HM Health Solutions Redefines Telecom Administration with Starfish Self Service Manager

Starfish Associates Self Service Manager HMHS Case Study

The first month after deploying the Starfish Self Service Manager solution, HMHS used the portal to:

Provision 300 new station requests

De-provision 200 accounts

Reset 750 voicemail and telephone passwords

“Providing end users and delegated administrators with self-service tools enables enterprises such as HMHS to automate and streamline their manual telecom business processes.”

Robert Hankin

Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Starfish Associates

Highmark Health, a Pittsburgh, PA based enterprise that employs more than 35,000 people nationwide and serves 40 million Americans in all 50 states, is the third largest integrated health care delivery and financing system in the nation. Highmark Health is the parent company of Highmark Inc., Allegheny Health Network, and HM Health Solutions. Highmark Inc. and its subsidiaries and affiliates provide health insurance to 5.3 million members in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Delaware as well as dental insurance, vision care and related health products through a national network of diversified businesses that include United Concordia Companies, HM Insurance Group, Davis Vision and Visionworks. Allegheny Health Network is the parent company of an integrated delivery network that includes eight hospitals, a community-based network of physician organizations, and a group purchasing organization, ambulatory surgery centers, and health and wellness pavilions in western Pennsylvania. HM Health Solutions (HMHS) focuses on meeting the information technology platform and other business needs of the Highmark Health enterprise as well as unaffiliated health insurance plans by providing proven business processes, expert knowledge and integrated cloud-based platforms.

Challenge

At Highmark Health Solutions, requests for simple telecom administration services such as moves, adds, and changes, were significantly high. HMHS needed a solution that would help reduce some of the administration burden from its help desk staff, and increase operational efficiency. The company wanted to allow users to provision and manage some of their own unified communications services, and synchronize user information across IT and communications applications.

Solution

HMHS chose to implement Starfish’s Self Service Manager solution, a web-based
portal for end users to provision and manage their own telecom services in a controlled and safe way. Starfish Self Service Manager was integrated with the HMHS enterprise Active Directory
(AD) to authenticate and authorize user access, as well as automatically synchronize information between the Avaya Aura® infrastructure and AD.

Users can now easily provision their own phones and voice mailboxes, manage phone options such as button settings, reset phone and mailbox passwords, and even de-provision unused telecom resources. All transactions are controlled, authorized and logged. The changes are virtually instantaneous – no more waiting for a response from the help desk – and the telecom staff can concentrate on more critical communications projects.

Self Service Manager leverages Starfish’s intelligent Directory Synchronization engine to keep Avaya Aura Communication Manager and Active Directory up-to-date in real-time. Phone numbers are automatically populated in AD when new stations are added, and user names are automatically populated in Communication Manager. This tight integration helps ensure data integrity and accuracy when authenticating users and authorizing access to telecom resources.

Results

After rolling out the Self Service Manager throughout the organization, HMHS couldn’t be more pleased with the results. Staff members were delighted to put the new telecom self-service portal to use. In the first month the application was deployed, 300 new station requests were provisioned and 200 accounts were de-provisioned. In addition, more than 750 voicemail and telephone password resets were successfully completed through the portal.

 

Whether it is a new division or small call center, the flexibility and scalability of the Starfish self-service solutions allow us to quickly deliver telecom resources.

Pamela Biller

Senior Infrastructure Engineer, HMHS

“Implementing Starfish Self Service Manager has automated and streamlined provisioning and de-provisioning of multi-vendor unified communication resources for our customers,” remarked Matt Sentz, Senior Architect, HMHS. “With nearly 20,000 users, self-service has significantly reduced the effort telecom analysts devote to moves, adds and changes allowing them to focus on career and skill development.”

Learn More

To learn more about Avaya solutions and DevConnect Technology Partner Starfish Associates, contact your Avaya Account Manager or authorized Avaya reseller. Or, visit us online at https://www.devconnectmarketplace.com

 

About Starfish Associates

Starfish is a global software company providing communication management solutions for multi-vendor unified communications and contact centers. We help enterprises with automated provisioning, self-service, resource management and migration tools for Amazon Connect, Avaya, Cisco, Genesys, Microsoft, Verint, Zoom and others.

Starfish automates millions of transactions per year across medium to large enterprises, enabling them to reduce costs, gain efficiencies, and respond more quickly to today’s dynamic business environment.

Learn more about Starfish Self Service Manager.