PARSIPPANY, N.J. -- Advanced Systems Concepts, Inc. (ASCI), a leading provider of system software solutions that enhance Windows(TM), UNIX, Linux and OpenVMS systems, today announced that its enterprise job scheduling system, ActiveBatch, has been installed at OSF HealthPlans, a 90,000-member health insurance company based in Peoria, Illinois. Since it began using ActiveBatch in September, OSF HealthPlans has experienced a substantial drop in operator errors, as well as improved efficiency for the critical batch processes managed by the new application.
Accuracy and timeliness are essential quality metrics for OSF HealthPlans, which counts the State of Illinois among its largest customers. An affiliate of OSF Healthcare System, one of the top 100 integrated healthcare networks in the U.S., OSF HealthPlans processes thousands of claims, billing statements, enrollments and other routine documentation every day.
According to Adam Carlton, Application Manager in OSF HealthPlans' Information Services department, an increasing need for productivity drove the insurance company's search for a job management application. "Our organization is in the midst of a major upgrade in its data processing systems," he said. "One of our objectives was to replace our manual batch management procedures with an automated solution. It was important for us to find a cross-platform job scheduling product, since our data center is also in the process of migrating from AIX to Windows--a task that will take another year or two to complete."
In early 2005, Carlton began looking for a reliable and full-featured application that could satisfy OSF HealthPlans' batch processing needs. After looking at products from several different vendors, he and his team focused on ASCI's ActiveBatch job scheduling and management solution.
"ActiveBatch supports AIX and Windows as well as other common platforms, which made it ideal for our use," Carlton noted. "Its open API and WMI script support meant that it would be easy to write code for. On the operator side, it has a good user interface that features graphic representation for dependencies, predecessors and successes. Plus it's very cost-effective."
Before making its final selection, Carlton spoke with the insurance provider's contact at Gartner Consulting, the corporate advisory arm of leading IT research firm Gartner Inc., with which OSF HealthPlans has a consulting agreement. "We were told that ActiveBatch was one of the most flexible and responsive of all job scheduling and automation products," Carlton stated. "Gartner concurred that ActiveBatch would be an excellent choice."
Designed to meet the fast-growing need for real-time or near-real-time information processing, ActiveBatch combines an exceptional graphical interface with support for advanced Windows and Unix technologies to create an unusually powerful and versatile job management solution. Along with its operational features, ActiveBatch allows administrators to leverage their Microsoft Windows environment through the use of Kerberos and other Windows Security components, Windows Active Directory, Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI), Microsoft clusters, OLE/DB compliant databases and much more.
Carlton stated that ActiveBatch's support for WMI script made it easier to replace existing job triggers with new code. Less than a month after purchasing the product, ActiveBatch was in place and directing the insurance company's many batch jobs, which run both daily and weekly.
"Despite the fact that we're a small operation by the standards of many major enterprises, we now have world-class batch control and reporting capabilities," he reports. "The ease of use and quick deployment have also been greatly appreciated."
In addition to increasing the efficiency of daily processing tasks, human error rates have been significantly reduced. "We used to get frequent calls from our operators during the night, when the organization's batch jobs were run," Carlton noted. "Those instances have dropped dramatically from what they used to. When you combine that improvement with the cross-platform capability and ease of operation, ActiveBatch is definitely gives us what we wanted."
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