CASE STUDY

ORCHESTRATION IS THE CURE FOR APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT AT A FORTUNE 500 HEALTHCARE SERVICES COMPANY
REDUCING DEVELOPMENT TIME BY 50%
Learn how Serena is helping a global healthcare services company improve the effectiveness and efficiency of their application development process by 50%
Reduce development time by 50% while improving overall quality Provide management with greater insight into each phase of the application development process Ensure tight collaboration across project teams through standard processes and tools Leverage existing investments without ripping out and replacing critical systems

THE COMPANY PROFILE

This Serena customer is one of the largest healthcare services companies in the United States. The company has hundreds of thousands employees, works with thousands of pharmacies and retail stores, and earns billions of dollars in annual revenue. This Serena customer works with a diverse customer base of corporations, consumers, pharmacists, and nurses helping them manage billions of prescriptions, medical claims, and clinical visits each year.

After a series of acquisitions and market expansions, the company realized that it needed to have a more rigorous application development process. It introduced a standard development methodology for consistent, repeatable delivery of software development projects, but it still needed enabling systems to support the methodology. While the company had already invested in tools for project management, testing, and software modeling, those tools were operating in virtual silos. Integrating them would require a massive effort. Despite market-leading systems, the companys developers were wasting time manually compiling information across different systems. And when something changed like a modified reimbursement policy, a defect encountered in a retail store, or a recently passed healthcare regulation project teams were often left in the dark and ended up facing a significant amount of rework. Communicating the latest status to management and customers was also a time-consuming and error-prone process. Even though the company had good systems and good developers, it realized that it still had no way to orchestrate all of its disparate software teams, processes, and tools together.

THE CHALLENGES
Because of the complex landscape of local, state, and national regulations in the United States, this Fortune 500 company needs to have robust technology solutions that can flexibly accommodate different local requirements, securely manage sensitive medical information, and process almost ten million transactions each day. The company has developed many of its own applications to manage this heavy workload, but it also needs to adapt to custom technologies from acquisitions, continuously evolving regulations, and a highly competitive market. And it needs to ensure that everyone stays in sync with a dozen major releases, almost 50 minor releases, and hundreds of emergency releases each year.

The need to orchestrate processes is key to our success.

IT Director

Fortune 500 Healthcare Services Company

CASE STUDY

It was clear to IT executives that they needed to think process orchestration first and systems second, or else they would still be wasting development effort with siloed tools. Instead of doing a typical RFP, IT executives convened a best practices workshop, where Serena and other leading solution providers could jointly refine the companys application development process and explain how potential solutions could drive out waste. After the workshop was complete, the company conducted a brief pilot program so that solution providers could demonstrate in greater detail how they could help. In a matter of days, the company quickly realized that Serena was the answer.

Requirements traceability across the development lifecycle: The company used to have a significant amount of waste and rework because requirements werent communicated clearly or to the right stakeholders. This Serena customer will now systematically track requirements from initial capture all the way through production deployment, with all requirements directly linked to their corresponding test case and to the companys business process map, so that everyone knows the latest status. Because Serena is the main method for orchestrating requirements, the company gains a rigorous change control process across its global teams, multiple platforms, and distributed projects. Executive metrics: Many of the companys systems provide good reports and dashboards, but they often are very productspecific dashboards with limited enterprise metrics. And when the company could get metrics, very few helped them understand how they could improve the development process and get rid of waste. Because Serena will orchestrate the entire application development process, the company will be able to use real-time enterprise dashboards to analyze metrics like cycle time, rework, emergency releases, and more. With Serena, the companys IT executives will be able to make sound business decisions faster than ever.

THE VALUE OF SERENA

This Fortune 100 health care services company is orchestrating its entire application development process from initial project request to ongoing support so that it can drive out waste from all stages of the development process. The company is also relying on Serena to fill a significant gap in how the company manages complex software requirements. Process orchestration to eliminate waste: One solution provider offered this healthcare services company process integration, but only if the company got rid of all of its current systems and used only theirs instead. Serena offered a different and much more sensible approach to eliminate waste from the development process. Serena worked with the company to identify which systems were absolutely critical and left those untouched. Serena is focusing instead on process automation and integration to orchestrate all of the companys existing and new systems including project management, requirements analysis, testing, deployment, and support. By having a single orchestrated development workflow in one system, this Serena customer expects to reduce development cycle time by 50% while improving overall quality. The Serena solution will ensure that everyone stays on track with relevant changes, reviews, and updates resulting in much less development effort being wasted.

THE FUTURE WITH SERENA

An orchestrated application delivery process is just the companys first step in delivering high-quality applications faster, lowering business costs, and delighting its customers. Instead of being tied up in manual processes and development rework, this Serena customers employees will have more time to focus on strategic and customer-focused activities. Process orchestration will also be rolled out to the companys offshore vendors and global partners. With Serena as a strategic partner, this Fortune 500 healthcare services company has found the perfect prescription for continuous process improvement.

CONTACT Website: www.serena.com Phone: 1-800-457-3736 Email: info@serena.com

Copyright 2011 Serena Software, Inc. All rights reserved. Serena is a registered trademark of Serena Software, Inc. All other product or company names are used for identification purposes only, and may be trademarks of their respective owners. Revised 04 March 2011. Document ID: CS-RQM-030711