Customer Solution Case Study
/ Nonprofit Boosts Productivity, Cuts IT Maintenance by 15 Percent with Online Services
Overview
Country or Region:United States
Industry:Healthcare
Customer Profile
Kindering Center, based in Bellevue, Washington, provides early childhood intervention services for children with disabilities and other special needs. It has 100 employees.
Business Situation
The center’s IT infrastructure would crash periodically, was a drag on staff productivity, and required continual maintenance.
Solution
The center eliminated on-site server computers, and the need to service them, by taking steps including the move to Microsoft Online Services, which deliver communications and collaboration tools over the Internet.
Benefits
- Streamlined communication saves two hours per employee weekly
- Reliability leads to peace of mind
- Simplified management cuts IT maintenance time by 15 percent
Charles Carkeek, President, Carkeek Technology, Inc.
Bellevue, Washington’s Kindering Center for early childhood intervention had a POP3 e-mail technology infrastructure with so many potential points of failure that the system crashed several times a year, disrupting communication among staff members. Even when the system worked, the drawbacks of Web mail kept staffers from viewing stored messages, limiting their ability to work remotely. The center resolved these concerns and more by adopting the Microsoft Business Productivity Online Standard Suite, which offers comprehensive communications and collaboration tools as a service over the Internet. As a result, staff members each gain two hours per week in increased productivity, which is spent on more and better client service. The center’s IT professional spends 15 percent less time on e-mail maintenance and routine administrative tasks, and the center sees increased system reliability.
Carkeek
Technology,
Inc. /
Situation
Despite all the advances in medical science over the past generation, children are still born with Down’s syndrome, cerebral palsy, and speech and hearing impairments. More children are diagnosed with autism than ever before. The greater viability of premature babies is surely a good thing, but it’s also contributed to the number of children with disabilities.
Few organizations know this as well as Bellevue, Washington’s Kindering Center. Founded in 1962 by five mothers of children with disabilities, the center’s mission is to provide intervention services during the crucial first three years of a child’s life, when such intervention has been shown to be especially helpful. Because of the organization’s family-centered approach, most of its 100 therapists and other professionals deliver services in the homes of their young clients.
In-home service has put a special burden on the communications tools that Kindering Center uses. The several members of an interdisciplinary team working with a given child need to meet regularly to coordinate therapies. At the least, that typically required lengthy drives to and from the center’s facility, in often-heavy suburban Seattle traffic, for a single meeting sandwiched between appointments. To coordinate schedules, employees would often need to send a flurry of e-mail messages.
“It could take as much time to coordinate a meeting as to hold it,” says Mimi Siegel, Executive Director, Kindering Center. “It wasn’t very efficient.”
The center, which has recently seen 15 percent annual growth in enrollment, had long since outgrown the POP3 e-mail technology infrastructure it used to support communications in particular and operations generally. That infrastructure was based on a pair of on-site computers running Microsoft Small Business Server, each limited to 75 user licenses, and thick client workstations at the desktops.
Meanwhile, a PC’s hard disk failure could wipe out a worker’s file of past messages. “We had so many points of failure in our email system,” says Siegel. “The servers could go down, or the service we used for e-mail hosting could fail, or we could lose the cable connection, or the PC itself. If we had a failure at 10 P.M., people working at home would have to stop. If we had a failure during the day, I’d have people lining up outside my office.”
Even when the system worked as intended, problems arose. Web mail provided remote access to the POP3 hosted e-mail service, but it didn’t provide similar access to the sent and received messages stored on the desktop PCs, so the information that staff members often needed was unavailable when they were out of the office. To retain records of messages sent while working remotely, staff members would have to remember to send the mail to themselves, a suboptimal workaround even when workers remembered to use it. Backups of e-mail messages were implemented manually once a month by the single IT consultant who supported the center’s infrastructure on a part-time, and partly donated, basis.
With the center and its staff continuing to grow, with communications technology of increasing importance to supplement face-to-face meetings, and with the organization more dependent on its IT infrastructure, Kindering Center knew it was time for a change.
Solution
Kindering Center had experience with hosted services for e-mail. It decided it wanted to move its entire communications and collaboration infrastructure to the Internet, and acquire that infrastructure as needed as a service, rather than license the software and host it on-site.
