Service, Asset, Client and Server Management, Workflow, and Software Virtualization

Executive Summary

Overview
Mercy Health Services, Inc., founded in 1874 in Baltimore, Maryland, consists of Mercy Medical Center, a Catholic health care center and teaching hospital located in the heart of the city; Stella Maris, a long- term geriatric care facility in the suburbs; and a network of approximately 40 hospital-owned physician practices (offices) located throughout the city and on the medical center campus. Mercy Health Services is steadfastly committed to providing healthcare and related services to the people of Baltimore, and is continuously expanding operations to carry out its mission. Despite providing $40 million in uncompensated care during fiscal 2009, Mercy Health Services generated $28 million in net revenue from operations, enabling the organization to continue to invest in new facilities, programs, and technology to better serve the Baltimore community.

Barriers
The nonprofit organization, which has grown rapidly in its 135-year existence, is constructing a new patient tower at the hospital to dramatically enhance Mercy’s service capacity. From an information technology (IT) perspective, the brisk expansion led to a more complex operating environment with multiple, disconnected point solutions and manual processes that hindered the productivity of Mercy’s increasingly sophisticated end users. External pressures, including the recent economic downturn and evolving regulatory requirements, further challenged the organization’s ability to manage costs while at the same time ensure that services are timely, effective, and high quality.

The Solution
To meet these challenges, Mercy Health Services integrated its IT environment and streamlined its business processes by consolidating on the following Symantec products: Altiris Service & Asset Management Suite to improve enterprise asset and service lifecycle management; Altiris Client Management Suite for proactive imaging, patch management, provisioning, and inventory management capabilities; Altiris Server Management Suite to centralize physical and virtual server management; Software Virtualization Solution from Symantec to simplify and accelerate application delivery; and Symantec Workflow to automate business processes. Symantec Consulting Services provided implementation assistance. To support a comprehensive endpoint management strategy, Mercy is in the process of upgrading from Symantec AntiVirus to Symantec Endpoint Protection.

Benefits
A Total Operational and Economic Impact (TOEI™) analysis by Alchemy Group found that these Altiris solutions from Symantec helped Mercy Health Services realize tangible business value. Aggregate real and projected savings of nearly $3.2 million from January 2005 through December 2010 were found in the following six areas:

• Service Desk Operations Labor Cost Avoidance: $772,333 in IT labor cost savings through improved service desk efficiencies
• Inventory Reporting Labor Productivity Gains: $177,100 in IT labor productivity through automated hospital and physician network reporting
• Contract and Asset Management Labor Productivity Gains: $120,747 in IT purchasing labor productivity and $978,931 in biomedical asset management labor productivity
• Client Imaging and Patch Management Labor Productivity Gains: $717,435 in IT labor productivity through simplified client management
• Server Provisioning and Re-imaging Labor Productivity Gains: $48,680 in IT labor productivity through expedited server management
• Application Packaging and Deployment Labor Productivity Gains: $393,540 in IT labor productivity through improved application delivery

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