Problem
Achieve Healthcare Technologies is focused on the long-term care industry and provides a comprehensive technology solution, including products and services, to nearly 3,000 customers nationwide. The company serves sub-acute, long-term care, skilled nursing, assisted living, and continuing care retirement facilities and communities. From client-server to Web-enabled solutions, Achieve provides small and large, single and multi-facilities with the services they need to run successful organizations.
Since Achieve positions its offering as a complete solution - including the infrastructure supporting its software - customers perceive any hardware problems as software problems, and they expect Achieve to address them. By offering its applications through a software-as-a-service model, Achieve has leveraged a strategy that continues to be a proven route to revenue and market expansion. To help it deliver a high-availability environment, Achieve has chosen to outsource the infrastructure needs supporting its applications.
Achieve clients see hardware as part of the Achieve application suite, so infrastructure is a big part of the Achieve value proposition and needs to work for the company to succeed.
Achieve also wanted to gain value-added services to be more attractive to its customers. After reviewing the providers in the marketplace, Achieve turned to VeriCenter.
Solution
The Eden Prairie, Minnesota-based company selected VeriCenter, Inc., for managed hosting, colocation, remote monitoring and reporting, and remote data backup services. VeriCenter was selected for its "high-touch service," world-class data centers, 100 percent network availability, state-of-the-art technology, flexibility, and high service level agreements (SLAs).
A VeriCenter customer for six now, Achieve develops a powerful solution called Achieve Matrix, which is a Web-based, fully integrated clinical and financial software application that helps remedy long-term care challenges through electronic health records capabilities, integrated resident-side charting technology, enterprise-wide reporting, and IT outsourcing services. Matrix is simple to use, easy to implement, and cost effective. VeriCenter hosts Matrix, Path Links, and other Achieve applications in its data centers and delivers these applications to Achieve’s clients. This model helps Achieve control costs and assure high availability of these applications.
Achieve prices its software to take advantage of economies of scale incorporated within the VeriCenter infrastructure and support team to streamline revenues and expenses. VeriCenter helps the company meet its pricing model through a utility computing strategy, which lets Achieve tap IT infrastructure capabilities on an as-needed basis, similar to buying electricity, without the requirement to buy, maintain, and upgrade its own infrastructure.
VeriCenter's distributed high-availability data center network also gives Achieve the ability to scale rapidly and nationwide.
"Customers see Achieve's applications as a total solution. They don't distinguish hardware from software," said Ken Polarek, Vice President of Operations at Achieve. "Our infrastructure must always be available, and VeriCenter delivers the assurance that we will be up and running. This delivery model also has helped us forge new alliances to bundle financial, payroll, Exchange, and desktop applications with our own solutions."
Results
The services that VeriCenter provides Achieve are crucial to its success, since the Matrix platform runs 24x7. VeriCenter has increased customer satisfaction and driven down costs for Achieve in its solutions delivery.
VeriCenter also helps Achieve indirectly meet the compliance requirements outlined by HIPAA for security and infrastructure as a result of VeriCenter's SAS 70 Level II compliance certification. The certification is an international standard developed in conjunction with the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). This internationally recognized certification provides assurance to VeriCenter's customers that the company adheres to policies, procedures, and business processes designed to ensure a secure and stable data center environment that safely monitors and manages customer data.
"By outsourcing to VeriCenter, we're able to focus on improving our software solutions and differentiating ourselves in the marketplace," Polarek said. "We view VeriCenter as a strategic partner that allows us to spend our resources on doing what we do best - solving the challenges of our valued client base."
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