Service and Asset Management and IT Analytic Reporting

Executive Summary

Overview
healthAlliance NZ Ltd., headquartered in North Shore, New Zealand, provides non-clinical services to the Counties Manukau and Waitemata District Health Boards (DHB), the two largest DHBs in New Zealand. Founded in 2000, the shared services organization offers a range of services to the DHBs, including finance, recruitment, payroll, information services, procurement, and materials management. healthAlliance has 265 employees and supports more than 12,000 DHB employees. In turn, the government-run DHBs serve the health needs of over a million people via four hospitals, 70 community and mental health sites, and 130 dental school sites.

Barriers
Service quality and delivery are the current focal points of the organization. The healthAlliance Information Services (IS) department had to ensure all systems were in place for adequate patient care. It needed to control technology costs, improve service delivery, simplify reporting, streamline payroll processes, and lay the foundation for regulatory compliance. In addition, healthAlliance needed to automate hardware tracking and management, better manage software licensing, and ensure platform independence.

The Solution
To address the different business and technology challenges, the healthAlliance team selected and deployed various Symantec technologies in four phases. First, in order to address asset tracking and service management issues, healthAlliance deployed Altiris Service and Asset Management Suite, All Levels, including Altiris Asset Management Solution, Altiris Application Metering Solution, and Altiris Service Desk Solution for the IS organization. Second, to simplify reporting processes, the team deployed the Altiris IT Analytics Solution Add-on. Third, the Altiris Workflow Solution Add-on was implemented to automate IS work processes. Finally, a second Altiris Service Desk instance was deployed to generate performance improvements in the healthAlliance Payroll organization.

For assistance with the solution deployment, healthAlliance leveraged Symantec Consulting Services and Symantec Education Services. Supplemental services were provided by a local external project management consultant and Symantec Partner Bay Dynamics, Inc.

Benefits
The different Symantec technologies are enabling the healthAlliance team to realize tangible business value in the form of productivity gains, allowing for faster and more effective service delivery. A Total Operational and Economic Impact (TOEI™) analysis by The Alchemy Solutions Group pinpointed realized and projected business value in the following areas:

• PC Replacement Labor Productivity Gains: $153,722 USD in IS contractor productiv- ity gains by automating PC replacement audits from October 2007 through December 2010
• Service Desk Labor Productivity Gains: $858,256 USD in IS labor productivity improve- ments in handling user account administration requests from October 2007 through December 2010
• Reporting Labor Productivity Gains: $78,015 USD in IS labor productivity improvements by enabling end users to generate analytic reports from January 2008 through December 2010

In addition, healthAlliance achieved qualitative gains in its IS Service Desk service level agreement conformance. The Service License Agreement (SLA) compliance rate rose from 55 percent in July 2008 to as high as 93 percent in November 2008 due to improved visibility into software requests and customer feedback. All of the above productivity gains allowed the healthAlliance team to reallocate IT staff to more strategic, business- critical initiatives.

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