Meghan Furr
The effects of COVID-19 on businesses large and small throughout the Tennessee Valley will be something we continue to grapple with for some time. Today, we take a look at a technology managed services company headquartered in Chattanooga who successfully pivoted its IT services in the early days of the pandemic to serve some of our community’s most vulnerable.
When the pandemic began impacting the U.S. in early spring, long-term care facilities were among the first businesses to experience a major disruption to their residents, administrative staff and nurses. This disruption extended to Pioneer Technology, an IT managed-services provider (MSP) that counts a long list of long-term care and senior living facilities among its primary clients and areas of future business growth.
Facilities supported by Pioneer Technology had to quickly change policies and procedures and communicate clearly with the large wave of family members eager and entitled to updates about their family members’ wellbeing. Pioneer Technology had a choice – sit back and see how their clients would handle this crisis or create and innovate new ways to use technology to proactively help solve their problems.
“Our mission is to establish consistent value for our clients by using our expertise to build strong technology solutions supported by great customer service,” says Adam Lloyd, CEO of Pioneer Technology. “It’s simply not in our values as a business or as people to leave our clients to solve their own problems when we can help, especially for such an important industry to us as long-term care, who found themselves at the epicenter of this global pandemic.”
The State of IT in Long Term Care
For long-term care organizations, their core-competency is in caring for others, not maintaining technology infrastructure. But technology is becoming more and more of a priority and requirement for care providers, due to regulations, security and even employee retention. That’s where an MSP like Pioneer Technology comes in.
Long-term care as an industry has not traditionally been forward-thinking in IT investment. This trend is changing due to the growth in health care technology and the increase of Baby Boomers as residents or patients. Boomers have incorporated technology into their lifestyles and have expectations that can determine where they choose to live out their golden years. Their desire to stream high-speed wireless content can cause a huge strain to facilities unprepared to accommodate this increase in demand for bandwidth. Similarly, poorly-functioning technology on the patient-care side can create a difficult work environment for nurses, administrators and staff – which can lead to lower quality care and high turnover rates.
This increasing need at health care facilities for stronger, scalable technology makes care providers a great fit for working with MSPs. They bring knowledge of IT Infrastructure to build agile and lean systems that generate real value for these organizations without requiring a lot of full-time, dedicated resources. Business continuity is preserved because IT is managed by experienced service desks and teams of account managers, rather than an internal department. This is not to say MSPs and internal IT departments cannot co-exist – in fact, in the case of Pioneer Technology, co-management and technical partnerships are an integral part of their service support with many large enterprise companies featuring adept, internal IT teams.
Pioneer Technology’s Approach to Service
Innovation has been at the heart of countless successful IT companies, and Pioneer Technology is no different. From the very beginning, its core team was formed directly from the IT department of a large, long-term post-acute care (LTPAC) provider. During this time, they came up with several innovations to transform the company's IT structure and strategy and to create an environment where this industry could adopt a cloud-first (when possible), advanced IT approach not often found in this segment. From there in 2015, a managed services provider (MSP) was born. This problem-solving spirit extends to today, with the company culture driving its response to the pandemic.
To help LTPAC clients solve their communication problem, Pioneer Technology launched a new, complimentary service in just a few days to make it simple for facilities to provide quick and important updates on a mass scale. Facilities were able to set up this “automated information hotline” with a dedicated phone number, as well as create their own recordings as many times as required. This could be done by typing the message, and voice dictation technology took over to create the recording. Over two dozen organizations took advantage of this technology in the first weeks of COVID-19.
“At Pioneer Technology, the relationships we build with our clients are at the heart of the services we provide,” says Lloyd. “We strive to add value to all organizations we count as clients and see the challenges faced by those we support as our own. As COVID-19 continues to impact organizations in unexpected ways, we are working hard to innovate new ways to help clients with their rapidly changing and evolving service needs.”
Pioneer Technology is a managed services provider (MSP) specializing in managing IT services including telecommunications, networks, security, IT infrastructure, cloud services, desktop and devices and service desk support for customers across the country. They deliver innovative, professional and quality IT managed services paired with best-in-class customer service. They create value for your organization and help you traverse the complexities of modern IT through a true, end-to-end business partnership.
