Cork private hospital in €8.5 million finance deal

Below is coverage from today’s Sunday Business Post that covers the deal that Sheehan Medical have signed with Siemens for their new private hospital the Cork Medical Centre.

I have pasted the text in below and also include a link in case you want to the view the article on the SBP’s website.

http://www.thepost.ie/story/ojaucwsnsn/

Cork private hospital in €8.5 million finance deal
04 July 2010 By Susan Mitchell

Backers of a new €90 million private hospital in Cork have just agreed an €8.5 million financing deal over seven years with Siemens Healthcare.

The new Irish private hospital operator, Sheehan Medical, will use the funding to purchase healthcare technology, ICT and diagnostic equipment at the Cork Medical Centre which is due to open in September. It will be the first new private hospital to open in the city for 30 years.

Sheehan Medical the million dollar men

Sheehan Medical recently signed a deal with Boston firm MEDITECH for an integrated IT system for their new private hospital the Cork Medical Centre in Cork. It was covered in the Done Deal section of the The Sunday Business Post yesterday. Here is a link to the article, which I have also pasted in below.

Sunday Business Post \’Done Deal\’ 9th May 2010: Sheehan Medical invests €750,000 in IT.

Sheehan Medical invests €750,000 in IT
09 May 2010 By Elaine O’Regan

Healthcare provider Sheehan Medical is investingUS$1 million (€750,000) in an integrated IT system for its new facility, Cork Medical Centre.

The first phase of the system by Boston-based Meditech, will be completed in August in time for the centre’s opening.

The second phase of the project, which will integrate the hospital’s clinical and financial systems, will be completed early next year.

Philip Sheehan, chief operating officer of Cork Medical Centre, said that the system would make all medical information, relating to each of the hospital’s patients, accessible to all of the consultants handling their care.

‘‘This is from entry to the facility through to completion of treatment and, crucially, it can also be accessed by all medical practitioners undertaking subsequent external aftercare, such as GPs or physiotherapists,” said Sheehan.

Cork Medical Centre will be the anchor tenant in City Gate, a mixed-use scheme in Mahon by local developer John Cleary.

Extending to 135,000 square feet, the €75 million City Gate facility will have 75 in-patient rooms, four operating theatres and a same-day surgery centre with 20 out-patient beds.

The facility will also house an intensive care unit and cardiology and neuroscience units.

Projected revenues for its first year of operation are €20 million, rising to €40 million in year five.

Sheehan Medical is operated by chief executive James Sheehan and his father, Dr Joseph Sheehan, who is chairman.

Joseph Sheehan was one of the founders of the Blackrock Clinic in Dublin in 1984. He was also part of the consortium that built the Galway Clinic in 2004.

When it is completed, it is expected that Cork Medical Centre will create 300 direct jobs and 150 ancillaryp ositions. There will be 75 doctors located on-site, providing up to 39,000 patient treatments annually.

In addition to Cork Medical Centre, Philip Sheehan said that the Meditech system had been used in other Sheehan owned medical facilities.

‘‘We have been working with Meditech at our other hospitals for a number of years,” he said.

‘‘Their IT system was adopted by our Galway Clinic in 2004,where it is a great success and it is also in use at the Hermitage and Beacon clinics, and Mount Carmel Group hospitals. This type of advanced IT system is crucial to the modern patient care and the efficient running of the hospital.”

Sheehan Medical has agreed a separate US deal with Loyola University Health System, which will manage a number of services at Cork Medical Centre. In conjunction with Loyola, it is developing a €37 million hospital in Chicago.

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60% of technology companies do not check social media profiles of potential employees and 63% do not have corporate blogs.

Some interesting research was released yesterday by global public relations firm Eurocom Worldwide, on  the use of social media and blogging by European technology firms (it can be found here:  http://www.eurocompr.com/prfitem.asp?id=12519 ). It found that:

- 60% of technology firms do not check the social media profiles of potential employees;

- 63% of technology companies do not blog

- almost a third (32%) of technology companies do not see the point of corporate blogging; and

- 39% said that blogging was too time consuming.

