Hospital Provider Saves Time, Increases Efficiency with Collaboration Workspaces

Microsoft Office System Customer Solution Case Study

“Groove Virtual Office is saving field managers at Customer: Hill-Rom least two hours a day by helping them be better Web Site: www.hill-rom.com Customer Size: 6,500 employees organized and communicate more efficiently.” Country or Region: United States Sean Bliss, Area Manager, Workflow Solutions Group, Hill-Rom Industry: Healthcare

Customer Profile Hill-Rom, maker of hospital workflow solutions and beds, Hill-Rom is a leading provider of hospital needed a flexible project management and group workflow solutions and beds. Based in Batesville, Indiana, Hill-Rom employs communication solution that would maximize the efficiency of 6,500 people and is a subsidiary of the business unit’s 100-person field organization. Deploying Hillenbrand Industries. Groove® Virtual Office version 3.1 (now part of the Microsoft® Software and Services Office system) for workspace collaboration has produced a 20  Microsoft® Office system − Groove® Virtual Office percent time savings for field managers and improved the accuracy and speed of deployments of Hill-Rom solutions.

Business Needs workflow solutions all over the United Hill-Rom is a subsidiary of Hillenbrand States. Project managers had a hard time Industries, a U.S.$2 billion manufacturer of coordinating and scheduling these equipment for every stage of healthcare. individuals for installations, and Hill-Rom makes hospital beds and upper management had difficulty tracking workflow solutions for managing nursing resources companywide to ensure that activity and patient movement throughout staffing and customer service a hospital. Hill-Rom, of Batesville, Indiana, requirements were met. The company employs approximately 6,500 people and depended on a combination of e-mail has annual revenues of $1.2 billion. messages, phone calls, and spreadsheets to communicate and share information; The Hill-Rom Workflow Solutions Group often important project details and action Microsoft customer successes, please has approximately 100 field personnel. items were buried in multiple e-mail visit: These project managers, trainers, service strings. When management wanted a www.microsoft.com/resources/casestudies technicians, and salespeople work report, field personnel would fill out together to sell and install Hill-Rom spreadsheets—often inconsistently—and send them back in e-mail, a process that network connection. Teams can create  20 percent time savings. “Groove could take a week or longer. workspaces at any time, for any period of Virtual Office is saving field managers at “Customer satisfaction is paramount for time, and customize those workspaces to least two hours a day by helping them Hill-Rom. We need constant visibility into accommodate their needs. be better organized and communicate resource availability so we can use our more efficiently,” Bliss says. “Our field precious field staff most effectively,” Today, every Hill-Rom Workflow Solutions personnel are also enjoying explains Sean Bliss, Area Manager for the Group project has a Groove Virtual Office considerable time savings. It’s a quality- Hill-Rom Workflow Solutions Group. “Poor workspace with tabs for things like discus- of-life issue for them; we’re not bugging resource tracking was causing delays and sions, status reports, design documents, them all the time for information.” Each inaccuracies in customer installations, milestones, and tasks. Project managers team can customize its Groove Virtual which in turn caused us to repeat open the workspaces and invite attendees Office sites to its needs, further installation work and lose time and money. to join. Team members can access the improving productivity and timely access Our people needed a way to share latest copies of project documents, to information. information, timelines, and deliverables schedule resources using shared without lots of e-mail flying around.” calendars, and send instant messages or  Better insight into project status chat. Management can get instant insight and resource availability. Plus, field workers did not always have into project staffing without relying on e- Because managers have immediate ready access to e-mail. Some were in mail and spreadsheets to draw information visibility into resource allocations and locations without Internet connectivity, and from the field because Groove Virtual commitments, they can make better even those with access had to connect to Office “pushes” information to staffing and financial decisions. A the corporate network through a virtual management automatically. dashboard in Groove Virtual Office private network, which was time-intensive displays color-coded project “health” and frustrating. “Instead of sending information in e-mail to indicators, allowing managers who are a dozen different people, we can send it to overseeing dozens of projects to tell at a one person, who opens a Groove Virtual glance which need their attention. Solution Office workspace and attaches the files,” The Hill-Rom Workflow Solutions Group set Bliss says. “We share information more  Fast, accurate, and consistent out to identify a flexible project efficiently and get it to the right people the solution deployment. Hill-Rom management and communication solution first time.” managers believe that Groove Virtual that was easy to deploy and use, worked Office will help reduce deployment times from anywhere regardless of network Military-grade security features help by allowing teams to locate needed connection, and dynamically scaled to any ensure the privacy of Groove Virtual Office specialists and information faster. number of participants. workspaces, and the differential update “Using Groove Virtual Office, we free up feature sends only changes to a document resources for more deployments and “We asked two of our experienced project rather than the entire document, training,” McAlister says. “Groove Virtual managers to research solutions,” says preserving network bandwidth. Office also allows us to increase Sidney McAlister, Director of Workflow deployment accuracy, which could save Solutions for Hill-Rom. “They looked at us millions of dollars each year.” leading project management applications as Benefits well as smaller Web-based solutions and Making the move to Groove Virtual Office  Higher customer satisfaction. settled on Groove® Virtual Office.” Groove has resulted in time savings, more efficient Since the Hill-Rom field has become Virtual Office version 3.1 (now part of the and accurate information sharing, faster more organized and informed, Microsoft® Office system) enables teams to deployments, and happier customers. deployments are more often on time and work together inside collaborative under budget. “Our customers are workspaces, regardless of their location or

© 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Microsoft, Groove, the Office logo, and SharePoint are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

Document published July 2006 seeing higher levels of efficiency from us,” Bliss says.

 Future efficiencies. Hill-Rom is looking at using Microsoft Office SharePoint® Portal Server 2003 to consolidate and back up data from several Groove Virtual Office workspaces into one “super site,” and at using the Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager 2005 dashboard application to provide even better field reporting to management.

© 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Microsoft, Groove, the Office logo, and SharePoint are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

Document published July 2006