CrownPeak Extranet Capabilities Power Healthcare Companies

CrownPeak Technology, the leader in on-demand content management solutions, announced the delivery of turnkey, on demand extranets for a healthcare industry giant and a boutique consulting firm.

Representing the next generation in extranet deployment and management — extranet software, delivered as a service — the CrownPeak solution is a fast, highly accessible alternative for companies seeking online collaboration among their employees, partners and/or customers. CrownPeak’s turnkey extranet capabilities give organizations a framework for managing and maintaining relevant, timely content — accessible to authorized users from any location — that is easy to deploy and cost-effective. Non-technical users are able to update and manage content quickly and seamlessly.

In an example of the speed and effectiveness of CrownPeak solutions are recent extranets deployed at HCA, the Hospital Corporation of America — the nation’s leading provider of health care services, with 191 hospitals and 82 outpatient surgery centers in 23 states and Europe — and 5THink, which helps large health care companies move from one place to another by providing transitional services, project management and architectural and construction related services. Both organizations required a central online facility where partners and customers in disparate locations could store and access the most recent versions of critical documents.

Using Advantage CMS’s award-winning interface, a simple mouse click is all that non-technical business users need to be up and running and contributing content within minutes. Users can then publish to the private, secure extranet, assign users and manage linking and layout. By enabling the “email content in” feature, partners or suppliers have the option to simply email content and assets into the extranet. CrownPeak also supports a fully customized look and feel — designed by any internal or third party developer — within a matter of days, not weeks or months.

The CrownPeak extranet solution integrates Web publishing, authentication, database management, polling, search, calendaring, document and image repositories, brand asset and task management features and more into one, fully-featured private extranet package. Extensive reporting and auditing features help users manage and track the history of all work. And because CrownPeak provides the extranet software as a service, companies can add or disable sections or features at will. CrownPeak also can integrate with companies’ existing Web hosting solutions or infrastructure if necessary. Extranets can be replicated rapidly, on demand.

“The model for successful extranets doesn’t have to be a complex, installed solution,” said Jim Howard, CEO, CrownPeak Technology. “With HCA and 5THink, we’re already helping create Web-based extranets that facilitate document and digital asset sharing across multiple locations — and are easily managed by people with little or no technical expertise. We’ve begun to deliver extranets even across industries that are traditionally averse to hosted solutions, such as health care, financial services and construction.”

For Initial Users, Rapid Deployment

For HCA, CrownPeak’s solution addressed an ongoing problem with the company’s custom-developed project management and document repository tool. That tool did not integrate with other HCA systems and was accessible only by certain staff members. The company needed a Web-based solution to facilitate the widest possible access, both inside HCA and for vendors and partners, to important construction-related documents — photos, blueprints, guidelines and more.

5THink’s business of managing transitions into newly-built healthcare environments requires extensive project management and constant communication between hospital departments. By using CrownPeak’s Advantage CMS solution as an essential project management tool for its healthcare facility clients, 5THink is able to monitor and record essential project management tasks. Client contact lists, issues logs, risk factors, important dates and deadlines, multiple department task records, and a document repository are all part of 5THink’s customized CMS. The system also maintains an archive of these sections, creating an ongoing record of the entire project.

“CrownPeak’s Advantage CMS created a project extranet where all the project documentation is taken care of,” said Kyrsten Johnson, Member Manager of 5THink, LLC. “The CMS facilitates direct communication between our project managers and our clients, but most importantly, it enables our clients to have responsibility for their own work. This saves us time and money, letting us focus on the overall aspects of the project while our client teams focus on their department-specific needs. We don’t have to micro-manage them — with the CMS they can manage themselves. The other benefit of having all of the project documentation housed in an extranet is for the client executive base — they can access all of the department teams and see their staff’s progress over the course of the project, and they can see the impact we are having on their facility.”

About CrownPeak Technology

Based in Los Angeles, CrownPeak Technology is the first company to provide world-class Web content management software as a service. The company’s Advantage CMS(TM) platform is the only solution that combines enterprise-level power and flexibility with the cost and speed-of-implementation of a hosted software application. Advantage CMS(TM) features the easiest-to-use interface of any CMS, and is the only hosted CMS to offer a full API and developer environment. Serving such clients as Crain Communications, Honeywell, The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the University of Southern California, and the State of Virginia, Advantage CMS(TM) manages and publishes hundreds of thousands of Web pages. CrownPeak has been named to eContent’s 100 most influential companies list, has won eWeek’s prestigious Analysts Choice Award and is a 2003 and 2004 SIIA Codie Award finalist as Best Content Management System.