Collaborate and Communicate; Microsoft 365 Implementation

With more than 1000 University of Kansas Medical Center employees who are also employed by the Health System and/or one of many Research Centers, we needed a way to facilitate collaboration, communication, and knowledge management while also protecting all PII, especially PHI, data, both in transit and at rest. Those who were multi-employed had been using different systems with different logins and different technology policies, making collaboration very challenging and putting data at risk. This project started in 2015 and when I was hired in 2017 had made little progress, as none of the stakeholders, particularly the IT security teams, could agree on technology policies, procedures, data encryption methods, cloud document management, collaboration with external researchers, etc. As the project manager for this project, I worked closely with the following stakeholders to finish this project by early 2020:
• Microsoft Vendors and Technical Teams, who created a single Microsoft tenant for the university, health system, and research staff to use with one set of credentials
• Leaders from each organization to make and inform teams of decisions
• IT Security Teams, from both the university and health system, to ensure that policies and procedures aligned and allowed multi-employed personnel to easily access information, communicate, and collaborate regardless of location
• IT personnel from all KUMC schools, Research Centers, and Health System to design, align, and implement IT policies and procedures and enable all features
• Super users from each KUMC school, Research Center, and Health System to develop and document training for all staff

Outcomes:
• 53% reduction in support tickets submitted as a result of not being able to access shared files
• 36% reduction in support tickets submitted as a result of not using work-provided hardware
• 72% improvement in employee satisfaction with shared system
• 43% reduction in “shadow systems” that were purchased and implemented outside of any IT review process (in addition to increased data protection this also resulted in a savings of >$120,000 per year between all entities)
• 23% reduction in support tickets submitted as a result of inability to share files with external researchers
• This project was especially valuable when the COVID-19 closed the schools and research centers. Technology made collaboration, communication, and research possible and easy, despite having to work remotely.

This project was especially valuable when the COVID-19 closed the schools and research centers. Technology made collaboration, communication, and research possible and easy, despite having to work remotely.