Hospital cuts costs and maximizes productivity with KACE

Benefits

• Comprehensive tracking of devices and software
• Organized ticketing system for fast issue resolution
• Simplified patch management
• Fast, automated execution of Windows deployments

The Story

NMC Health is a community-based nonprofit hospital based in Newton, Kansas. They provide a 103-bed facility for primary care and specialty care services with just under 1,000 employees.

Though being on the smaller side, they still have all the same requirements that a larger hospital might have for endpoint management, including solutions for ticketing, inventory, patching, and imaging.

The turbulence of a homegrown program

When IT Director, Mike Cottle, first joined NMC Health, they were using an internally developed program for IT support that Cottle describes as “one step above an Excel spreadsheet.”

Users were initially filling out paper forms to open tickets, and the IT team had difficulties with prioritizing, tracking, and resolving issues. When users encountered problems or needed assistance, there wasn’t a systematic approach to managing incidents.

With the volume of tickets coming in every day, Cottle knew that he needed to get rid of the hospital’s paper ticketing system and find a way to process requests in a quicker and more orderly fashion.

Striking the right cost-to-benefit balance

Having used KACE previously, Cottle liked the cost efficiency of a multi-functional program. 

“As a smaller hospital, we can’t afford to go out and make best-of-breed purchases,” says Cottle. “We just can't sustain that kind of environment.”

Without the resources to support separate systems for inventory, ticketing, and patching, NMC Health needed an all-in-one endpoint solution that offered all the tools they wanted in a single package.

Cottle presented several solutions to the NMC Health executive team as better alternatives to the system that was currently in place. Out of all the tools introduced to executive leaders, KACE was solidified as the best option. Cottle suspects it had a lot to do with the superior return on investment. He says, “When you compare it to the best-of-breed products, and how many of them you’d need to come close to doing all the things KACE can do, KACE easily wins out.”

Improving the ticketing process

One feature of KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) that NMC Health gets considerable use out of is the service desk. With KACE SMA, the hospital can easily track and solve every end-user issue throughout the organization. 

“We know about issues faster because employees are able to report them quicker,” says Cottle. “We are able to quantify the volume of issues much more reliably than we'd ever been able to before. When using a paper-based system, we experienced a lot of issues and never got any follow-up. Tickets just got buried in a stack of paper somewhere, so it was only the squeaky wheel that got any attention whatsoever. KACE has helped us tremendously in that regard.”

Aside from break-fix tickets, Cottle also uses the ticketing system to manage IT change control, which helps the team monitor GPO policy changes.

Taking control of inventory and patch management

When it comes to inventory, Cottle finds KACE SMA helpful for providing a comprehensive view of all the hardware and software on the hospital’s network.

“Keeping track of all the devices and all the software in the house is a daunting task, but KACE made that much simpler for us,” he says. “If we wanted to run a report on how many people have Adobe Acrobat, with KACE, it's very simple for me to go and find that out.”

Cottle also gets use out of KACE SMA’s patching capabilities for quick updates that avoid the complexities of creating a GPO policy, though he recognizes that NMC Health may be underutilizing its benefits. He envisions starting to use it more effectively in the future to manage most of their workstation patches. “KACE has a library of hundreds, if not thousands, of applications with the latest and greatest patches out there,” Cottle says. “I don't take advantage of that, and I really want to. That would be something this year that I hope we're successful in utilizing.”

A dependable and time-tested solution

“I've used lots of products in what I do, and I can't say that all of them are things that I continue to recommend 20 years later,” says Cottle. “When my peers are shopping around, I still recommend KACE.”

KACE SMA and KACE SDA have all the features that NMC Health require for smooth business operations:

• Complete ticket management — The KACE Service Desk handles and prioritizes tickets through an easy-to-use console, with integrated reporting that delivers insight into every asset.
• IT asset management — With an IT staff of nine people who each wear a lot of hats, staying on top of hardware and software needs to be simple. Detailed discovery and inventory provide robust reporting and a comprehensive oversight of NMC Health’s entire environment.
• Customized patching — Flexible patch management options offer versatility in how patch updates are deployed. Whether a small or large project, the ability for customization ensures the right size patching plan.
• Automatic disk imaging and deployment — For undertakings like Cottle’s upcoming Windows 11 rollout, one-off systems imaging is not practical. KACE SDA can execute fast, automatic deployment across multiple sites from any location.

“KACE gets used every single day of the week,” says Cottle. “In all the years I’ve been using it, I have not been able to justify moving to another product.”