I keep a note on my desk. It reads, "To whom it may concern: our son was diagnosed with cancer 3 weeks ago. If we are able to receive any assistance, we would greatly appreciate it."

I received this note attached to a school lunch application when I worked for a group of public charter schools in Colorado over ten years ago. Throughout my career working in schools, for the state, and now at Sagitec, I've kept this note as a reminder of why we do what we do and who the work is really for.  

The National School Lunch Program is one of many federally funded programs that address nutritional needs for children and other underserved populations in the US. In 2023, over 4.6 billion lunches were served to kids. These are kids of all different backgrounds who need to eat during the school day to learn and succeed.  

This experience has profoundly shaped my understanding of the challenges families and administrators face, inspiring a search for better solutions.

Why Create Neotrient

We can use modern technology to reduce the administrative burden of complying with the federal and state regulations for these programs. Some areas where states and sponsors currently struggle with their technology are: 

• Inability to adapt their custom systems to changes in regulation without costly enhancements or delays.
• Poor user experience increases the time spent applying, approving, and claiming meals served.
• Lack of data continuity as their data is not easily accessible in their system, or is housed in other systems.

By harnessing innovative technology, we can remove many obstacles, empowering states and agencies to focus their energy where it matters most.

How Neotrient Will Help

We will tackle these barriers by creating a system that does more of the heavy lifting using smarter connections and automated workflows so that users can spend less time on program administration and more time feeding kids. A few examples of how Neotrient will accomplish this include the following: 
 

• System configuration to allow state agencies to adapt to regulatory changes and state-specific guidance quickly.
• A Direct Certification module that uses high-accuracy matching algorithms to qualify students for free meals even before a family needs to apply.
• BPM workflows to allow for system-driven processes that reduce process waste
• A User-focused UX/UI to help reduce the amount of time for users to complete tasks (fewer clicks)
• Questionnaire functionality for the states to collect, and easily access, data.
• A SaaS subscription model to reduce the unpredictable cost of ongoing enhancements.  

What is Neotrient's Vision

Our vision for the Nutrition business unit is to change how we feed our communities through human-centered technology. This vision was born from our team's on-the-ground experience in the field:  

• Rachael Burnham and I have worked at the state and local levels. We have experience working directly with families who use these programs and schools serving meals daily.
• Ami Childress and Michael Dun have decades of software development expertise and worked with over 40 different state agencies to develop a comprehensive understanding of the diverse needs these agencies face. .

My team recently attended the ANC conference, and we discovered several key insights that will help shape our approach as we enter the industry. Among these are providing a concrete implementation timeline, emphasizing the importance of integrating with other data systems to allow appropriate data flow, and leveraging Neotrient's configurability and workflows.

Conclusion

Our experience, in combination with the knowledge and expertise of the existing Sagitec team, allows us to realize our vision by bringing modern technology into the field of child nutrition. Although we all get caught up in our daily tasks, it's important to remember why we're doing what we're doing and who benefits from our hard work. In our case, it's children, just like the one from the note on my desk.