Ensuring the Health of Health Care Administration at LCMS

The Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod (LCMS), with 2.5 million members, ranks as the second largest Lutheran church body in North America and the 11th largest denomination in the United States. Today, The Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod has 6,150 congregations served by more than 9,000 professional church workers and 18,500 teachers serving over 1,300 pre-schools, 1,000 elementary schools, nearly 100 high schools, 10 colleges, and 2 seminaries.

The Worker Benefit Plans (WBP) is an entity within the LCMS whose main purpose is to administer health, retirement, disability, survivor, and other benefits for the more than 50,000 LCMS church, university, and school workers and their families.

At the center of WBP’s operation is a Lawson ERP application that handles the processing of almost all business activities including plan enrollment, contract administration, claims processing, reimbursement submissions, human resource functions, payroll, and check printing. Great measures are taken to ensure that this business critical application - and everything it depends upon - operates 24/7 so that members’ needs are properly met.

However, managing such high volumes of data and activities - as well as managing a complex IT infrastructure - is not always an easy task. A single glitch in the ERP application environment - a hung application, a disk shortage, a server malfunction, a network interruption, a printer off line, etc. - can be bad for members and WBP.

Meeting the Performance Challenge

Understanding the need to have "all systems go" all the time, WBP began a search for an application performance management solution. Having worked with other management solutions over the years, WBP’s IT staff members knew about the inherent merits, expenses, and complexities often associated with the common high-end application management products. They were also familiar with many of the various low-end niche products - tools that forced you to write and maintain bulky scripts or string together a hodge-podge of point products if you wanted to address multiple performance needs. Tasked with finding the best product to meet WBP’s diverse needs and budget, Gordon Arbesman, the Network Administrator at Worker Benefit Plans, became aware of Heroix eQ Management Suite and was intrigued by the product’s rich functionality and reasonable pricing. Upon completing a thorough evaluation of the product, WBP was impressed.

"We found Heroix eQ had much of the functionality offered in the high end products but without the cost," said Arbesman. "With Heroix eQ we get a solid blend of price and performance.2

Managing IT, Managing Business

By providing a centralized means for monitoring and managing all aspects of WBP’s IT environment, Heroix eQ allows WBP to gain control over the health of their Lawson application - and their business. With Heroix eQ, IT support members constantly have a clear view of what is going on with the performance of their hardware, software, network, and other IT resources. "Through a single console we now gain access to intelligent, actionable IT performance data that allows us to make better decisions, eliminate guesswork, and focus on strategic projects instead of spending all of our time chasing problems," said Arbesman.

There are several key features of Heroix eQ that WBP finds most valuable. Of particular interest is the product’s ability to present IT performance and operational information from a business perspective using Line of Business Views. Line of Business Views allow WBP to group relevant application, server, and infrastructure components based upon the specific business activities they support. Color-coded icons show exactly which business activities are affected by performance or availability issues, making it much easier for WBP IT staff to detect, correlate, and correct performance problems before they impact the business. An added feature is that all of this information is accessible remotely and securely via the Web.

With Heroix eQ’s Line of Business Views, WBP can now look beyond individual technology silos - enabling better management of the business as a whole. "Using the Line of Business Views feature, we can now configure exactly how we view our performance data," said Arbesman. "With a few mouse clicks we can configure performance information to be presented according to how we view the business. The view can capture performance for a specific application and all of its dependencies, a group of related applications, a group of servers, a group of events, or even a single type of events (such as all Windows Events). In essence, we can configure Heroix eQ to help focus our attention on whatever we feel is most important."

Key personnel across the organization - system network administrators, DBAs, application managers, business line managers - no longer need to waste their time trying to decipher what the problems are, who needs to know, what impact the problem will have on the business, or what corrective measures need to be taken. With Heroix eQ this information is immediately available and easy for WBP to spot.

The performance data captured using Heroix eQ is of interest to not only WBP’s technical support staff, but to their CIO and other senior members of the organization. In addition to helping document service levels, the product’s reporting and graphing capabilities enable WBP to identify "top resources," thereby enabling them to quickly identify heavy resource usage at the application, server, or user level. WBP also relies upon the product’s automated archiving, reporting and graphing of custom application data, on-demand web-based reporting and graphing, and trend analysis capabilities.

Saving Time, Saving Money

Heroix eQ also helps WBP automate what used to be tedious, time-consuming tasks. The automated log file keyword search capability alone helps them save over 500 hours annually. "With Heroix eQ, we no longer have to wade through tons of useless Windows event log data to pull out the information we care about," said Arbesman.

The product’s trend analysis feature allows WBP to better manage its capacity planning, hardware purchases, and CPU allocation. Now allocation and purchasing decisions can be made using real data, thereby eliminating unnecessary investments. "In the past, if we thought we needed more server capacity, we’d go out and buy the hardware. That is no longer the case," said Arbesman. "With Heroix eQ, we now have the data necessary to properly manage our IT assets and future purchasing requirements. This is a huge gain."

Having access to a wide range of continually updated performance data, WBP has been able to move from being a reactive organization to a proactive organization. Now, instead of getting calls from end users experiencing problems, or receiving false alerts, WBP’s IT staff has a clear picture of all IT performance indicators - meaning member and business demands are better managed and met.

Heroix eQ not only lets WBP monitor and manage its IT infrastructure and components, it also lets them leverage their investments in individual technologies. For example, WBP uses a Veritas backup utility that outputs log files that are hundreds of lines long. Prior to having Heroix eQ, WBP would spend a great deal of time trying to pinpoint a specific tape number within the lines of code. Now Heroix eQ lets WBP automatically find this information, making better use of IT staff time and better use of the Veritas product. WBP is also better able to manage and leverage their investments in Exchange, IIS and SQL Server technologies by using Heroix eQ to ensure constant availability and peak performance, even under fluctuating workloads.

The product’s rich functionality isn’t the only thing WBP is praising. According to Arbesman, "Heroix not only knows how to develop great products, but it also knows how to hire talented, professional individuals who take pride in their work. Their technical support organization is second to none. I particularly like the fact that I am given direct contact information for the specific technical support representatives handling our account. Whenever I have questions or need help, I’m able to reach a live body - someone who knows me and is willing to give me the time and attention to address my needs. I don’t know of many other companies that take customer support to that level."

Heroix eQ - Looking at IT Performance Through the Crystal Ball

No more guesswork. No more wasted hours of effort. No more unnecessary purchases. With Heroix eQ, WBP no longer wastes hours trying to obtain a clear understanding of the health of the organization’s IT assets. "Using Heroix eQ is like having a crystal ball that provides us a clear view of the present and future health of our IT environment," said Arbesman. "Now WBP’s’ IT staff - and business operations - run more efficiently, more effectively. For the first time, we are now able to clearly bridge the management of our IT environment directly to our business activities. Companies looking for an application performance management solution that offers extensive functionality without a hefty price tag should definitely look at Heroix eQ."