The American College of Physicians (ACP) is the nation's largest medical specialty society. Its mission is to enhance the quality and effectiveness of health care by fostering excellence and professionalism in the practice of medicine. The society has about 120,000 members, including medical students. Members are physicians in general internal medicine and related subspecialities, including cardiology, gastroenterology, nephrology, endocrinology, hematology, rheumatology, neurology, pulmonary disease, oncology, infectious diseases, allergy and immunology, and geriatrics. ACP is also a publisher of medical journals and books, and sponsors continuing medical education (CME) courses.
ACP's Graphic Services department is responsible for creative, prepress and print management for the majority of the printed materials required by ACP. With about a dozen people on staff, the Graphic Services department was looking for a more efficient way to manage its business as its workload continued to grow. Of particular concern was the amount of rekeying of information that was routinely required as projects moved through their life-cycle, including manual entry of data into the College's accounting system at the end of each job. Additionally, the Graphic Services department was interested in replacing its paper job tickets, used by its customers to request the department's services, with a digital workflow, as well as to make the approval process for proofs more efficient.
ACP acquired MetaCommunications' Virtual Ticket and Job Manager about three years ago to address these needs, and will soon be incorporating Approval Manager into its workflow. According to Mike Ripca, Graphics Technical Administrator, "We looked at a number of solutions, but none of them were designed for the graphics industry the way Job Manager and Virtual Ticket are, and none of them fit our needs as well."
ACP deployed Job Manager first in the Graphic Services Department. Ripca says, "Users complete a job request using a PDF form and send us the paper request. We transfer all of that information into Job Manager and assign the job to a designer. As the designer progresses through the project, all time and materials are entered into Job Manager, as well as any expenses associated with outside vendors, including printers. We now have all job information in one, convenient, central location, and we are better able to manage all of that information without a lot of rekeying."
The other benefit of using Job Manager, according to Ripca, is the ease with which it was integrated with ACP's accounting package. He adds, "As each job is closed, it is invoiced in Job Manager. Then on the first day of each month, we export that invoicing data to Accounting using a custom script that interfaces with our accounting system. They instantly have the information they need, and we eliminate the time and potential for error associated with manually keying information into the accounting system."
Ripca is now working with MetaCommunications professional services staff to create all of the necessary forms in Virtual Ticket and to customize the application to ACP's needs. He says, "MetaCommunications has been great to work with on this project. Once we have all the forms in place, we will be able to easily change them as we need to. If I need to add an option to a drop down menu, or an extra check box or field, it is very easy to do. But having those resources available to do the initial programming has been a huge benefit for us."
Our IT department has pointed out to me numerous times how well written MetaCommunications installers and documentation are and how they wish that other companies would write software this cleanly.
Mike Ripca, Graphics Technical Administrator
Once the group rolls out Virtual Ticket, according to Ripca, instead of filling out PDF request forms and printing a hardcopy request, his customers will complete and submit job requests through Virtual Ticket. He adds, "That eliminates another layer of manual intervention and potential for error. Jobs will come into a queue for our traffic manager to approve and get pushed into Job Manager for assignment. We will also be using Approval Manager through the Workgroups 2007 interface to track proofs with our internal customers."
Another benefit Ripca is looking forward to is the ability for his customers to view their jobs online, including status and detailed costs. He says, "This will be much more convenient for our customers, and will eliminate unnecessary calls to the department when they need to acquire information about a job. There will be less interruptions for us since our customers will have the ability to access information from anywhere, 24/7."
In addition to job requests, Virtual Ticket will also be used for bid specifications, purchase orders, scheduling and more. Ripca says, "This will tie together a lot of separate, disconnected processes we currently have in place and will eliminate some of the individual software solutions we have had to use to get the work done." This includes, according to Ripca, the ability to generate a scheduling report from Virtual Ticket to replace the unwieldy Excel spreadsheet currently being used for scheduling. "It will be a huge productivity boost having all of this information in one database," he adds.
"MetaCommunications has been terrific to deal with," Ripca concludes. "Their customer support is excellent, the response time is great, and the Workgroups 2007 suite is outstanding. Our IT department has pointed out to me numerous times how well written MetaCommunications installers and documentation are and how they wish that other companies would write software this cleanly. That is high praise, and well-deserved."
