Vālenz Health

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Enhancing Mobility and Growth with Collaboration Platforms

Vālenz® Health simplifies the complexities of self-insurance for employers through a steadfast commitment to data transparency and decision enablement powered by its Healthcare Ecosystem Optimization Platform (HEOP). The company's HEOP integrates robust analytics, high-value provider networks, URAC-accredited care management, full-service claim management and assured payment integrity –providing full transparency for unparalleled data engagement and decision enablement – engaging early and often to lower the cost of healthcare insurance claims.
Vālenz Health

Challenge

Vālenz has enjoyed strong organic growth alongside an aggressive acquisition strategy that resulted in a mix of disparate telephony vendors and systems. In addition to the difficulty of managing and utilizing disparate systems, the primary phone system and contact center had been overengineered, resulting in a reliance on expensive and slow-to-respond third parties for support.

Vālenz was looking to migrate to a collaboration solution that would allow employees to collaborate and be productive anywhere, on any connected device. Members of the organization needed to be able to call and collaborate whether they were in the office, working from home, or in any remote location. Additionally, Vālenz had three separate phone systems in their Tampa, Phoenix, and Portsmouth locations. 

In pursuit of providing a consistent, world-class experience for clients and internal users alike, Vālenz engaged Weidenhammer (in conjunction with our partner Prelude Solutions) to evaluate and recommend a single, consolidated calling and contact center platform that could be deployed organization wide. Through discovery with Vālenz’s staff, together we identified Vālenz’s key needs: simplicity, ease-of-use, integration, and streamlined management. Also noted as important considerations in the selection of the right platform were costs, the ability to scale with the organization, and the ability to roll out additional features and capabilities in the future. Finally – and critically – Vālenz was looking for a system that would allow the organization to be largely self-sufficient for everyday administration, adjustments, and modifications to fit the evolving needs of the business. Most importantly, it needed to allow Vālenz to move nimbly and fulfill the organization’s promise of engaging early and often for smarter, better, faster healthcare.

Solutions

To minimize costs and enhance mobility and growth, we recommended that Vālenz migrate from the three disparate phone systems to the state-of-the-art Cisco Webex Calling and Cisco Webex Contact Center cloud collaboration platforms. 

Cisco Webex Calling is a cloud-based collaboration platform which provides rich calling and collaboration services with very little on-premises infrastructure. It is extremely well-suited to an organization like Vālenz which wants to continue to provide first class collaboration capabilities while lowering capital expenditures, providing predictable operating expenditures, and reducing staff workloads. 

The Cisco Webex Contact Center is an omni-channel cloud contact center solution that can transform customers’ experiences and improve business results. It gives Vālenz the agility of the cloud, with security and scalability for the future. Webex Contact Center gives agents and supervisors the ability to work from anywhere with a reliable internet connection, while still utilizing a full-featured, robust contact center. Included with the platform are features like chat, email campaigns, workforce optimization (WFO), and the extremely powerful and easy-to-use Analyzer for robust reporting capabilities. Webex Contact Center provides customers and agents a fast, reliable, and diverse way of communicating.  

Results

Moving to Cisco’s Webex platform allowed Vālenz to not only realize the organization’s goals of lowering expenditures through predictable operating costs – it also improved operational support by bringing all users and sites into a single dashboard for management and support.

Reduced costs, increased productivity and collaboration, and streamlined operations are all tangible benefits that Vālenz can point to as a result of having moved to Cisco’s Webex platform.

The Cisco Webex Calling and Webex Contact Center solution was delivered under the very flexible and feature-rich Collaboration Flex Plan subscription model. The elimination of the need for most of the on-premises infrastructure typically required with a phone system enhanced the system’s availability and reduced management overhead and costs. The subscription model also allowed Vālenz to distribute and predict costs over the next five years.  

In addition, Hammer Tech’s partner, Prelude Solutions, was able to uncover $34,000 in annual savings and improved uptime and redundancy by reviewing Vālenz’s carrier agreements and providing efficient and effective alternatives.

Vālenz was also invited to participate in Hammer Tech’s Cisco Customer Success and Adoption program. A scheduled series of stakeholder meetings and end-user Q&A sessions took place once the project was completed. These sessions allowed Vālenz to identify and address any areas in which enablement and adoption could be improved. This allowed Hammer Tech to help Vālenz develop a strategic plan to provide training, processes, and policies to encourage the use of this platform to its potential, assuring that Vālenz got the most out of its investment.

“Weidenhammer has been a great partner to Vālenz for telephony products and services. They partnered with us to configure and implement our Cisco Webex Calling and Webex Contact Center solution, provided education to our staff so we could be self-supporting, and continue to provide guidance as our telephony needs have expanded and matured.”

– Ed Zwicker, Chief Information Officer