CDM infrastructure overhaul cuts Whiddon’s process time by 99%

Communications Design & Management (CDM) has overhauled aged care provider Whiddon’s ageing IT infrastructure, cutting its process time by around 99 per cent.

Employing over 2,700 staff that care for over 2,100 older Australians in 26 locations, CDM worked alongside Nutanix to move Whiddon’s core applications onto the vendor’s hyperconverged infrastructure.

This saw the aged care provider's admin process time cut down from two hours to around 30 seconds, which has allowed the aged care provider’s IT team to focus on projects to improve resident care, deploy modern applications and better its business performance.

Additionally, the aged care provider’s power consumption was reduced by approximately half when compared to its previous infrastructure, with it directing the savings into frontline services.

The migration to Nutanix infrastructure started in November 2017. Whiddon was fully operational on the new infrastructure, as well as concurrently deploying a 20-site SD-WAN, by the end of the first quarter of 2019.

Then 2019 and 2020 saw the aged care provider extend its use of the Nutanix infrastructure, optimising the workloads through Nutanix's IT infrastructure management platform Prism.

Before deciding to go with CDM and Nutanix, Whiddon had originally considered several infrastructure options, including traditional data centres and public cloud, but public cloud was found to be too costly, as well as saw increased risk for data protection and environment control.

The overhaul came as the aged care provider faced a multitude of challenges related to its technology usage, with Regan Stathers, executive general manager of technology and property at Whiddon, claiming it was having an impact on its hiring.

“Whiddon has always tried to focus on digital enablement, but it’s a difficult time for the industry. Technology investment is not seen as a priority and other stakeholders lag behind in digital maturity and dexterity. It became an issue in attracting new, digital natives to the profession which we desperately need,” he said.

“We’re probably the only industry still reliant on the fax machine.”

The aged care industry has previously seen an overall reduction in technology investment due to challenges regarding industry funding models seeing most rural, regional and remote providers operating at a loss, Stathers claimed.

Additionally, he also said an industry-wide lack of technological maturity and digital literacy, not to mention its ageing IT infrastructure, also impacted the provider.

“We need to create an environment where we can see where customers are on their journeys and have the right data in the right place at the right time to provide optimum care," Stathers added.

“Technology and innovation at an industry-wide level can help improve care for our elderly, attract new talent, reskill existing staff and help adapt the sector to meet the needs of tomorrow.”