Sometimes a company needs special help because it continues to be very
successful. A good example is GENEX
Services, Inc. of Wayne PA, a leading, privately-held provider of
medical managed care. Most GENEX employees are nurses who are case managers that
travel from appointment to appointment at peoples’ homes, doctor’s offices and
hospitals. Their job is to manage medical costs and work with disabled
employees of GENEX’s customers and get them healthy and return to work as soon
as possible. That benefits not only injured workers but GENEX’s customers,
which include insurance companies and large self-insured employers.
Over the last decade, GENEX, which specializes in disability
management and medical cost containment, has acquired nine other corporations, in
addition to tremendous growth experienced organically. Such rapid growth has
required radical upgrades in all of the company’s activities, especially with information
technology. For most IT improvements, GENEX depends on Anexinet, an award
winning systems integrator and technology management company. Anexinet has proven
success enabling mid-size and Fortune 1000 clients to optimize the value of
their IT investments while improving performance and operational processes.
For GENEX, Anexinet continues to provide consulting and
implementation services in three crucial Infrastructure areas: servers, storage
and networking. Aside from consulting, GENEX has purchased hardware and
software from Anexinet in all three areas – as well as Anexinet’s guidance on
what to buy from other corporations. Dennis Robinson, GENEX’s Director of
Technical Infrastructure, says he rarely makes a move in his data center
without Anexinet’s input.
Robinson says “The first really big thing that we did with
Anexinet was implement a virtualization strategy into our IT environment. Due
to high growth we were contemplating a major data center build-out. If we
hadn’t followed their recommendation to virtualize, we would have needed a
major expansion. We would have incurred considerable expense to support our
data center, not only for more servers but also for more power and cooling costs
and capacity among other things. If we hadn’t virtualized we would have burst
at the seams.”
In 2010 GENEX acquired Intercorp’s Worker Compensation and
Disability Management Business from Cigna Corporation. Robinson calls it a “game
changing expansion.” Overnight the
company went from 2,000 to 3,000 employees causing an immediate need for more
IT capacity to handle the increase in billing data and case work data provided
by their nurses.
“Generally speaking, our work with Anexinet is a true partnership.
We’ll rarely hire a firm to come in, turn over the keys to them, and let them
work on something for us while we just sit by and watch. Usually it’s a
collaborative effort, as it was and continues with Anexinet. They are used to
me calling and saying ‘we just bought another company and we should talk about
what updates we have to make.’ We’ll huddle with them and together we’ll come
up with ways to handle new problems. It helps that they thoroughly understand
our environment.”
Robinson praises Anexinet’s data center consulting services as
“superlative.” He says Anexinet has introduced GENEX to other Anexinet customers
and fosters a communication between them so that each can learn from other’s
experiences. “Anexinet doesn’t overpromise or fake it,” he adds. “If they can’t
do a particular job, they are upfront and honest about it. And sometimes they
point you to who can.”
Robinson concludes. “Anexinet is one that we consistently trust to
be able to give us the guidance we need across all the disciplines. It may sound
like a love fest, but I’m really pleased.”
Labels: Anexinet, datacenter consolidation, Genex