Medical Education Firm Achieves Dramatic Growth with Full-Service Support from ITS

Millennium Medical Education Resources works as a liaison between publishers and pharmaceutical companies to provide PhRMA-compliant educational materials for use by health care providers. The Doylestown, PA-based company provides online educational materials for use by health care providers. Millennium provides online library programs for several clients drawing books and electronic media from all major medical publishers. This is a highly regarded and guideline-compliant educational option and one of the few allowable now within this competitive industry.

Millennium Medical and IT Solutions began their partnership in 2001 initially with custom programming assistance for the company’s Microsoft Access databases. When it was clear that ITS could also support Millennium’s growing network support needs, the choice was made to outsource these services rather than hiring full-time resources that would need to be managed and mentored.

Early on in the relationship, Millennium was shifted away from the limited functionality Access solutions used for tracking leads and customers to the enterprise-level SQL Server platform and eventually a fully integrated, .NET web-based system. Because of Millennium’s rapid growth, including the hiring of new account managers who are constantly on the road, Millennium needed to expand its database. More than half of Millennium’s employees are mobile now and require a familiar working environment for when they are both in and out of the office. Consistent uptime and high data security are always concerns for doctors and the pharmaceutical industry especially in regard to remote workers. In addition to making it more accessible to staff, ITS also made it easier to use and adapt without costly system rewrites as new company programs came on line. For the network support, initially the ITS Guardian Plan proved to be the right choice. But as the equipment in the office has aged and staff size nearly doubled, a switch to a completely hosted or cloud computing infrastructure was recommended and deployed. The transition from Guardian to the NearCloud Plan moved all of Millennium’s servers and backend infrastructure from their office environment to a securely hosted and monitored setup in ITS’ state-of-the art data center. With its multiple layers of redundancy – far more than the average business can afford for its own network – the data center is the ideal option for most companies with mobile users. Additionally, this transition allows ease of installation and configuration of any future applications and the cyclical upgrades associated with office servers are a thing of the past.

The many improvements to the database platform over the years have enabled Millennium to provide an electronic order exchange for the doctors to easily submit orders electronically, ultimately helping Millennium increase revenues while improving staff efficiencies and keeping costs under control. Another benefit has been the “level playing field” the database application has created for Millennium in how it interacts with its enterprise pharmaceutical and publishing constituents. On the network side, the upgrade to a modern server infrastructure with unlimited scalable resources and support has provided a huge boost to productivity. The transition also provides a unified workspace eliminating inefficiencies in workflow. Millennium has the ability to add users on an as-needed basis. Under the NearCloud Plan, the company is entitled to upgrades for all Microsoft Office and Server Operating Systems at no additional cost, eliminating the need to purchase any future upgrades when they are released. Ongoing support of the Millennium network is provided by the ITS help desk and field engineering teams, which closely monitor Millennium’s network 24/7. These services include our Virtual Chief Information Officer (VCIO) for strategic planning and account oversight, to make certain all Millennium’s technology needs are met.