Professional Growth Systems

Professional Growth Systems, Inc. is an Alaska-based management consulting firm. It provides strategic project planning, change management, governing board development, executive coaching, and team development to a wide range of clients.

Professional Growth Systems was tasked with coordinating the establishment of the Alaska Medical Informatics Project.

Many in Alaska live in remote areas and the only way to get them to medical care in an emergency is through air transport. The goal of the Alaska Medical Informatics Project is to connect sick/injured persons to medical telemetry, as soon as rescue teams arrive on site, and to continuously stream that medical information to the hospital while the patient is in transit. That way, doctors have a head start on assessing the patient’s condition.

The company needed a collaboration and communications tool to help coordinate the work of a triumvirate of very different organizations - the Yukon Kuskokwim Health Corporation (YKHC), the University of Alaska, and TAMSCO, an information technology company - in setting up the Alaska Medical Informatics Project.

Professional Growth Systems selected WebEx WebOffice as its communications and collaboration application.

“I was first introduced to WebOffice in 2002 (when it was called Intranets.com) by TAMSCO, the technology leader on this project,” D. Douglas Johnson, Vice President and Co-founder of Professional Growth Systems, Inc., says.

Besides coordinating with TAMSCO, the University of Alaska, and YKHC - which administers a comprehensive healthcare delivery system for 50 rural communities in Alaska - Professional Growth Systems also had to coordinate resources in other states for this project. The firm did all this by using WebEx WebOffice.

"The Alaska Medical Informatics Project was such a large project that we needed to coordinate folks throughout Alaska, as well as people in the lower 48 states and WebEx WebOffice really served us well. Everyone felt the collaboration it was generating was really valuable."

- D. Douglas Johnson, Vice President of Professional Growth Systems, Inc

“For everyone in these very different organizations to have one central repository, project schedule and documentation of deliverables - using WebOffice - made a huge difference in the overall project implementation,” Johnson says. “The Alaska Medical Informatics Project was a very successful project, and it’s still ongoing today.”

Professional Growth Systems routinely collaborates with people all over the country. “And it’s an adventure, working with people over distance - both outside and inside Alaska. In Alaska, everything is so far apart. You just can’t jump in a car and drive there. You’ve got to get in an airplane or helicopter; some places you can go by boat, but that’s all very time consuming.”

“We use WebOffice as a tool to help our clients coordinate and collaborate on projects that are dispersed in this environment,” Johnson said.

For instance, the firm used WebOffice as the collaboration tool for another client - Banner Health Corporation - to bring success to a project to pilot new software for this nationwide chain of hospitals. Banner Health employs about 21,500 employees in 8 states - making it one of the country’s largest employers.

“WebOffice provided a wonderful collaborative environment and connectivity for a very diverse and dispersed group of folks working in different facilities all around the country participating in this project,” Johnson said.

“Banner loved WebOffice as a collaborative environment. The project manager was more than pleased. I was involved in kicking the project off. We loaded the initial plan into WebOffice and we then followed it throughout the duration of the project.”

They used the WebOffice Document Manager, with the drag and drop feature that lets them keep all the relevant documents in one area, and they also used the WebOffice Task Manager and Calendaring. “All of these tools are fabulous. Everyone can see where and when the next meeting is and they can see their tasks.”

“It’s hard to quantify the value of WebOffice monetarily, but you’ve got to look at it through the bigger picture. I will say is this: The quality of the projects - in terms of what’s delivered of the various components at the time they need to be delivered - is much better because of WebOffice.”

Johnson explained that WebOffice reduced the stress of the project manager and the project team by creating an environment where people feel connected. “If you don’t have that and you are doing things over a distance - emailing things back and forth - it creates a confusion that takes people’s attention away from productivity. But, with WebOffice, anytime you want to know what’s going on, it’s right there at your fingertips, which is priceless in so many ways.”