Affinity builds communities with EM3 iOn

Why EM3 iOn works for Affinity Easy to learn and use – users are trained in one to four days, depending on their role Enthusiastic adoption – 110 trained users contributing content successfully over nine months Improved communications - everyone can contribute, leading to robust, useful Web sites Flexibility and power to grow – powerful tools like remote content inclusion accommodate growth without lengthy integration cycles

The situation: Affinity Health System is a regional healthcare network comprised of 17 clinics, three hospitals, a long-term care facility, and a health plan. They are ranked 11th in the top 100 integrated healthcare networks nationwide (Verispan 2003). Their Web sites were maintained manually, with updates funneled through an already taxed IT organization, leading to delays and a lack of current, useful information.

The goal: Affinity hoped to better serve their patient, provider, and employee communities by improving the quality of their Web communications. Rather than adding headcount, they chose to invest in a content management system.

Another goal was to relieve the pain of managing some 2000 policies and procedures in use among their member providers. These frequently updated documents were managed in Microsoft Word files emailed between 20-30 policy contributors. Because of regulatory requirements, historical auditing was a labor-intensive, manual process. Lack of control and ability to intelligently track changes led to confusion and frustration when enforcing them

The choice: After 15 weeks evaluating leading Web content management systems, Affinity selected EM3 iOn™ for its ease-of-use, powerful out-of-box capabilities, quick deployment, and EM3's responsive customer service.

The launch: Affinity chose to use an outside advertising agency for the site design and EM3's professional services for template integration. Once comprehensives were delivered, EM3 converted the designs to HTML and integrated the XSLT templates into iOn within one week. EM3 remotely installed iOn on Affinity's servers within a day, and after four days of training, the four-person launch team began building their first iOn-managed Web site. The team combined new and existing content, creating more than 200 iOn objects, and launched Affinity's corporate Web site eight days later

The growing team: "We now have 110 users contributing, and 30 more being trained. iOn has gained critical mass much faster than anticipated," says Will Weider, Chief Information Officer, Affinity Health System. "Use is growing exponentially. It's a cultural change that has been embraced by our organization of more than 4000 people. It's remarkable to change an organization that big so quickly."

iOn has produced a paradigm shift in Affinity's communications, according to Weider. Affinity once used Microsoft Word as their primary publishing mechanism, emailing documents between contributors, and posting them to server shares. Now the Web serves as their daily communications hub. Weider is even considering reducing the number of Microsoft Word licenses for the organization.

The results: Affinity currently manages six Web sites in iOn, with more on the way. These sites deliver constantly updated information to the healthcare community in real time. "iOn has been so successful at improving our communications that is has been raised to a strategic level within the organization," says Weider. "Our 2004 Strategic Plan states that we will use iOn to create a site targeted at improving communications with physicians and nurses."

Affinity also revamped their policies and procedures process, bringing them into their iOn-managed repository. With the help of EM3's Archiver plug-in, Affinity created a definitive repository that even resolves disputed infractions by confirming the exact content of a policy on any given date.

"iOn meets all our needs for policy management," Weider says. "Our policy managers love it. They often think it was designed specifically to manage policies, letting them assign task owners, track deadlines, manage changes, etc. Then they realize it's a full Web management tool. Before you know it they're creating departmental Web sites."

The bottom line: In addition to cutting license costs and meeting communication goals without added headcount, Affinity realized other cost benefits. Using iOn's powerful remote content integration capabilities, they instantly created a seamless gateway to third-party recruitment application that manages job descriptions, resumes, and applicants. Affinity's Web site has become the primary recruitment center for luring quality candidates. This alone has saved tens of thousands of dollars a year in newspaper advertising.

According to Weider, iOn's power and flexibility keep pace well with their growing needs. "As a vendor, EM3 is one of our top three. They really listen. It's gratifying to see our ideas for enhancement appear in product releases," he says. "My team lives in iOn day and night. We love it!"