The Medi-Clinic Group has selected the NetTracker Web site analysis suite, supplied by Synergy Computing, to better understand the Web usage patterns of its clients, improve its marketing and develop a more proactive approach to its security measures.
The Medi-Clinic Group, which aims to provide patients with cost-effective healthcare by offering a wide range of specialised services, commands 23% of the private hospital industry in SA. Through a continuous process of expansion, upgrading and training, the group is constantly improving standards and equipping its personnel with the skills and facilities to support its doctors and to ensure the peace of mind of its patients.
Part of this process involves tracking and monitoring of both client and staff Web usage, in order to build an understanding of which areas of a site are used the most, where any potential security problems may lie and to track performance patterns - hence the selection of NetTracker.
NetTracker allows users to analyse and optimise their online channels by providing a flexible, comprehensive and accurate world-class Web analytics solution.
According to Synergy Computing account manager Christo Bredenkamp, many large corporations establish sprawling Web presences - because 'it's the thing to do' - and then simply forget about them. "It's one thing to create a Web presence, and quite another to understand how and why clients are using the Web site," he says.
Medi-Clinic's manager of Internet technology, Paul Miell, says the group initially purchased one licence, approximately 15 months ago, in order to monitor its public site, but the pilot was so successful that it now has five licences - focusing on the public site, the members' only site, and three of its hospitals, namely Panorama, Constantiaberg and Morningside.
"It is critical for us to have the type of statistics supplied by NetTracker, as without such stats, you really have no clue as to what is going on," says Miell.
"Not only does it give us a better understanding of our customers - in terms of which areas of the site they tend to focus on - but it also helps from an internal point of view, in that we have used it proactively for security, to track down external addresses that were linked to our internal admin and were thus potential security threats.
"From the marketing side of things, because we are now aware which areas of the site receive the most hits and what times of the day traffic is at its busiest, we can specifically target where and when to run promotions or competitions in order for them to be most effective."
When it comes to end-users like marketing, sales and service managers, these players need to do more than just measure their Web site's effectiveness through pre-configured reports, and an analysis tool like NetTracker can empower them to manage their Web site's success through investigative Web analysis.
"With NetTracker we also have the ability to take a global view, in that we can check what data is being accessed, and the amount being accessed across the various sites, and can even check things like the speed of our Web server's response, so we can also measure our own performance," confirms Miell.
"NetTracker has proven its effectiveness to the Medi-Clinic Group, and in the long run we hope to eventually roll it out across all 50 of our sites."
According to Bredenkamp, an effective Internet presence can make a significant difference to how clients perceive the companies with which they interact.
"The dot-com meltdown has already taught us that while a Web site is a critical channel for doing business, it has to be properly structured and designed to deliver value to the customer as well as to the business. NetTracker plays an important role in allowing companies to achieve this," he says.
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