assemble it afterwards.

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Birdie Analytics brings it together in one place: rather than pulling three or four separate reports to piece a picture together, Shelly says, "you get the report and everything you need in one, with the visual charts and tools as well" - landing directly in her inbox rather than needing to be chased.

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Within that, the team uses the Electronic Call Monitoring report specifically to check that visits ran their full length and that people see a consistent set of carers, so gaps get caught week to week, not discovered on the day an inspector walks in.

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On the rostering page, Ellie relies on colour to catch problems early too: carers who haven't logged a visit show up in red, "very easy to see," she says, compared with previous systems where a gap "wasn't as obvious." Support from the wider Birdie team, Shelly adds, "has been great.”

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In June, Seren's branches across Cardiff, Caerphilly and Blaenau Gwent went through inspection with Care Inspectorate Wales, with roughly 170 people receiving care, plus office staff and carers, interviewed. Seren came away with Excellent across every theme that applies to a domiciliary provider: Well-being, Care and Support, and Leadership and Management.

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"She was very happy that all of our outcomes were person-centred, and that the information on Birdie was detailed," Ellie says of the inspector.

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Shelly sums up the shift in preparation: "The preparation took hours, not a whole week, which saved us a lot of time. We were able to get the reports, the risk assessments, care plans, all the notes off very easily during the inspection. Rather than being reactive, we were very well planned going into this inspection – a real positive for us."

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The same evidence trail has paid off with local commissioners too. Separately from the CIW inspection, Cardiff council's Dynamic Purchasing System requires a 100% validation score to win new care packages, and Seren's East branch has hit that mark since moving to Birdie, having fallen short at 82% in the past when evidence wasn't ready to show on the day.

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Part of that evidence trail comes from SmartPlans, Birdie's AI-powered care assessment tool, which Seren's team uses to speed up how care plans get written. "A care plan could take two to three hours to write," Ellie says. "With Birdie, it’s halved that time."

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When CIW inspectors asked how the team handles AI-assisted assessments for people who are softly-spoken or non-verbal, Ellie's answer satisfied them: every AI suggestion is used strictly as a guide, and a person reviews and confirms each one before anything is saved. The same human-in-the-loop standard that matters to Birdie as much as it does to Seren.

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Asked what matters most to achieving Excellent, Ellie keeps it simple: "It's very important that everyone has a detailed care plan, clearly documented, so if you're brand new to that client, you can read it and know everything you need to do."

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Her advice to other Welsh providers considering Birdie: "If they're in Birdie, they already know how good it is. If you're not, come join Birdie, have some demos - it's really good."

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