The Kuratorium Wiener Pensionisten-Wohnhäuser (KWP) is the largest provider of senior care in Austria. Owned by the city of Vienna, the non-profit organization provides essential social and nursing services for elderly citizens. Its 4,100 employees care for more than 8,900 residents in 30 senior homes. KWP provides long-term residential care to meet each person’s individual needs, from supported living to round-the-clock nursing. To bring elderly people together beyond the boundaries of its senior homes, KWP also manages 160 senior citizen clubs across Vienna, which attract thousands of visitors every year.
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KWP is committed to delivering the highest quality of care for Vienna’s elderly citizens. In addition to providing nursing care, the organization’s highly-qualified employees prepare fresh, home-cooked meals every day and run varied activity programs.
Jürgen Mayringer, Team Leader IT Systems at KWP, said: “We want our residents to be happy and healthy, and to feel at home living with us. To help achieve this, our job in the IT department is to ensure that staff have the right tools and resources to care for residents as best they can.”
“Advances in healthcare in recent decades mean that people are living longer, resulting in older residents and new complex nursing challenges at KWP, such as dementia care. Manfred Panzenböck, Head of IT at KWP, remarked: “We know that the number of senior citizens requiring residential care services will grow in the coming years. To ensure that we can continue delivering high-quality services, we want to modernize our processes with fully electronic record-keeping and provide our staff with the latest tools to allow them to focus even better on our residents.”
For many years, KWP has relied on Micro Focus solutions to support day-to-day tasks such as email, messaging, and printing. Micro Focus Open Enterprise Server has long been the foundation for central file management.
Jürgen Mayringer commented: “We’ve been using GroupWise® for email and calendaring since the mid-90s. Later we deployed ZENworks® Configuration Management to distribute software to employee workstations. We’re very satisfied with the solutions – they deliver all the functionalities we need and have grown with us over time. The reliability, flexibility and scalability of the products is excellent.”
“Today, around 2,000 employees access emails and documents as part of their jobs – some use desktop and others laptops. With Micro Focus ZENworks Configuration Management, we can roll out applications and software updates to all these devices very quickly and easily to ensure we stay up-to-date with the latest security features.”
Security is a key concern at KWP and keeping data safe has always been a top priority, which is why KWP implemented Micro Focus Filr, part of the Micro Focus Open WorkGroup Suite, as an easy and secure internal file sharing service for its staff.
Manfred Panzenböck noted: “Previously, employees used public cloud storage to share files including large multimedia documents. Although this was convenient, security was somewhat lacking. With Micro Focus Filr, we retain control over our data – ensuring that sensitive information stays private.”
As more and more staff rely on access to central information, and as KWP rolls out new systems such as building automation controlled via PCs, the complexities rise and requirements are constantly changing. Equipped with a comprehensive set of Micro Focus solutions, KWP is prepared for these future IT challenges.
“As the population ages, we expect the number of residents to grow further,” stated Manfred Panzenböck. “In combination with improved IT support across processes, including the electronic documentation of care services, we will need to scale our IT operations to cope with that increased demand. We anticipate that the number of devices on our network will grow to 20,000 by 2020 – but we know from experience how scalable Micro Focus solutions are, so we’re sure that we will be able to handle this growth.”
In addition, KWP is currently implementing NetIQ® Identity Manager to manage users and permissions more efficiently. This step will facilitate the introduction of electronic documentation, when many more staff will require access to the company’s central IT applications.
Jürgen Mayringer concluded: “With Micro Focus, we can give employees quick and easy access to all the resources and communication tools they need to get on with their jobs, helping them to provide the best care that they can for Vienna’s elderly – now and in the future.”
