Portfolios :: WebMD

ASP Service Level Improvement Project

Overview

Any problem that affects customer satisfaction negatively is one that cannot be tolerated, no matter how minute. Customer satisfaction and expectations are of the utmost importance and are essential to the success of any company. Healtheon has a small, rather minute problem, that when encountered during regular business activities, takes on the obstructive perception of a total operational failure. The problem is experienced as a delay of transactional processing. Normally these transactions complete in less than ten seconds, but irregularly and somewhat unpredictably these transactions can take 30, 60 or more seconds!

Several companies attempted to identify the cause of this spike in processing time, but were unsuccessful. TSI deployed a problem identification team which during the course of 6 weeks pinpointed the exact elusive cause of the performance spike problem.

Project Involvement

Healtheon's infrastructure was comprised of dial-in clients, IP routers, multiple gateways, multiple T1's carried by multiple ISPs, java clients, web servers, Orbix servers, Corba objects, firewalls, proprietary middleware clients developed in C++, multiple web browsers, 2op, TCP/IP, and other technologies. Our team consisted of experts in all of the major and adjoining technologies, in order to be able to critically study every independent technology and all of the technologies involved in between them.

Ultimately, TSI delved beyond the original theories proposed by the other companies and was able to pinpoint a software library that was erroneous outputting erratic data. This module was developed by Healtheon , but was a normal part of the windows operating system making it difficult to find. Problems like this one, with an adjoining technological component, are the reason why most enterprises cannot find difficult issues, particularly with maintaining service levels.

Summary

Healtheon now continues to regularly engage TSI on problems with their infrastructure, and their service level performances, migration activities, and architectural designs.