Press Release

Medical University of South Carolina Automates Grants Allocation Process with Lombardi Business Process Management Software

Medical Research University Eliminates Backlogs and Delays of Funding Grants with Teamworks BPM

Austin, TX – May 6, 2009 – Lombardi, a leader in business process management (BPM) software, announced that the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) has implemented its award-winning Teamworks® BPM software suite in support of the company’s post award financial grants allocation processes. 

“The financial grants process is the life-blood of our research business – Teamworks helps us manage it faster, gives us more visibility and lets us be more efficient than before,” said Stewart Mixon, Chief Operations Officer at Medical University of South Carolina. “I wish we had done this years ago. The results that we are achieving have been a huge win for us.”

MUSC is the oldest medical school in the Southeast, with 1,200 faculty members teaching more than 3,000 students and residents annually. MUSC depends upon financial grants as a primary means of funding its medical research. The university manages the post award grants allocation process where up to 3,000 requests for grant fund distribution changes are made every quarter. Previously, this process was entirely manual; the same information was keyed into different front-end and back-end systems, resulting in significant backlogs and delays, as well as many errors and rework efforts.  Due to error rates and other contributing factors, there were more than twice as many forms submitted in the manual process than are processed using the Lombardi Teamworks-based process today.

Universal Business Solutions’ (UBS) team assisted MUSC with the process planning and implementation efforts. UBS is a Lombardi consulting and services partner. Using Lombardi Teamworks, they jointly implemented a new process that leveraged the university’s existing legacy systems while automating and simplifying the grants allocation process.

This new process quickly delivered significant benefits for the university, enabling MUSC to proactively catch and eliminate errors at the point of entry, bringing the per-grant error rate from 85-90 percent down to 2-3 percent. Through the use of Teamworks, MUSC also was able to reduce “human touches” in the grants allocation process by an impressive 65 percent - allowing the university to free up several staff full-time equivalents (FTEs) for other important tasks. Moreover, through the use of Teamworks dashboards, MUSC management receives key performance indicators containing real-time status information of all of its financial grants distribution activities. This important metric was impossible to collect prior to implementation of the new process.

"We are proud that Medical University of South Carolina is achieving such important benefits through Teamworks", said Olivier Gachot, executive vice president of worldwide sales, Lombardi.  “BPM is a fast and cost-effective way for universities and other research centers to manage scale and improve their business processes.”

About MUSC 
Founded in 1824 in Charleston, The Medical University of South Carolina is the oldest medical school in the Southeast. Today, MUSC continues the tradition of excellence in education, research, and patient care. MUSC educates and trains more than 3,000 students and residents, and has nearly 11,000 employees, including 1,200 faculty members. As the largest non-federal employer in Charleston, the university and its affiliates have collective annual budgets in excess of $1.6 billion. MUSC operates a 750-bed medical center, which includes a nationally recognized Children's Hospital, Ashley River Tower and a leading Institute of Psychiatry. For more information regarding academic information or clinical services, visit www.musc.edu or www.muschealth.com.

About Lombardi
Lombardi is a leader in business process management (BPM). We offer award-winning BPM technology and services to help our customers, partners and government agencies around the world succeed with their process improvement initiatives.

Lombardi is behind some of the largest, most successful BPM implementations in the world. Our customers include AARP, Aflac, Allianz Group, Applied Materials, Banco Espirito Santo, Barclays Global Investors, Chiquita Brands, Dell, Financial Services Authority, Ford Motor Company, Hasbro, ING Direct, Intel, Jaguar Land Rover, Mirant, National Bank of Canada, National Institutes of Health, OAD Groep, Pfizer, PHH Arval, SIRVA, Symantec, UCLH, Wells Fargo, Yale University and numerous governmental agencies. For more information, visit www.lombardi.com .

For more information:
Wayne Snell
Sr. Director of Marketing
+1.512.382.8200 ext. 377
Wayne.Snell@lombardi.com