The Company

Worldwide, VAMED is one of the leading companies for equipment of the health care and health tourism industry. VAMED group employs more than 6,000 staff members and has realized more than 450 projects in health-related industries in more than 47 countries during the past 25 years. The companies of the VAMED group provide project management and consulting services, planning, engineering and contract development services, facility management and operate health care facilities.

The focus of these activities rests upon hospitals and clinics, health care centers, thermal springs and wellness centers, providing treatment at health resorts and operating facilities for assisted living for retired people. Moreover, they focus on operating labs and research facilities as well as hospital-related facilities nationwide as well as in other countries.

The Project Objectives

Today, intelligent archiving is a basic functionality. If you want to work on a project-basis and across department boundaries in order to tighten your business processes, the best way is to apply a DMS as well as workflow technologies. As a result, both leading organizations disposed of the archiving systems they had used for years because they could not be expanded. They migrated to the d.3 system. d.velop Austria has started introducing the DMS/workflow and archiving solution in different VAMED companies in Austria and Germany since the spring of 2006.

These companies aimed to cover all future communication and information requirements that may arise in the company group by deploying this software. A continuous overview of all documents and their degree of editing will contribute to accomplishing this objective. Moreover, in this way, collaboration with external partners will be improved.

Efficiency

d.3 has been deployed by two leading organizations as well as by two subsidiaries since September 2006. The system conducts several tasks such as contract management, processing incoming and outgoing mail, automatic forwarding of invoices, e-mail archiving, and plan management. In addition, it takes over COLD data from diverse ERP systems, manages knowledge and is integrated into patient management systems. Because the staff members have already worked with an electronic archive for years, they have been able to get used to the new system very easily – right from the beginning.

More-over, they mastered the new functionalities without any problems. Cycle times of incoming invoices and distribution of incoming mail were considerably accelerated. Single projects and decision-making processes can be traced; documents are stored in a revision-proof way. Communication was improved and options for collaboration based on documents were introduced. “d.3 thus considerably impacts our core business and supports our daily business in several ways: invoices are processed a lot faster, incoming mail is sent to the responsible project manager instantly and it reminds us of expiring contract deadlines, to name a few,“ Johann Müller-Albrecht, Manager IT at VAMED group at the corporation headquarter located in Vienna, explains.

Why d.3 in particular ?

The d.velop team and product have proven their migration competence for existing archives. Crucial aspects for the decision in favor of this system were the broad range of functionalities d.3 provides as well as its price-performance ratio, which turned out to be the best among the products on the shortlist. The solution’s flexibility was especially important to VAMED. For the general design and the development of workflows for the different companies and departments, the system permits considering the requirements of staff members as well as those of key users. Their specific work processes are reflected in the software one-to-one.

Johann Müller-Albrecht, Vamed Project manager ECM

“d.3 does not provide a fixed framework that needs to be adopted, but, rather, processes can be defined individually. During this process analysis, we detected some weak points in our existing business workflows and eliminated them. Our objective was that at any point in time the staff members would be the driving forces. And d.3 provides the flexibility in order to accomplish this aim”, Johann Müller-Albrecht emphasizes.

Facts and Figures

• Two leading VAMED organizations have migrated from their existing archiv-ing system, which was restricting with regard to functionality and expandaability, to a future-oriented ECM solution by d.velop. The new solution comprises a DMS (revision-proof documents), archives and workflow.
• The communication and information requirements of these leading organizations are now met. Decisionmaking processes in single processes are com-prehensible because there is always an overview detailing who received which document at which point in time. Furthermore, the current status of every document’s progress through the review and editing process is provided.
• One crucial aspect for the project’s success was d.3’s high degree of flexibility.
• All participants, even those working at the subsidiaries, were integrated into the workflow design process. Their individual requirements and expectations were considered in developing the final workflow.

Project progress

The IT structures at VAMED are heterogeneous. Thus, other ERP systems in addition to SAPERION are included. Standards for the Microsoft world are also included because Exchange, Office, SQL server and SharePoint are widely used. d.3 has been integrated into different systems without any problems.

The starting point of the project was marked by the replacement of the old archive by a powerful EMC Centera archiving solution at VSG VAMED Standortentwicklung und Engineering (location development and engineering) GmbH & CO KG in Vienna. The migration of the old data started in May 2006 and was completed in September 2006. At the same time, a d.3 workflow for incoming invoices was introduced. “After we had completed these two pilot projects, the next projects were pending”, Johann Müller-Albrecht says. This comprises the introduction of a workflow for processing an incoming invoice at VAMED Management and Service GmbH, the implementation of a solution for processing incoming and outgoing mail at VAMED Medizintechnik (medical technology) GmbH in Vienna. In addition, we plan to introduce a contract management system at VAMED Management and Service GmbH Deutschland in Berlin.

“At the medical technology subsidiary, we first installed a workflow process for incoming mail using d.capture and d.3 flow. Subsequently, we concentrated on outgoing mail”, Peter Huemer, Managing Director at d.velop GmbH, Vienna, explains. Every mail is assigned to a certain project. By assigning keywords and using algorithms for project assignment, the software ensures that that every incoming document – regardless of whether it was sent electronically or on paper – is assigned to the right project manager.

For every outgoing document, d.3 verifies whether or not the author was authorized to originate the document. This is realized using the Microsoft Office integration, which uses templates. In the d.3 system, it is determined which document has to be assigned to which project record and who has the right to produce a certain kind of document.

The installation of the mail workflow was started in September 2006. Then, because the medical technology company was acquired by the VAMED group from the previous owner, the municipality Vienna, project progress was delayed. Since mid-2007, the workflow has been in live operation. E-mail archiving as a result of the d.3 integration into the MS Exchange Server has been an important part of the solution.

The contract management system at VAMED Management and Service GmbH Deutschland (VMS), Berlin, which is based on d.3, was installed in September 2006. It helps the company to keep an overview of the status of different contracts. Moreover, it automatically informs about contractual obligations and deadlines. The same system is scheduled to be implemented at the sister companies in Vienna. Johann Müller-Albrecht: “Currently, the system is extended every month.”

Outlook

Quite soon, the Neurologische Therapiezentrum Kapfenberg (Neurological treatment center, Kapfenberg) will be equipped with d.3 in order to process incoming mail along with a d.3 workflow for handling invoices. There, the software will be integrated into the existing patient management system; a common interface to connect the two solutions is currently in development.

In the corporation, a knowledge management system is being introduced by the experts at VAMED. For this system, the Microsoft Sharepoint Portal Server combined with d.3 will play a crucial role. Documents which do not need to be stored in a revision-proof way will be captured by SharePoint, and those that have to be archived in a revision-proof way will be stored in the d.3 system. The VMT Krankenhausmanagement und Betriebsführungsges. m.b.H. (Organization for hospital management and business management), Vienna, plans to digitize and archive more than 20,000 plans and 14,000 records with more than four millions documents in d.3.

The total number of d.3 work places at the VAMED group will increase from the current 100 concurrent users to 500 at the time of project completion.