St. Jude Medical

Hosted Office SharePoint Server 2007 Case Study

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Business Situation
All over the world, doctors are controlling risk and providing improved outcomes of their cardiac and neurological patients with the help of devices manufactured by St. Jude Medical. Headquartered in St.Paul, Minnesota, St. Jude Medical is a medical device company that is dedicated to developing medical technology and services that put more control in the hands of physicians, advance the practice of medicine and contribute to successful outcomes for every patient.

St. Jude Medical relies on the Internet to communicate with key audiences that include customers, patients, employees and investors. The company publishes a corporate Web site (www.sjm.com), micro sites related to specific marketing activities, sales-force extranets, internal Web portals, intranets and collaboration tools. The St. Jude Medical public-facing Web sites include product and procedure information, aimed primarily at patients, while the company’s marketing sites, internal Web applications and extranets are generally targeted toward the St. Jude Medical sales force, along with physicians and hospitals.

“Providing value to our customers extends throughout the fabric of St. Jude Medical,” says Allen Brinkley, Manager of Application Development at St. Jude Medical US Sales. “A big part of that is effectively delivering information to both our internal and external customers.” To maintain trust and credibility with its core customer audiences—cardiac doctors and care centers— St. Jude Medical needs to be a source for reliable, unbiased clinical information. St. Jude Medical has provided that information largely through the relationships its sales representatives develop with physicians and hospitals. They respond to requests from doctors for clinical trial reports, clinical study results, presentations on conditions and procedures, and, of course, information about product features.

“The relationships our sales reps have developed directly with physicians and hospitals have been very successful, and that will be maintained as a core part of our business model,” says Andrew Urbanski, Manager of the Enterprise IT Web Services Department at St. Jude Medical. “The challenge we face as we grow bigger is to find ways to strengthen those relationships while making the sales force more productive.”

To help grow its market share, St. Jude Medical needed to arm doctors and hospitals with the information that will help them make the decision to use St. Jude Medical products. They wanted to provide that information to physicians online and on demand, so their sales representatives could spend more time focusing on building and

Solution
St. Jude Medical decided to strengthen the relationships its sales representatives have built by providing its core customers direct access to information and services on a single online portal. To do so, the company utilized the enterprise search and Web content management features in Fpweb.net’s hosted Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 to develop the St. Jude Medical Professional Web site (www.sjmprofessional.com).

This site provides doctors, medical professionals, interested consumers and media access to a wide range of information in many dynamic formats about St. Jude Medical products and related conditions, procedures, and clinical data.

Rather than build this complex environment in-house, St. Jude Medical selected Fpweb.net, a managed hosting provider, to build, deploy and maintain the hosted Microsoft^® Office SharePoint Server for them. Fpweb.net hosts the solution infrastructure, including hardware and software, in a SAS70 Type II data center with 24/7 post-implementation support from Fpweb.net SharePoint certified engineers. In addition, Fpweb.net provides St. Jude Medical with managed services like backups, monitoring, anti-virus, intrusion detection, patching and more.

To develop the Web site, St. Jude Medical worked closely with two partners. Sogeti, a Microsoft Global System Integrator with Local Professional Services and Global Delivery capability, provided solution architecture and technical consulting expertise throughout the initial proof of concept.

Brilliant Blue, a marketing, branding and advanced systems consulting agency, helped St. Jude Medical build the visual design and site structure, crafted the overall user experience of the Web site, and developed the site in depth through to production and maintenance.

Before choosing Office SharePoint Server 2007, St. Jude Medical evaluated several other platforms for the Web site, including solutions from EMC Documentum, IBM, Interwoven, Oracle and other vendors. St. Jude Medical was already making wide use of the search and content management capabilities on their Fpweb.net hosted Office SharePoint Server to develop intranet sites. They decided it would be best to utilize the infrastructure and training investments they had already made for their internal portals to contribute to the development, maintenance and growth of the new external Web site.

“By selecting Office SharePoint Server 2007, we could take advantage of current and planned skill sets within our various business units,” says Brinkley. According to Urbanski, other key factors in moving forward with Office SharePoint Server 2007 were cost and the ability to have search capabilities integrated with a Web content management solution. The site includes two basic components, a public site with information communicating the purpose and value of the site, along with basic information about St. Jude Medical products, and a registration/secure-access component targeted toward physicians that offers a wide range of detailed information and services. St. Jude Medical used Office SharePoint Server 2007 to build specific features into the site including a physician locator, practice-development tools for doctors and query tools that enable users to find content in downloadable formats, such as PDF documents, Office PowerPoint^® presentations and Flash video presentations.

St. Jude Medical integrated Office SharePoint Server 2007 with mapping technology to develop a physician locater on the site where doctors can find expertise and experience on conditions, procedures and St. Jude Medical products. Doctors can register to be included in the physician locator and can apply to submit clinical information, peer-reviewed literature and other searchable resources to the site.

Benefits
Using Fpweb.net’s hosted Office SharePoint Server 2007 services, St. Jude Medical has been able to develop a public facing Web site that will be much more than a sales and marketing tool. St. Jude Medical has built a platform for doctors to communicate more effectively with their peers as well as with St. Jude Medical, where they can submit and search for clinical data, expertise and information to help them and their patients make more informed decisions. Site visitors can use the site search features to find information about St. Jude Medical products, clinical trial results, peer reviewed literature, even video presentations of surgical procedures.

St. Jude Medical will be able to use the sjmprofessional.com site to build upon the long term relationships and model of trust it has with its customers. “We will be providing our physician customers with the information they need to be successful,” says Urbanski. “At the same time, we’re giving our sales representatives a tool to get that information directly to their customers, and offering our internal business users a familiar, consistent platform to work with.”

Increased Profitability
By choosing a fully managed hosting provider like Fpweb.net to host their Office SharePoint Server 2007 solution, St. Jude medical was able to lower in-house IT costs and increase profitability. Because Fpweb.net takes care of all infrastructure needs from start to finish, St. Jude Medical was avoided additional costs for hardware, software and the I.T. staff needed to manage the solution. By implementing this tool without large upfront capital expenditure, St. Jude medical could take advantage of the immediate ROI produced.

Stronger Customer Relationships
The St. Jude Medical Professional site will serve over 10,000 physicians. By providing a single portal where existing and potential customers can quickly and easily find reliable information not just about its products, but also independent clinical data and expertise, St. Jude Medical can strengthen its relationships and build trust and credibility with its core customer base. “We’re building a place that doctors will come back to because they trust the information,” says Urbanski. “It provides them value by saving them time and improving their access to key information.”