Are you finding that the communication among your staff, across different departments, and with your vendors is often inefficient and even quite redundant? How many times have you answered the same question either by e-mail or with a phone call? Do you find that inaccurate information is being passed on to customers because sales or services people are referring to outdated e-mails or an implementation schedule that has changed? Does each one of your teams have its own file system and database and use many interfaces to organize its information?
Many of today’s companies are faced with these critical business information problems and are in search of the most effective, proven programs in the marketplace that can be used to solve their growing communication issues. After a thorough consideration of available options for addressing business intelligence, one of SoftServe’s clients made the decision to select the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (recently upgraded to MOSS 2007) in their efforts to establish more efficient and accurate communication with vendors and customers.
Addressing the Need
Nearly six years ago, Misys Healthcare’s (now part of new Allscripts) Homecare business unit, a leading provider of healthcare information systems serving 600 providers of home healthcare, hospice, and private-duty services, installed SharePoint as a platform for improving communication between Allscripts and SoftServe, and between different departments within Allscripts’ Homecare Product Development. Because Allscripts Health System Group designs, installs, and supports software for the automatic billing, scheduling, and clinical functions of its healthcare clients in the U.S., it is imperative that their clients—agency directors, finance directors, management information officers, and private duty organizations—receive accurate, up-to-date information for their business needs.
“It’s important to share information not only across the world, but also with our vendor SoftServe, as well as with the people across the hall,” says David Staudenmaier, product development manager, Allscripts Health Systems Group. “It’s inefficient to have to repeat information or constantly tell the people you work with where the information is stored,” he adds. “It’s also important for all of the new employees who are working here to know that vital information is always in SharePoint.” SharePoint’s hierarchical structure defines the levels of user access across the company and the rules for how to access information and establishes a project management system.
For example, Allscripts Homecare has two major release charters per year and service packs to update releases or accommodate defects. When the division began publishing its release charters in an easy-to-read and easy-to-access manner in SharePoint, it quickly began realizing reductions in miscommunications that impacted productivity. Every piece of code is assigned an issue number for a large or small enhancement or a defect needing repair. A release charter summarizes the information, which is communicated to all of the people in the organization who need it, as well as to SoftServe in order to ensure that both companies are working on the same project at the same time. Furthermore, the release charter is important because the data is communicated to Allscripts Homecare customers through the marketing, sales, or services departments, e.g., what software is being enhanced or repaired.
“Marketing needs to know what new software is coming, support needs to know what is being repaired, and the customer needs to know that their issues are being fixed in a timely manner. My office, research and development, must keep track of everything,” Staudenmaier says.
In addition, SharePoint can provide any employee who needs it with release charter changes if an item is added to a specific release. SharePoint quickly provides alerts to determine if an employee needs to look at the release charter again. SharePoint’s structure also offers major site areas such as research and development, support, and services. Within each grouping are sub-areas that can be organized as needed, allowing employees to drill down for details. Although the research and development site has a sub-area on release charters, there are other areas about design and documentation as well.
