Johannesburg, 10 Dec 2008
The Alchemex Web Solution enables the execution and distribution of authenticated real-time reports from a single centralised source, by Web browser across intranets or the Internet, to colleagues, customers or suppliers.
Private Health Administrators (PHA) was formed in 1992. Its core business is the administration of medical aid schemes and the provision of healthcare solutions. Pharos Medical Plan is administered by PHA. A combination of sound administration and integrated healthcare management (www.pha.co.za/ihm.html) ensures PHA is the leading healthcare administrator with an unsurpassed track record of service, cost containment and benefit delivery.
PHA originally investigated the benefits of a business intelligence solution because it wanted to provide a better service to its customers, handle queries more efficiently and ultimately create efficiencies around what was a manual and repetitive process prior to Alchemex. Penny Putman, clinical director at PHA, explains that the desired end result was “to have automated reports to empower our workforce with relevant information, when they required it and in a format of their choice, and Alchemex provided the end-to-end solution for us”.
Verena Buys, data analyst at PHA, explains the objectives as easier said than done. “We had a membership and pre-authorisation system, a claims information legacy system as well as multiple Excel data sources that are completely disparate from a data integration perspective, resulting in information silos that could not be simultaneously queried to provide a consolidated view across the business. This challenge was easily overcome using Alchemex's union reporting functionality, which allowed us to interrogate the multiple unrelated sources and deliver a single version of the truth,” she said.
This exercise was further complemented by the fact that some of PHA's existing report queries could be transported directly into Alchemex, allowing the report-writing process to be fast-tracked by re-using some existing intellectual property that had been developed. “This was a major plus for us and really proved to us what a flexible solution Alchemex was,” says Buys.
Further to this, Alchemex enabled PHA to provide additional information that was previously not available in the original reports through drilldowns, assisting many of the teams in providing a better service and being more proactive, as they now have all the necessary information at hand. Buys continues: “Because Alchemex delivers directly into Microsoft Excel, we have all the existing functions and tools available in Excel to format the report the way we choose, and save that layout as a template for future use. All of this allows us to live up to our reputation of being the leading healthcare administrator and deliver a world-class service to our customers.”
An additional obstacle that existed in the organisation, aside from the way in which the reports were prepared, was the distribution and delivery of specific reports to the right people. “Many of our pre-Alchemex reports for our claims department had to be printed and then faxed,” says Putman. “This manual and repetitive task was being carried out on a daily basis by many of our departments, and has probably been the area in which Alchemex has added the most value. The solution has totally transformed the way we share and distribute information within the organisation.”
Steve Coull, director at Alchemex, explains: “PHA's challenges regarding the preparation and distribution of reports was not unfamiliar to us, and is a fairly pervasive obstacle among many businesses today. The solution we matched to their need was the Alchemex Web Solution, which now allows all their reports to be run in real-time via the Web from anywhere in the world, with delivery into a number of outputs such as Excel, pdf and html, ensuring that bandwidth constraints are catered for.”
PHA now has the ability to develop a new report based on a business need today, and make it available immediately across the Web, resulting in massive efficiencies within business processes. “Our mobile workforce can help themselves 24/7 to their required reports, without having to wait for the report to be prepared and sent to them, and removes much of the pressure on our internal systems and teams from a reporting perspective,” says Putman. “An additional benefit has been the ability to schedule and automatically deliver chosen reports to distribution lists via e-mail, again ensuring that our workforce has the information at hand to perform their functions.” PHA currently has around 70 reports deployed within the Alchemex system; these are accessed by over 50 users through the Web, with over 100 reports being run daily.
Alchemex also has pre-defined templates available for Pastel and VIP Payroll, meaning that the company can further leverage its original investment in the software, by delivering out-of-the-box standard reports for these applications that will further benefit other departments that have not yet been exposed to the solution.
Alchemex is offering its Web Solution software at a 20% discount until 19 December 2008. To view a product demo, go to http://www.alchemex.com/_video/_ws_demo.html. To take advantage of this offer, please contact Steve Coull on 082 9017482 or stephen@alchemex.com.
Alchemex reporting software delivers automated management packs and other decision-support solutions in Microsoft Excel directly from the database of a company's accounting and/or payroll application, integrating with ACCPAC, MYOB, Pastel Evolution, Pastel Partner, Pastel Payroll, VIP Payroll, Sage 50, SAP Business One, Sybiz Vision and SYSPRO. Tools can be implemented standalone on any compliant data source or integrated into vendor applications.
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