WellPoint: Cloud with Microsoft Office 365

WellPoint Inc. and Microsoft Corp. yesterday announced WellPoint’s completed migration to the cloud that includes its internal productivity platform and more than 65,000 email boxes. WellPoint collaborated with Microsoft to deploy Microsoft Office 365, which allows associates to collaborate in a virtual environment, share desktop screen views, host virtual meetings, instant message and streamline communications. This yearlong process included a multiphase migration to the cloud environment. Office 365 allows the more than 37,000 WellPoint associates to communicate via chat, video and audio. WellPoint’s affiliated health plans serve nearly 34 million members, more than 62 million people through subsidiaries, and are continuously working to improve the customer experience. The collaboration with Microsoft is expected to provide the support needed to help give customers the best service in the industry. When associates can communicate in a collaborative, efficient manner, customers receive prompt, efficient service. WellPoint is working toward more coordinated care management delivery for customers, which includes access to the latest medical evidence and accurate and complete member information contained within a security-enhanced cloud environment. This technology serves as the foundation for WellPoint’s internal communications, with WellPoint’s goal to eventually offer the same collaborative communications to affiliated health plan providers and customers. “We are leveraging the cloud and Office 365 to achieve new levels of collaboration internally,” said Andrew J. Lang, senior vice president and chief information officer, WellPoint Inc. “Our next step is to enhance our collaborative communication capabilities to our affiliated health plan members and our health care plan provider partners by enabling solutions that help in improving the coordination of care.” “In today’s hypercompetitive marketplace, health plans must focus their limited resources where they matter most — empowering people and teams to deliver exceptional customer experiences, be more productive, and respond quickly to change and opportunities,” said Dennis Schmuland, chief health strategy officer, US Health and Life Sciences, Microsoft. “For WellPoint and other health benefit organizations, an always up-to-date cloud service such as Office 365 offers the agility to respond quickly to change and opportunities, and by substantially reducing IT operating costs, it frees resources for more strategic uses.”