Meet Mariam – CEO
Assisted Living – Nationwide
Company Experiencing Fast IT Growth Saves Big Money Using INSI Customized IT™!
Fast IT Growth Client Needs Full IT Support
Miriam is the founder and CEO of an assisted living company that is experiencing fast IT growth. In fact, the baby boomer generation has resulted in significant business growth across all her locations in multiple states. However, IT growth has also caused multiple challenges. She needs one company to review all of her IT challenges and design a solution.
Miriam’s Network Environment
Mariam has eleven locations. Each location has 60 residents with company-issued supported iPads and 5 staff members with PCs. In addition, their corporate office has five PC users. Interestingly, each office has its own network that consist of 2 aging servers and a firewall. Further, they use a SaaS electronic medical records system that is specifically for the assisted living industry. The staff accesses the EMR system from their laptops and cell phones.
Miriam’s Fast IT Growth Challenges
Mariam worried. She knows the assisted living model she created is solid, but the program won’t work without reliable technology. Unfortunately, most of the residents are not able to connect to the Internet to make their meal orders, schedule activities, call for the staff, or email their families. In addition, the staff is unable to access the EMR software in certain parts of the building which makes it difficult for them to service the residents.
This is happening across all of her locations which have identical setups. Consequently, it has been an intermittent issue from the beginning, but it has gotten worse lately. The more IT growth she experiences, the slower the network. Now, families are threatening to end their contract.
Mariam’s Additional Fast Growth IT Needs
The assisted living industry has a lot of turnover in both staff and residents. Each turnover results in returned equipment must be cleaned and reassigned. Miriam would like a company to keep spare equipment and manage the on-boarding and termination process. Further, she would like a company to provide iPad support to the residents as well as support her staff. This includes supporting the network and correcting the wireless network issues. Last, she has a concern about the dispersed and aging servers. She would like a recommendation that meets HIPAA compliance standards.
Customized IT Fast IT Growth Solution:
INSI developed a plan that not only addressed all their needs but also resolved their wireless issues.
1. The first step was to do a wireless analysis to determine the source of their connectivity issues. (INSI have vast experience working with telecom equipment as we have even built the ISP backbone for an entire city.)
2. Tablets were put under a Tier 1 Helpdesk plan at one-third of the cost. This was due to the fact they require such little support. We even installed a monitoring agent on them to alert us of any issues.
3. We put together a support plan that provides full support, from Tier 1-3, for the desktops, laptops, firewalls, servers, and network devices. We installed networking monitoring agents and antivirus software to keep the patches, definitions, and virus protection current.
4. We centralized the servers onto a robust server environment in our secure collocation facility and added Microsoft Office 365. This reduced their server count from 24 to 3. Further, this fast IT growth solution reduced their new location and IT maintenance technology cost. The servers were put under a lease with the intent of upgrading the system every 3 years when the contract runs out. To make sure this was a cost-effective solution, we presented the client with a hosted quote for comparison. They still chose to own the equipment.
5. Per the client’s request, we warehoused 10% of their desktops, laptops, and tablets. If an end-user had issues that required a hands-on approach, we would already have the device imaged and ready to ship. Our plan was to swap out the equipment so they could continue to work. Consequently, this minimized the downtime and disruption to their service.
INSIs Customized IT™ solutions allowed them to consolidate all of their servers, keep ownership, and meet the physical and technical safeguards of HIPAA.
