Premise Health adopts Strategic Portfolio Management

Identifying the need for transparency
Premise Health formed from the merger of two companies with different approaches and tools for IT business and service management. As a result, the combined organization handled service requests, incidents, and demand management using disparate, manual tracking methods, including emails, spreadsheets, lists, and ad hoc reports. Not only was this time consuming, but it also resulted in a lack of visibility, context, and awareness of what resources were needed for projects to be successful and completed on time.

Premise had a centralized project management office, but request intake was fragmented, and prioritization was difficult due to lack of transparency. In order to be more effective and efficient, the entire company needed to take a more holistic approach to project management across business units. Premise wanted a single platform to streamline service management for enterprise use that would allow it to better manage demand, balance resources, manage projects using agile methodologies, perform budget and portfolio planning, and accurately map costs to technical and business services.

“Our processes were so manual and disparate that we didn’t have reliable metrics to identify where we should allocate our resources to get the best return on our investment,” says Natasha Hunter, Product and Program Manager – Business Applications at Premise Health. “We just didn’t have enough visibility. Something as simple as finding out the status of a service request involved multiple conversations and emails flying back and forth.”

Simplifying and standardizing
To simplify, consolidate, and reduce tooling, Premise set out to streamline and standardize its request forms and processes. A positive experience using ServiceNow for change and incident management led to replacing the aging project portfolio management platform with ServiceNow Strategic Portfolio Management. From the very beginning, the goal was to go beyond IT and automate request and resource management to generate additional value for business units.

Premise quickly replaced email intake with demand-based processes, and traded spreadsheets for automated reports and dashboards in ServiceNow. Developers began utilizing agile methodologies for ServiceNow development and adopted more formal project management processes. Business units did the same, using ServiceNow templates to save time and provide valuable guidance to team members who were not in traditional project management roles.

“I didn’t have project management experience before ServiceNow, and it’s been enabling and empowering,” says Meg Welchans, ITSM Analyst at Premise Health. “It’s a much better way to manage demand.”

Over time, Premise leveraged its success with IT service management and scaled it across the enterprise, representing project managers and project users in 13 different business units and over 30 departments across the organization, including facilities, finance, procurement, and more. The company now has more than 500 licensed users of ServiceNow IT Business Management from various business units, along with an enterprise review board with representation from every department in the organization.

“ServiceNow gives us visibility and transparency,” says Hunter. “Requests go through a standardized process and are prioritized accordingly, so we can balance across everyone’s needs.”

With the Strategic Portfolio Management solution, the team had a greater ability to meet requirements, manage demands, and deliver positive outcomes. The solution also enabled teams to leverage a single, enterprise platform with extensive integrations to other critical enterprise functions. By creating robust, dynamic analytics and dashboards and by providing a way to manage projects using various methodologies, the solution helped the team ensure resources were being managed and utilized effectively and provided visibility into the availability for new work. Additionally, the team also better facilitated strategic and financial decision-making.

Cost savings, new opportunities
By consolidating platforms, streamlining work, and automating processes that were previously manual, like reporting, Premise now saves at least $1.7M+ annually. ServiceNow helps provide a unique opportunity to bridge organization strategy and portfolio while driving innovative new opportunities for the business, such as Six Sigma and lean portfolio management. When Premise deploys a new health center, the entire implementation (all involved workstreams) is now managed using ServiceNow instead of multiple, disparate systems.

By using ServiceNow, the company leverages templates, status reports, valuable metrics, and self-service dashboards to easily monitor progress, address risks/issues, and help ensure timely completion of projects. Premise also used ServiceNow to manage the upgrade of its Epic electronic health records system and to deploy a new immunization registry program, saving over 15,000 hours of team member time that translated directly to over $1M dollars.

A focus on enterprise-wide process consistency delivered the following benefits:

• Analyzing the true cost of all services
• Rationalizing applications and investments to focus more on innovation
• Transforming delivery execution of new services with agile methodologies
• Tracking and scrutinizing resources, timelines, and costs
• Reining in rogue processes within business units

Increasing business velocity
Improving visibility, aligning projects with strategic goals, and adopting hybrid project management methodologies enables Premise to deliver new products and services faster—both internally and for customers. Despite the increased pace, projects are less stressful for team members because they have the tools they need to properly manage requests and prioritize demand. Hunter expects these benefits to increase as Premise moves further into automating resource management.

“Now that we manage all our projects with ServiceNow, we can really start maturing our processes and taking more manual tasks off people’s shoulders,” Hunter says. “Not only are we helping the organization move faster, but we’re also helping people be happier in their jobs—and that’s a tremendous win.”

About Premise Health
Premise Health is the world’s leading direct healthcare provider and one of the largest digital providers in the U.S., serving over 11 million eligible lives across more than 2,500 of the largest commercial and municipal employers in the U.S. Premise partners with its clients to offer fully connected care, in-person, and in the digital environment. It operates more than 800 onsite and nearsite wellness centers in 45 states and Guam, delivering care through the Digital Wellness Center and onsite, nearsite, mobile, and event solutions.

Premise delivers value by simplifying complexity and breaking down barriers to give diverse member populations access to convenient, integrated, high-quality care. It offers more than 30 products, delivering the breadth and depth of care required to serve organizations’ total populations. The result is healthcare that meets the needs of members and their families, helping them live healthier while lowering costs for organizations. www.premisehealth.com

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