As the largest health system in Illinois with nearly 32,000 employees, Advocate Health Care makes every effort to enable its people to connect around the same goal: create the best place for patients, doctors and associates. While staying connected across hundreds of miles is challenging for any organization, the need for collaboration across Advocate's system is essential.
The Challenge
After 10 years of using an iPlanet messaging system, the company needed to evaluate on-premise vs. cloud solutions, and find a supported platform that would scale to meet its needs. In considering alternatives, reducing costs was important, but aligning with its unified communications roadmap was essential. Effective communication within and across hospitals was also critical, such as being able to connect to the right people instantly.
The Solution
Slalom Consulting's total cost of ownership and technical analysis showed that Microsoft's Business Productivity Online Suite cloud-based solution made the most economic sense for Advocate, while also offering the most flexible and resilient unified communications platform. Slalom migrated users from iPlanet, Lotus Notes, and certain legacy Microsoft Exchange versions to Exchange Online, and supported user readiness activities. Plus, it designed an Exchange Online solution to fully leverage the platform without the need or cost of additional third-party migration tools.
The Results
Advocate can now provide its staff with more advanced collaboration and communications capabilities through a new, industry-standard messaging platform. They can see each other's presence information in order to reach out more efficiently for critical business needs, increasing productivity by combining availability with instant messaging capabilities. By migrating Advocate to Microsoft BPOS, Slalom has enabled the organization to fully realize its unified communication strategy, and build a solid, long-term
foundation for future growth.
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