Allscripts
Allscripts Achieve Support Scalability with NextNine
- A NextNine Case Study
PDF version
Introduction
Allscripts, founded in 1980 (NASDAQ: MDRX) is the leading U.S. provider of clinical software, connectivity and information solutions used by physicians and other healthcare professionals to improve patient care. Across the USA, more than 30,000 physicians in some 3,500 health organizations ranging from solo doctor’s offices to acute care hospitals use Allscripts TouchWorks solutions for electronic health records, document imaging, and e-prescribing.
Challenges
As a leading US provider of clinical software, Allscripts has enjoyed rapid growth of its TouchWorks solution. With a steadily growing client base, Allscripts support teams were facing major challenges to continue maintaining their reputable high service standards. Hiring and training more personnel to support their expanding business needs was proving to be only a temporary arrangement and was having adverse affects on Allscripts' operating expenses.
CHALLENGES
- Support growing customer base
- Reduce OPEX
- Avoid additional hiring and training
- Maintain customer satisfaction
- Supporting non-Allscripts systems
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High performance, reliability and constant availability are necessities for healthcare applications. As the application provider, Allscripts faced a situation where whenever productivity was impacted, the doctors would turn to Allscripts for support, even if the problem was unrelated to Allscripts software.
Allscripts recognized the need for a solution that not only would help them scale efficiently, ensure availability and improve their support resolution time, but could also enable them to support system components that influenced their application's performance. No matter what, customer satisfaction had to be maintained and even improved. How to do this economically was their biggest hurdle.
The Solution – Allscripts Support One, Powered by NextNine Service Automation
Allscripts chose to deploy NextNine’s Virtual Support Engineer™ as a new service to their customers, branded ‘SupportOne’. As part of the SupportOne service, NextNine’s Virtual Support Engineer™ was deployed at every customer site to monitor system activity like memory usage, storage space, CPU and print queues.
The Virtual Support Engineer also supervises error logs for known error conditions, and in cases where a critical system measurement reaches pre-defined thresholds, it sends an e-mail alert to the client and Allscripts Support. In addition, the Virtual Support Engineer helps Allscripts ensure that customer environments are up to date with current patches and updates, automatically deploying the necessary ones after the client approves them.
With NextNine Service Automation powering SupportOne, Allscripts could assure 24X7 system availability to their customers who rely on Allscripts for the high level of medical care they provide. With the Virtual Support Engineer™ at all customer sites, Allscripts support teams will be able to prevent system malfunctions and downtime even when caused by incorrect configurations. This is done before the problem reaches critical levels as symptoms are diagnosed and resolved long before outages occur.
"For healthcare providers, system failure isn't about costs, it's about saving lives. Since we've deployed NextNine Service Automation, our customers can rely on 24X7 availability"
John Nebergall, Senior Vice President Client Support.
Allscripts now automates many support tasks, increasing their service efficiencies and freeing their service engineers to focus on larger issues. NextNine Service Automation also facilitates Allscripts and their clients in conforming to the guidelines of regulations such as HIPAA and 21 CFR Part 11 by providing comprehensive audit trails.
RESULTS
- 25% reduction in support incidence rates
- Efficient scaling to support growing customer base
- Delivering superior support levels
- Maintaining low operating expenses
- Compliance with HIPAA and 21 CFR Part 11
- Increasing customer satisfaction
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The Bottom Line
Within the first 90 days of deploying NextNine Service Automation, 50 incidents of downtime were prevented. After initial deployment of SupportOne to the customer base, Allscripts significantly lowered their support incident rates by as much as 25% and have managed to considerably lower deployment and installation times for software service updates. By launching SupportOne powered by NextNine, TouchWorks continues to keep its customers happy. Financially, Allscripts realized an immediate break-even for 2006 for their investment in NextNine Service Automation.