Free Edition Industry: Health Care| Case Study
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Care Institute of Medical Sciences (CIMS) is a multi-speciality hospital accredited by the National Accreditation Board for Hospitals & Healthcare Providers (NABH) and the National Accreditation Board for Testing and Caliberation Laboratories (NABL). The hospital offers world-class diagnostic, medical and surgical facilities, and is equipped with the latest diagnostic interventional equipment for its patients.
While doctors are concerned with patient’s health and surgical emergencies, the IT team concerns
itself with the maintenance of desktop computers that are actively used by doctors, lab researchers and hospital administrators. The tasks range from viewing patient history and auditing health reports to performing other work-related tasks. The organization also maintains in-depth information about lab reports, visitor details, ward statuses and medicine inventory.
While usage rates reach their peak in the daytime, the IT department at CIMS has developed a sophisticated IT infrastructure to manage desktop computers and complete daily tasks within its own network.
Desktop management plays a key role in monitoring and managing routine tasks run by desktop
computers, such as tracking the number of hardware/software tools available within the network, and deploying and updating software applications. Their incumbent way of manually updating the entire desktop provided highly inefficient, and thus, it became apparent that it was time for the IT team to automate the desktop management routine. However, they couldn't find a strong desktop management solution that could effectively execute the system management tasks on such a large scale.
CIMS found a solution to help manage these tasks through ManageEngine, called Desktop Central. It enabled CIMS to quickly perform IT operational tasks and execute other desktop management functionalities from a central location. Additionally, the IT team was able to effectively manage assets, troubleshoot systems from a remote location, configure policies based on user role and implement security based on IT policy. Most importantly, this automation saved time and reduced costs by more than 60%.
Over the years, CIMS has grown from a humble healthcare clinic to the most advanced cardiovascular care in Western India. Once accredited by NABH for its consistent quality of service, it became more important for the organization to keep patient’s records secured, and for users to be able to consistently work with desktop computers in order to accomplish these tasks on-time. Supporting this type of performance, while minimizing IT costs, was an important business driver behind the initiative to automate desktop management operations.
Initially, the IT team considered a solution from Microsoft for its desktop management operations
before choosing ManageEngine.
“We have tried (Microsoft’s) Intune initially, and although the software was working well, it had limitations as patch updates were supported only for Microsoft related applications” said Shivam Parikh.
“We have also tried a few other on-premise software. The only problem we have seen is those software tools were able to help us in solving part of the Desktop Management operation whereas we were looking for a complete package that could help us with managing the entire spectrum of Desktop Management operations.”
CIMS was very specific on its need.
“We want to reduce the time consumed by our IT person – to replace manual processes that helped us well, but that would no longer stand up to the scale we have grown now,” Parikh said. “We wanted to effectively use manpower, while scaling up our operations and still meet healthcare industry compliance standards.”
The Desktop Central solution had everything the IT team was looking for: an Automated solution,
easy-to-deploy applications, third party patch updates, robust reporting, out-of-box reports and a
minimum learning curve.
“As we belong to Healthcare industry we cannot afford the luxury of working at our own sweet time, and on top of it, our IT staff was always on a constant move in order to trouble-shoot problems at user’s location,” Parikh said. “For this reason, it became necessary to solve issues immediately from a single location. The remote control was one of those features that enabled us to assist users quickly and economically.”
The ability to manage every single aspect of Desktop Management operations with a minimal staff
was a big draw" Parikh said. “By deploying Desktop Central, we were able to reduce the manpower and we are saving about 60% of the overhead by reducing 40% of man power.”
CIMS was able to replace its existing manual practice of tracking inventory details with the inventory tracking feature from Desktop Central, maintain those records for auditing purpose and validate the total cost of ownership associated with the purchase of hardware and software.
“Our manual procedure of registering inventory details in excel proved futile,” Parikh said.” Moreover, it becomes difficult to manually drill down to the specifics such as RAM configuration, number of software products deployed and their usage stats.”
“Desktop Central inventory management tracking assets is a breeze,” Parikh continued. “It allows us to assess software usage, especially to get a clear picture of licenses, which enables prudent reuse of any unused licenses and also ensures compliance. For instance, we were planning to purchase a new software license. Then one of our staff tracked the software usage with Desktop Central and determined that particular software was, in fact, under utilized. If not for Desktop Central, we might have wasted money by investing in purchasing new licenses for that software.”
The desktop management requires executing deployment updates especially on odd hours such as
weekends and evenings when the system usage is particularly low. These deployments include patch updates, wake-on-LAN to successfully install applications and system scans.
“It was critical for us to deploy updates at a specific time frame when the system usage was minimal. And ensuring that staff was present at the right time to deploy the right updates was not easy, and needed a lot of planning,” Parikh said. “With Desktop Central, the deployments have been streamlined in the corporate LAN, and the deployment template helped me with scheduling and installing the updates as per our schedule.”
The IT team is now evaluating mobile device management software to manage its user mobile devices to perform profile management, asset management, application management and security management. This integration will help achieve complete device management package under a single umbrella and eliminate individual tools for managing mobile and desktops.
Parikh noted Desktop Central was easy to deploy and helped CIMS with a swift implementation of its IT infrastructure.n
“I need software that can run with a minimal knowledge. The Desktop Central was not only a easy-to-deploy software but also the learning curve was very minimal.”
ManageEngine offers simple, easy-to-use products at a price that every business can afford. It is
thoughtfully built with SMBs in mind and eventually scales for large businesses. ManageEngine products enable IT managers to deliver an optimum end-user experience and harness IT to achieve business efficiencies in the face of increasing complexity. By providing a real-time, single-pane-of-glass approach to IT management, ManageEngine enables an IT organization to be proactive, empowered and better positioned to play a strategic role within the enterprise. https://www.manageengine.com/
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