Outsourcing Center, Beth Ellyn Rosenthal, Senior Writer
dbDoctor has reengineered the database monitoring process for Oracle and Sun Microsystems systems. ‘Databases touch each and every facet of your business. When they go down, all hell breaks loose and losses immediately start to accumulate,’ says Michael Misheff, vice president, sales and marketing, for dbDoctor.
Outsourcing Center, Beth Ellyn Rosenthal, Senior Writer
SynHRgy HR Technologies, an HR outsourcing vendor in Houston, Texas, monitored the usage of its 500,000 participants last fall. Sixty-five percent of the enrollees used the Web or its interactive voice response (IVR) system in lieu of talking to a live representative, reports Kraig Koester, Midwest regional director for SynHRgy. He points out the outsourcing vendor’s 35 clients range from high tech companies who couldn’t live without their Palm Pilots to unionized heavy industry whose employees work with their hands not computers.
Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer
From the moment of his 1999 signature approving two-thirds of the proposed HIPAA regulations, President Clinton tossed the healthcare industry a hot potato. So now the industry is forced to start changing the way it was doing business.
Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer
Behind closed doors, discussions about the biggest challenge for both providers and payers in the healthcare industry are not about HIPAA compliance. It’s about how to be profitable. Given the numerous industry problems besetting companies, revenue has been drastically cut, and most have lost millions of dollars for several years in a row. The solution, as many are discovering, is for organizations to become more efficient. And the only way to accomplish that objective is to outsource non-core business processes and take advantage of outsourcers’ expertise and technological resources.
Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer
Born in August 1999, TrustData Solutions Corporation has already matured enough to take giant steps in the eSecurity arena. HIPAA experts agree TrustData’s solutions are probably the most advanced technology today for allowing companies to enable HIPAA compliance.
Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer
Wireless scares people, says Adam Braunstein, senior research analyst with the Robert Frances Group. The concept that you can get anything anywhere is easy to understand and sounds great, and what company wouldn’t want to give those capabilities to its staff and customers where appropriate? The problem is that the application is extremely difficult. There are several warring technologies out there, Braunstein explains, and the wireless carriers are having huge difficulties. Financial institutions and the healthcare industry are the early adopters of wireless technology. It’s also an ideal solution for a mobile sales force, traveling executives, field technicians, logistics and other processes. The media has touted the enormous benefits for companies to adopt this technology as an extension of access to the Internet while, at the same time, making a lot of noise about the immaturity of the technology and its failures in addressing business applications and user needs.
Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer
As human genome mapping starts to produce results and new drugs are developed to eradicate or control some of life’s most significant challenges, the spotlight will be on pharmaceutical companies. Time to market will drive their efforts. But the pharmaceutical industry is highly regulated, so their innovative development efforts will require tight management and control, along with certain levels of configuration management and maturity models (CMM). Outsourcers such as MERANT provide powerful solutions that will allow them to fly like eagles. Keith White, MERANT’s vice president and general manager, explains that 70% of development projects fail and 90% of them are over budget and behind schedule. The challenges are obvious for, as he points out, When you have to develop a product that has to fit in to a million different environments, the risks and time and resources required to get them deployed and to maintain and manage them is expensive.
Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer
Johnson & Johnson is the largest and most diversified healthcare company in the world. It manufactures world-renowned health care products and provides related services to consumers and pharmaceutical markets, selling products in more than 175 countries. With more than 190 operating companies in 51 nations, the company has more than 99,000 employees worldwide. It’s a human resources migraine, to be sure!
Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer
Johnson & Johnson, the largest and most diversified healthcare company in the world. Deutsche Bank, one of the world’s leading investment banks. Boeing Company, a leader in the aerospace industry. Glaxo Wellcome, Inc., a leading research pharmaceutical firm. Rohm and Haas, a specialty chemical company. BP Amoco. Nokia. CNA Insurance. And PSEG, an electric and gas holding company in 13 countries. The roster of satisfied customers of outsourcer, Hewitt Associates, is a Who’s Who of leading world-class companies. Each of those companies recognizes the role their employees play in making their companies successful. They also recognize that their ability to recruit and retain high-caliber employees depends heavily on the benefits programs and quality of human resources services extended to employees.
Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer
Medicaid is one of the most controversial, complicated and expensive programs in U.S. government. It’s very political, so there is a high level of interest, and there is also a lot of change going on in it all the time, says Peggy Bartels, Administrator of the State of Wisconsin’s Division of Health Care Financing. So any entity that provides outsourcing for Medicaid is going to be in a fishbowl environment. It’s very difficult. She explains that the process of reviewing and making determinations about whether or not Medicaid will fund services is all done under the very close supervision and administration of the State. Decisions are controversial. By being our business partner, the outsourcer invites the same criticism we receive, she adds. They’re in the bull’s eye, and it is a big challenge to do that kind of work and maintain a positive presence. Nevertheless, EDS took the challenge and has been the Medicaid fiscal agent in the State of Wisconsin since their outsourcing agreement began in 1977.
"*" indicates required fields