Healthcare Company: Adoption Services for Wireless Connectivity
In this case study
Technology infrastructure supports user expectations
End users increasingly expect seamless experiences wherever they go, and on whatever device they use. Organizations need the right technology infrastructure to support these experiences if they hope to stay relevant, competitive and keep up with evolving employee and customer expectations. It's not enough just to build the right wireless infrastructure to enable seamless connectivity; IT staff must also have the proper knowledge, processes and training in place to take full advantage of the capabilities a new technology offers.
Poor connectivity and outdated access policies
A Managed Healthcare Company serving nearly five million low-income families and individuals had ignored upgrades to its wireless network for too long. Its Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) Virtual Machine (VM) infrastructure was running low on memory, CPU and hard drive resources, causing frustrating connectivity issues for end users. To compound matters, the Company's guest wireless and Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) access policies for employees and visitors were overly cumbersome and required IT intervention. In fact, IT had resorted to training other employees on how to onboard visitors and contractors in an effort to lessen the burden of constantly dealing with ad-hoc connectivity issues.
The main customer pain points included:
- Visitors/Contractors: The guest wireless onboarding process for visitors and contractors was time-consuming as it required a network engineer to manually set up accounts and approve access.
- Employees: Onboarding nearly 5,000 employee personal devices (through its BYOD policy) proved equally taxing given the network's lag and arcane approval process.
The Managed Healthcare Company realized it needed help updating its wireless network, developing simpler access protocols that minimized IT involvement and training employees on the changes. They hired WWT to develop an end-to-end solution for all of the above.
Adoption services as an approach
After engaging the customer in a workshop, WWT used a multi-tiered Adoption Services approach to help the customer understand the reasons behind their existing wireless and process issues, develop and implement a remediation plan, and train staff on how best to deploy the solution.
WWT Adoption Services specialists worked with the customer to develop a solution and set of processes that comprised the following components:
- WWT procured and helped install new Cisco ISE VMs at the customer's West Coast headquarters;
- We established new, more efficient processes for guest and employee BYOD account onboarding;
- Within roughly two weeks, WWT implemented new ISE policies for guest and BYOD wireless access programs;
- Post-install, we tested different laptop and mobile devices to ensure upgrades met customer standards and expectations; and
- WWT trained key customer network engineers and administrators on the new technology and process improvements.
Easier access increases satisfaction
WWT's unique Adoption Services approach provided our customer with an upgraded Cisco wireless network featuring improved connectivity speeds and a custom set of modernized access policies that not only minimized onboarding IT involvement but gave employees and visitors a great user experience.
In a subsequent satisfaction survey, the customer rated WWT 10 out of 10 and recommended our Professional Services to another organization. Moreover, as a result of this positive engagement, this customer has asked WWT to assist in a separate wireless remediation project for nearly three hundred access points at its corporate headquarters.
Explore your unique wireless and adoption requirements by learning more about Next Gen Wireless.