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SSPA Presents STAR Award to McKesson Corporation

Second Consecutive Award for McKesson Information Solutions

SAN DIEGO, Oct. 15, 2002 – The Service & Support Professionals Association (SSPA), the leading industry association for IT support professionals, today announced that it has recognized McKesson’s Healthcare Resource Planning (HRP) support center in Wheeling, Ill., with an SSPA Software Technical Assistance Recognition (STAR) Award. McKesson received the 2002 STAR Award in the “Most Improved” category for significant gains in customer service excellence and exemplary technical support. The Wheeling HRP center supports McKesson’s resource management solutions for the materials management and financial management areas of healthcare organizations.

This Most Improved STAR Award is given to the company that demonstrates the greatest increase in the quality of their software support over the prior 12-month period. The winning company must illustrate a dramatic improvement in customer satisfaction along with overall gains in support productivity. In order to compete, companies must show their support metrics and customer satisfaction results for both the current and prior year. Last year, McKesson’s Horizon ClinicalsTM support center in Louisville, Colo., received the STAR Award for the Most Improved category, making this the second consecutive year that McKesson has taken top honors in this category. Past winners include the IBM AIX U.S. Customer Service Center, FTP Software, and Business Objects.

“The SSPA STAR Award winners provide a ‘best-of-breed’ showcase of the top talent within our industry,” said Bill Rose, SSPA Founder/Executive Director. “McKesson Corporation delivers world class services, and the STAR Award serves as the highest form of recognition in the service and support industry.”

“Winning the STAR Award for the second year in a row proves that our focus on improving customer satisfaction is yielding solid results,” said Graham King, president of McKesson Information Solutions. “This award symbolizes not only world-class support, but also our firm commitment to one of McKesson’s key customer groups as we introduce a new generation of solutions that can help them re-engineer processes for better resource management, which results in less variability and lower costs.”

McKesson’s HRP customers have clearly seen a difference in the service they receive, as reflected in a current 95.6 overall satisfaction rating in third-party-administered customer support surveys. The HRP support center now answers 95 percent of calls within 90 seconds and resolves 48 percent of cases on the initial call.

“The HRP support center has come a long way over the past year or so,” said Tom Crawford, director of enterprise applications for Resurrection Health Care, which has eight hospitals and several outpatient clinics in the Chicago area. “Everyone from the analysts to the vice president of materials management is pleased with the support we are receiving from McKesson. Our relationship with the McKesson Materials Management support team has vastly improved. We now view McKesson as a business partner interested in helping us achieve our goals.”

During the past 12 months, the Wheeling support center has implemented a wide range of improvements that touched almost every aspect of delivering support. Improvements included a new automatic call distribution (ACD) system to facilitate the move to real-time support by customer support analysts, use of an online knowledgebase to quickly resolve issues, implementation of formal case follow-up and closure procedures that ensure commitments to customers are met regarding case statuses, and training and recognition programs for employees. The center achieved its Support Center Practices (SCP) certification against industry standard benchmarks in February 2002.

All SSPA Member companies are eligible to nominate themselves in any number of the categories -- Sustained Performance; High Call Volume; Most Improved; Complex Support Applications; Outsource Support Provider; Innovative Support; Mission Critical Support: Small/Emerging Company and Support Technology Vendor. SSPA provides each Applicant with an electronic application as a benchmark/guideline. The STAR Award Applicants take this task very seriously and spend a considerable amount of time on this arduous, but rewarding process. Many non-winners have said that, even though they did not win an Award, the whole process was well worth the time and effort. They indicate they learned a lot from the process and were able to identify areas for improvement. For more information on the SSPA STAR Awards please visit www.theSSPA.com or send an email to info@theSSPA.com.

About McKesson
McKesson Corporation is the leading provider of supply, information and care management products and services designed to reduce costs and improve quality across healthcare. McKesson solutions empower healthcare professionals with the tools they need to deliver care more effectively and efficiently. Founded in 1833, with annual revenues of more than US$50 billion, McKesson ranks as the 31st largest industrial company in the United States. For more information, call 800/981-8601 or visit our Web site at http://www.mckesson.com. For more information on our resource management information solutions, visit the Information Solutions Web site at http://infosolutions.mckesson.com.

About SSPA
Founded in 1989, the Service & Support Professionals Association (SSPA) was formed to focus on the specific needs of service executives who are responsible for support centers and overall customer relations. Today, the SSPA represents over 18,000 service professionals at 2,200 support centers worldwide. These executives look to SSPA to provide insight into the future of support services, a roadmap of best practices within our industry and access to the best service and support vendors. SSPA has become the center of support providing a reliable and comprehensive resource for news, research, benchmarking, standards and collaboration.

SSPA was created for professionals, managers and executives that make their living in the IT support services community. It is not a generic, one-size-fits all website where nobody ever feels like they belong. SSPA is dynamic, interactive, living resource specifically designed for the unique needs of support professionals. This exciting virtual community creates a forum for constant interaction with peers, industry experts, technology vendors and much more.

For more information regarding the SSPA and other related divisions, log on to www.theSSPA.com or send an email to info@theSSPA.com.
 
Editorial Contact:
Ron Johnson
SSPA
909.244.7002
rjohnson@thesspa.com
 
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