American College of Physicians

A Healthy Approach to Financial Management

The American College of Physicians (ACP) is the nation's largest medical specialty society. Its mission is to enhance the quality and effectiveness of health care by fostering excellence and professionalism in the practice of medicine.

ACP's Graphic Services department is responsible for creative, prepress and print management for the majority of the printed materials required by ACP. The department was looking for a more efficient way to manage its business as its workload continued to grow. Of particular concern was the amount of rekeying of information that was routinely required as projects moved through their life-cycle, including manual entry of data into the College's accounting system at the end of each job.

Additionally, the Graphic Services department was interested in replacing its paper job tickets, used by its customers to request the department's services, with a digital workflow, as well as to make the approval process for proofs more efficient. ACP acquired MetaCommunications' Workgroups Suite to address these needs. According to Mike Ripca, Graphics Technical Administrator, "We looked at a number of solutions, but none of them were designed for the graphics industry the way Workgroups is, and none of them fit our needs as well."

Our IT department has pointed out to me numerous times how well written MetaCommunications installers and documentation are and how they wish that other companies would write software this cleanly.
Mike Ripca, Graphics Technical Administrator

ACP deployed Workgroups’ Job Manager module first in the Graphic Services Department. Ripca says, "Users complete a job request using a PDF form and send us the paper request. We transfer all of that information into Job Manager and assign the job to a designer. As the designer progresses through the project, all time and materials are entered into Job Manager, as well as any expenses associated with outside vendors, including printers. We now have all job information in one, convenient, central location and we are better able to manage all of that information without a lot of rekeying."

Ripca is now working with MetaCommunications professional services staff to customize Workgroups to ACP's needs. Ripca concludes, "MetaCommunications has been terrific to deal with. Their customer support is excellent, the response time is great, and the Workgroups suite is outstanding. Our IT department has pointed out to me numerous times how well written MetaCommunications installers and documentation are and how they wish that other companies would write software this cleanly."

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