One of the country’s busiest hospitals, St. Vincent’s University Hospital has rationalised technical support vendors and enhanced IT service delivery at lower cost, with the help of leading IT services company MJ Flood Technology.
By bundling a reactive support package with pro-active professional services, the company has helped the hospital’s IT department to deliver more reliable, more flexible and enhanced IT services for less.
SVUH has an extensive mission-critical IT infrastructure with 4,000 PC users, 1,900 PCs, 160 servers, 500 printers and more than 100TB of production data. The hospital’s ICT team is under constant pressure to deliver 100pc network uptime and deploy new technologies, which will support the healthcare provider’s commitment to the highest quality patient care.
“Flexibility is a term much used but more rarely delivered on, but it has been a tangible benefit of our relationship with MJ Flood Technology,” explains Dermot Cullinan, director of ICT, SVUH. “Time and time again the feedback from my senior team has paid testament to the proven flexibility of the company. They have repeatedly gone the extra mile to address problems for us. This has given my team confidence in the support that MJ Flood Technology provides on a day to day basis and in responding to adverse events,” he adds.
“With a support and operations team of just 12 staff, we were faced with a huge challenge in terms of managing multiple maintenance and support contracts for the diverse elements of our ICT infrastructure,” explains Neal Mullen, Deputy ICT Director, SVUH. “It was clear to us that we needed to re-think our whole approach to maintenance and to our method of contracting professional services time. With budgetary constraints, this had to be done within a framework which would reduce costs.”
Leveraging maximum value with an innovative approach
SVUH ICT proposed a bundling of traditional maintenance and professional services. This single contract covers a combination of reactive support and project-based assignments for desktops, printers, servers and technologies based on Microsoft, VMware and Symantec.
This approach delivers a number of benefits to the hospital as Gareth Madden, sales director with MJ Flood Technology, explains. “Many customers have the perception that maintenance call-off represents poor value for money where there is a low volume of support incidents. By integrating high value professional services into a single contract, SVUH have much better visibility of what they are paying for and what they are getting in return.”
“Over the past few years we have logged fewer calls with our support companies. This is mainly due to our infrastructure being more resilient and our team being better skilled,” says Neal Mullen. “If we have a problem and we feel we require support with it, we typically have MJ Flood staff dialled in within 30 minutes. Similarly, we can draw down consultancy time and project-based technical support from the contract as and when we need it. This approach has reduced costs while increasing our return on investment.”
Enhanced IT service delivery
The MJ Flood Technology team have assisted in a number of key ICT projects under the contract such as an Active Directory design and migration and a Microsoft Exchange deployment for 3,800 users. “It’s very much a team effort,” according to Neal Mullen. “Through MJ Flood Technology, we have technical skills and resources on-tap. They validate projects, assist in technology migrations and act a sounding-board for us when we are faced with a particular challenge or pain-point. It’s a partnership that works well and one which is enhanced through their commitment to knowledge transfer, adding to our own in-house technical capability over time.”
Increased transparency in cost, performance and value
By choosing one point of contact, SVUH have full transparency on costs and call metrics. In 2009, for example, 350 support calls were raised and MJ Flood Technology met their Service Level Agreement of four-hour response in 98pc of cases. “We know from week to week how the contract is performing,” says Neal Mullen. “We can clearly demonstrate to management how the contract is adding value to ICT operations and in turn helping us to focus on high value tasks such as IT strategy development rather than fire-fighting on a day to day basis.”
AT A GLANCE:
Company: St Vincent’s University Hospital
Industry: Healthcare
Customer profile: Founded in 1834, St Vincent’s University Hospital is a major academic teaching hospital, affiliated to University College Dublin. It provides a front line emergency service and national/regional medical care at inpatient and outpatient level in excess of 40 medical specialties. The hospital has 479 in-patient beds, incorporating 7-day, 5-day and day care options and is committed to high quality patient care.
Business challenge: To provide maintenance, technical support and professional services to the hospital’s mission-critical ICT infrastructure in a way which consolidates multiple existing support contracts, boosts IT service delivery and dramatically reduces cost.
Solution:
- Bundling of traditional reactive maintenance with pro-active professional services time.
- Management of hospital’s extensive IT infrastructure using remote diagnostics and on-site support.
- Acting as an extension to the hospital’s IT team in terms of advice and project-based assignments.
Benefits:
- Maximum business and technical value leveraged from one single contract.
- Complete transparency of cost and supplier performance for management.
- Reduced administration overhead with single point of contact for call-logging and escalation.
- Improved IT delivery capability with flexible engineering services and technical expertise on-tap.
- Knowledge transfer to in-house IT staff.
- Continuity of people with consistent skills and response methodology.
For more information using IT as a real business enabler, talk to us today on (01) 466 3500 or email info@mjf.ie
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