1. technology and computing

Case Study | Google Apps for Work
Intellicare boosts mobility with Google Apps for
Work
The Organization
Intellicare, also known as Asalus Corporation, is primarily a Health
Maintenance Organization (HMO) engaged in the delivery of managed
healthcare services through comprehensive, systematic and preventionoriented maintenance programs to various companies, institutions and
groups.
Started in 1995 with only six employees and 3,000 members, Intellicare
currently has over 1,500 employees in their staff and has a growing
membership base of 800,000. They have fourteen offices spread out over
the Philippine archipelago: three main offices in Metro Manila, four
regional offices and eight satellite offices.
Being the country’s preeminent HMO, Intellicare is committed to lead,
innovate and trailblaze a holistic approach to healthcare management.
They aim to uphold the right of each individual to health by making sure
that quality healthcare is available, accessible and affordable to all.
At a Glance
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What they wanted to do
Enable user mobility
Deploy a cost-effective solution that
minimizes maintenance
Eliminate redundant file replication
What they did
Worked wih Google Apps for Work
Partner IP Converge Data Services, Inc.
(IPC) to deploy Google Apps for Work
What they accomplished
Enable users to access all files from the
cloud
Ensure email reliability
Get rid of redundant backups
The Challenge
The healthcare industry involves handling a lot of information, which
means that a healthcare provider’s medium for relaying data is crucial.
Microsoft Exchange (MSE) was their chosen email platform 8 years ago
and although service availability was not a problem, Intellicare stumbled
upon issue after issue along the way.
The IT team had to constantly refresh MSE to the latest version every so
often over the years, which challenged IT admins to regularly adopt new
configurations. Every change to the system also affected fellow employees,
as this created a new learning curve for all users within the organization.
Other issues included the lack of control over spam email, lost email,
attachments that contained malware and the data-transferring process of
Outlook between personal computers. Downtime was very minimal but the
requirement of software-updating meant that server activity had to be
closely monitored each time, aside from addressing other technology
concerns. This was a time-consuming effort for Intellicare’s IT department.
“We can claim that users are very satisfied with the switch. They can
now easily access their email through their mobile phones, whereas
before, they were only limited to the office PCs.”
– Mr. Arnaldo Dantis, Vice President of Operations, Intellicare
About Google Apps
Google Apps for Work is an enterpriseready suite of applications that includes
Gmail, Google Calendar (shared
calendaring), Google Drive (online
document and spreadsheet hosting),
Google Sites (team site creation and
publishing), and Google Video* (easy,
secure sharing of video content).
* Google Video is not available in all
countries.
For more information visit
www.google.com/work/apps/business
“It is simply a very organized system.”
- Arnaldo Dantis, Vice President of
Operations, Intellicare
The Solution
Intellicare was in need of a more secure, highly-reliable and stable email
service and one that their IT team can easily migrate to, maintain and
upgrade. The solution also had to be friendly enough for all employees to
jump in to and let them work right off the bat. Intellicare decided to give
the cloud a try with Google’s free trial of Google Apps. After several days of
using the platform, they were convinced that this was the solution they
needed. After evaluation and consultation with cloud services provider,
IPC, Intellicare immediately migrated to the full version Google Apps for
Work within a month.
Once Google Apps for Work was on the scene, users already started
appreciating what cloud computing technology was able to provide them.
Email and all user files were accessible anytime, anywhere, no matter
where they were or which device they were using. Spam email is kept to a
minimum, updates are user-friendly and data loss is not a concern
anymore.
Results
The full migration took ninety days to complete but only thirty days to get
Google Apps for Work successfully up and running at Intellicare. According
to Mr. Arnaldo Dantis, Vice President of Operations at Intellicare, “the
overall transition was smooth and very easy.” The IT team also had no
trouble training employees on their new cloud-based productivity suite. “It
is simply a very organized system.”, said Mr. Dantis.
One of the most-used Google Apps at Intellicare is the Google Calendar,
which lets users easily sync their phones and PCs together -- a task that
would normally take a lot of tinkering with their former email service
provider. Besides Gmail, Hangouts is also widely used within the company,
bringing different departments together for quick meetings. Google Docs
and Sheets were instantly used and since all revisions in Google Drive are
automatically saved, the IT department is spared from hours or even days
of data replication. No more heavy software updates, malware and
redundant backups.
Mobile users gained huge benefits from going Google, since they can now
check and update patient information from their phablets. “We can claim
that users are very satisfied with the switch. They can now easily access
their email through their mobile phones, whereas before, they were only
limited to their office PCs.”, said Mr. Dantis.
With the help of Google Apps for Work, the organization has gone mobile,
fast-tracked collaboration and eliminated redundant processes. Today,
Intellicare is also creating mobile applications through the Google Apps
Engine.
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