OWNA launches free next generation AI assistant as it fulfills its innovation promise

OWNA, the all-in-one child care management software (CCMS) provider, has launched its long awaited AI assistant as it continues to cement its credentials as the most innovative tech solutions provider to Australia’s early childhood education and care (ECEC) sector. 

Called OWNA Assistant, the app which is available to download for free on the App Store and Google Play, is the company’s first foray into an agentic solution that is designed wholly with the ECEC sector’s very specific needs in mind. 

“We are incredibly proud and excited to have launched this new solution,” Kheang Ly, Founder & CEO of OWNA Group said. 

“Our product is not only easy to use, it focuses on areas like compliance, sustainability and data gathering that do not overlap with the crucial planning cycles of educators and offer plenty of real opportunities to save time and increase awareness.”

Introducing OWNA Assistant - A new way to manage your service 

Based on technology similar to that found in large language models like ChatGPT or Gemini, OWNA Assistant is automatically linked to your OWNA subscription and is able to gather a huge raft of information with simple prompts. 

For example, a simple question like “what does today look like” brings up a range of information including ratio adherence, absent children, staff sign in registers, events, roster gaps, expiring certificates and much more or “which family owes fees” yields very precise details on just who is out of step with their billing cycles. 

“OWNA Assistant really is a gamechanger for any early learning professionals who want to get the most out of their data, save time and ensure compliance and sustainability,” Kheang added. 

“Its also 100 per cent free and incredibly easy to set up. A user just needs to download the App, jump into OWNA HQ settings, navigate to the AI Assistance entry and press tick. Once done the App is activated and the usage can begin.”

Built for the trust that early learning depends on

For many in the sector, the arrival of AI raises fair questions about children’s information, accuracy and who is really in charge. OWNA says it designed OWNA Assistant with those concerns as a starting point, not an afterthought.

“We know services are rightly cautious about AI, especially where children’s information is involved,” Kheang Ly said. 

“That’s why the educator or leader stays in control at every step. OWNA Assistant does the legwork, but a person checks and approves everything before it’s saved. It only ever sees what that staff member could already see in OWNA.”

"The most important safeguard is that the educator always has the final say. OWNA Assistant prepares records and messages, but anything that would save information or send a message is shown to the user on a confirmation card first. Nothing is written to a child’s records or sent to a family until the educator checks it and says yes."

OWNA’s very own large language model ensures data is safeguarded always

Unlike many AI tools currently available across the sector, OWNA Assistant doesn’t send data to a third-party frontier model, like ChatGPT or Gemini, because it runs on OWNA’s own large language model. 

This important distinction underlies why OWNA’s lead on other software providers in the early learning sector is so advanced. By investing the many hours of research and effort to build their own model, OWNA is very much in control. 

A clear benefit of this approach is the ability to host data processed through OWNA Assistant onshore in Australia which is in turn covered by the same data protections that already apply across the OWNA platform. 

In addition, OWNA has also limited what the app keeps. When educators use hands-free mode, their speech is converted to text on the phone itself, so no voice recordings are sent. Photos of care charts and whiteboards are used to draft the records and are then discarded, and conversations with the assistant are deleted 90 days after the last message.

OWNA remains focused on exploring more AI functionality in long term feature roadmap

The broad adoption of AI related tools across society as a tool and their rapid maturation into effective supports in decision making and knowledge building make the space ripe for additional innovation for the early learning sector. 

The recent launch of Nurtra, OWNA’s very own CRM, harnesses the power of AI to help providers understand what is happening within the enrollment pipeline and where attention may be needed.

Rather than requiring teams to work through multiple reports to identify potential problems or opportunities, Nurtra’s ‘smart CRM’ functionality is designed to amongst other things help score leads, identify potential churn risk and highlight gaps within the pipeline and potentially support a provider find out where attention is needed and identify prospective families who have not recently been contacted or do not have a follow-up task assigned.

“I see a future where AI becomes embedded in all of the software solutions that we use. OWNA is no different, and I anticipate continuing to build on our lead in this space to develop and roll out products that matter,” Kheang ly said. 

To learn more about OWNA Assistant please click here.