“We’re Not in the Computer Business”
“We really wanted to be in the cloud,” says Siegel. “We’re not in the computer business. We didn’t want to have to manage our own servers.”
“Cloud” computing refers to the hosting and management of Web applications and services on the Internet through data centers. For its Internet cloud solution, the organization first considered Google Apps. But the Google solution lacked some of the collaboration capabilities that the organization wanted, and the user interface was too jarring a change from the Microsoft software with which the organization’s staff members were already familiar.
“Kindering wouldn’t have gotten everything it wanted with Google Apps,” says Charles Carkeek, President of Carkeek Technology, Inc., the consultant who supported the center’s infrastructure. “Nor would Google have interoperated with the Microsoft Office software that the organization already used.”
Instead, Kindering Center turned to a cloud computing solution from the software provider whose offerings were already the basis for the organization’s infrastructure: Microsoft. That solution is the Microsoft Business Productivity Online Standard Suite, part of Microsoft Online Services. It provides mobile and desktop e-mail, calendaring and contacts, presence and instant messaging, audio/video conferencing, shared workspaces, and Web-conferencing applications. The solution includes Microsoft Exchange Online, Microsoft SharePoint Online, Microsoft Office Live Meeting, and Microsoft Office Communications Online. These enterprise communication and collaboration applications are hosted by Microsoft at its data centers and can be licensed with assistance from partners like Carkeek Technology, which can help with configuration.
Migrating Files and Accounts
The biggest step for Carkeek in preparing Kindering Center for the Business Productivity Online Standard Suite was to migrate the staff members’ existing e-mail files and accounts to Microsoft Exchange Online. Carkeek had to migrate those files and accounts individually because the staffers had .pst files, containing their stored e-mail messages and other personal information used by Microsoft Office Outlook and Exchange Server, on their own desktop PCs, rather than on a single, centralized e-mail server. He followed Microsoft-documented best practices for maintaining coexistence between the two e-mail systems during the transition, ensuring that no e-mail was lost. The migration was completed in the background, without attracting any attention from employees or keeping them from their daily work.
Staff members did notice the upgrade from the Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 to Office Outlook 2007 messaging and collaboration client, which was also accomplished in preparation for adopting the Business Productivity Online Suite. To make the upgrade as smooth as possible, Carkeek and Kindering conducted a training session for employees, distributed printed instructions, and designated “master users” to whom employees could go with any questions. Employees now access their messages, contacts, calendars, and to-do lists through Office Outlook 2007 when they’re at Kindering Center and from Office Outlook Web Access, through any standard Web browser connected to the Internet, when they’re away from the center.
Gaining New Collaboration Tools
Kindering Center is also adopting SharePoint Online. It already has experience with SharePoint technology, which supports the company’s intranet. The center plans to adopt SharePoint Online as its central document repository along with the technology’s search capability, making it easier to find, share, and collaborate on documents. Until now, staff members had been storing documents on desktop PCs, in shared drives on the servers, or on the intranet, making it difficult to find documents unless a staffer already knew where to look. Documents were shared as e-mail attachments, leading to multiple versions and version-control problems.
As part of the migration to the Business Productivity Online Suite, Kindering Center also plans to adopt Office Live Meeting and Office Communications Online. Office Live Meeting will give employees the ability to conduct conferencing over the Web. Office Communications Online will add presence and instant messaging, making it possible for employees to immediately see if colleagues are online and to query them or exchange information without the intrusion of a phone call. The capability works both through the Office Communicator client and through the Microsoft Office applications that employees now use.
In addition to adopting the Business Productivity Online Suite, Kindering Center moved its management, security, and remote desktop access servers to virtual servers running Windows Essential Business Server 2008 Premium, hosted off-site by a third-party provider using the Windows Server 2008 operating system with Hyper-V technology. As a result, the organization eliminated the need for any servers on-site—as well as the need for on-site server maintenance.
Benefits
Kindering Center staff members are more efficient now, thanks to the Business Productivity Online Suite, and this leads to better client service. The suite also reduces system maintenance time and cost while increasing system reliability.
Streamlined Communication Boosts Efficiency
Siegel sees a variety of ways in which the Business Productivity Online Suite streamlines communications, leading to increased efficiency on the part of the center’s staff members. She estimates that the center saves two hours per staff member per week as a result.
