Partnership HealthPlan of California Saves $200,000 Per Year with Overnight Monitoring

An ActiveBatch Workload Automation Success Story

PHC, a non-profit healthcare provider, was expanding its operations. However, the homegrown job scheduler used by PHC had several limitations that made it difficult to run more jobs and to better coordinate those jobs as the business grew:
  • A reliance on custom scripts meant that building end-to-end workflows was resource-intensive and slow, hampering the pace of change;
  • An inability to create and reuse individual jobs meant that each workflow had hundreds of lines of custom code that buried its component processes;
  • Long, scripted job strings made workflows difficult to monitor and impossible to troubleshoot and correct without additional, error-prone scripting.

By The Numbers

500

Partnership uses ActiveBatch to monitor and manage approximately 500 jobs each night.

$200k

Partnership saves almost $200,000 per year by using ActiveBatch to monitor and manage overnight processes.

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PHC Implements ActiveBatch

PHC had recently replaced its legacy applications with a UNIX platform and was moving from COBOL to multiple languages that supported UNIX. A script-language independent scheduler was therefore required in order to simplify and coordinate IT’s evolving environment:

  • PHC replaced its collection of COBOL scripts with script-language independent ActiveBatch job steps, allowing PHC to develop end-to-end workflows across disparate technologies;
  • With ActiveBatch, PHC turned thousands of lines of custom script into reusable job steps that can be used to build reliable workflows faster and with fewer errors;
  • ActiveBatch’s Operations View delivers real-time information on all jobs that have run, are running, or are scheduled to run;
  • ActiveBatch’s Reference Functionality allows PHC to reuse job templates that, when modified, pass those modifications to all jobs that reference it, making workflow changes quick and seamless while reducing manual errors.

In Their Own Words

“It’s not possible for one person to manage and monitor nearly 500 jobs in a single night. Without ActiveBatch, we’d have to hire another two or three people, which saves us approximately $200,000 a year.”

“I take care of the entire organization’s business process scheduling, and I wouldn’t be able to do my job without ActiveBatch.”

“ActiveBatch provides a recovery structure that makes it easy to recover the process flow and get things up and running again.”

“Before ActiveBatch, we’d bury [dozens of] separate components into one long job that was hundreds of lines of custom code.”

“Working with Advanced Systems Concepts is a pleasure and was one of the best decisions I ever made as an IT manager.”

How PHC Succeeded with ActiveBatch

Simplified the management of end-to-end processes by dividing workflows into discrete job steps that can pass dependencies and parameters downstream.

Common job steps are reused across a variety of product lines, making it easier to develop new business processes while simplifying the IT environment.

When immediate action is required, ActiveBatch Alerts notify programmers through customized channels, including placing automated phone calls.


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