For example, employees now have full access to their e-mail, including stored messages, from any Internet-connected computer. That makes it possible for them to initiate and respond to messages more efficiently when they’re away from the office, which contributes to better service on behalf of the center’s clients. The ability to see team calendars makes it possible to schedule meetings faster, without the back and forth of e-mail messages to confirm dates. When Siegel recently vacationed in Cambodia and Viet Nam, for example, she stayed up-to-date on her e-mail and calendar remotely, something she couldn’t do with the former system.
Siegel says she’s “terribly excited” about the prospect of using Office Live Meeting for the interdisciplinary team meetings that are held to review and plan for client care and services. Staff members will save the often lengthy commutes to the center’s facility, which will give them more time to work with clients. And without the need to plan for commuting time, meetings can be scheduled on shorter notice, for more timely decision making.
Kindering Center staff members will gain further efficiencies from the use of SharePoint Online for the center’s document repository. Documents will be faster and easier to find, and collaboration on documents will be streamlined as well.
“When we were writing grants, for example, we’d e-mail them back and forth, and it would become a struggle to ensure we were working on the right version,” Siegel says. “Someone had to take all of the separate edits and versions and consolidate them into a single document. That process took time, and it could introduce errors. With everyone working on the same document on a SharePoint site, we gain both speed and accuracy.”
Reliability Leads to Peace of Mind
Kindering Center has eliminated most of the potential points of failure with its new solution. In contrast to the former system, which experienced periodic outages, Microsoft Online Services provide Kindering Center with a 99.9 percent scheduled uptime service-level agreement. Should there be a problem, Carkeek says, Microsoft will have the service back up and running within minutes. “We’re very comfortable with the reliability we get from Microsoft,” he says.
Beyond providing greater uptime, Microsoft Online Services serve a backup and business continuity function. Carkeek no longer worries about a staff member losing e-mail messages when a desktop PC hard drive fails because those messages are now hosted in a Microsoft data center. And should staff members ever be unable to get to the center, or should the center ever be unavailable, e-mail will be preserved and immediately accessible from other locations.
“The reliability we get with the Business Productivity Online Suite leads to peace of mind,” says Carkeek. “This is something we just don’t have to worry about.”
Carkeek has also configured the center’s email system to cache messages on staff members’ PCs. That makes it possible for them to continue to work even if the Internet connection is temporarily unavailable. The ability to work either from data in the cloud or on the desktop is an example of the Microsoft software-plus-services approach, which goes beyond software as a service to give customers the flexibility to decide which resources they want over the Internet and which they want locally.
Simplified Management Saves Time, Cuts Cost
It isn’t just the center’s therapists and other healthcare professionals who save time and work more efficiently thanks to the Business Productivity Online Suite. So does Carkeek. The simplified management and greater reliability of the Business Productivity Online Suite streamlines administrative tasks, maintenance, and troubleshooting, a savings of 15 percent of his time that translates into lower cost and higher service for Kindering Center.
For example, because sudden outages of the center’s systems no longer occur, Carkeek no longer has to respond to such emergencies, which formerly occurred at any hour of the day or night. Even tasks such as adding, removing, or modifying user accounts take less time. In the past, Carkeek had to manually configure or migrate .pst files, set up archival storage, and perform other administrative tasks. Now, when a new staff member joins the center, Carkeekjust sets up Office Outlook 2007 on the employee’s desktop computer, and it automatically connects to Exchange Online and completes the rest of the configuration process.
Carkeek also saves the time he might have spent upgrading self-hosted applications. Microsoft ensures that Kindering Center is always connected to the latest versions of the Business Productivity Online Suite technologies.
“With the Business Productivity Online Suite, I don’t have to worry about routine maintenance,” says Carkeek. “Microsoft takes care of that for me.”
Carkeek uses that time for projects on behalf of the center that otherwise wouldn’t be undertaken, or completed so quickly. He points to the adoption of Windows Essential Business Server as a project he was able to complete with time that formerly would have been devoted to server and account maintenance.
Microsoft Online Services
Microsoft Online Services are business-class communication and collaboration solutions delivered as a subscription service and hosted by Microsoft. With these offerings, customers can cost-effectively access the most up-to-date technologies and immediately benefit from streamlined communications, simplified management, and business-class reliability and security features. For IT staffers, Microsoft Online Services are backed by strong service level agreements and help reduce the burden of performing routine IT management, freeing up time to focus on core business initiatives.
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