- 65% didn’t have a company Facebook page

The survey, which was conducted by Eurcom Worldwide during January and February 2010, only surveyed 286 senior level executives in technology companies, mostly across the European region. Whilst this is a very small sample it still shows either a lack or ignorance or low priority given to social media and on line marketing.

I find these figures astounding. After all I would’ve expect the use and awareness of this technology by technology companies to be much higher.  Of all the sectors that you would expect to embrace social media and blogging you would think it would be the IT sector.  I bet that if a similar survey was undertaken in the world of the FMCG (fast moving consumer goods) sector that the results would be a much higher because  this sector is much more forward thinking and cutting edge.

It appears for technology companies there only positive response was that 73% network on LinkedIn.

I’d be interested in a similar study in relation to how much use public relations and traditional media technology companies undertake and perhaps this would’ve been more apt for a PR company like Eurcom to undertake, but still it gives a very interesting insight into how technology companies think and act.

Part of the problem is their lack of knowledge and disinterest in marketing and PR. But it may be more to do with the fact that there is a perceived lack of need to focus on this. With a lot of technology start ups things move very fast and sometimes companies only think about PR and marketing when there is a lull to drum up new business.

Also with technology start ups the focus is on new technology. This is their priority and rightly so. Marketing could be seen as a luxury. In my experience a lot of tech companies do not know a lot about SEO, surprisingly so, and therefore, don’t appreciate the benefit of blogging.

Blogging is one of the single most beneficial ways for a company to boost its Google Ranking. And it is especially easy for companies to do because they have so much going on and so much information that can be put on a blog. Content such as the obvious media releases, but also press coverage, commentary on industry issues, product focuses, photos of events, video, all of which can also be automatically be sent to a corporate Facebook and Twitter feed.

With all my clients I ask them to incorporate a blog into their websites, which I then help them update with all their news,  not just the more traditional blog posts on the issues in their industry. I think this is an essential accompanyment these days to more harder copy / traditional forms of PR, that is still a priority to clients.

If a client is having some news covered in the media it is vital that they have full details on there website for when people look them up after they’ve read the article. If they don’t then they’re missing a major trick. Blogging software allows me to do this for them, without waiting for the client’s IT department to it, because I can log in to the blog element of website, without having to go into the main back end (content management system) of their website, which the IT guys don’t like (and rightly so) as the blogging software is kept in a different sub-directory with a separate login. Importantly clients should not make the mistake of having the blog hosted by the blogger provider, as this would do nothing for the search engine optimisation as it is kept on blogging providers website and not their own company site.

But this does not explain why companies do not use social media to analyse staff. Whilst 73% are in LinkedIn 60% do not check out the LinkedIn profiles of their potential employees. Why not? This is the obvious thing to do. After all many people have a LinkedIn account for that very reason, it is the equivalent of an on line CV. It’s the first place I would look to get background on potential employees.

On the whole there is sometimes a misnomer about the technology industry, whilst the products and services are very cutting edge sometimes the thinking isn’t. It reminds me of the scientific industry. There can often ve a very blinkered approach and people stick to their area  of expertise. The specialists in the industry know how to make their product, but don’t know how to market it and sometimes don’t even appreciate its wider application. That’s where people like me come in to help them get their product to market, get the word out and get them up to speed as to what they need to be doing internally to help them promote themselves.

It’s not hard but sometimes it takes someone from the outside looking in to point this out especially when a company is so immersed in launching it’s new product or service.

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“Open season to help save on IT spending” The Sunday Business Post covers Dublin software firm Openplain

As a freelance public relations adviser I often dread opening the papers on a Sunday morning. Over the years many a restful Sunday has been ruined by coverage of client that wasn’t quite to their disliking, even due to the minutest detail. However, there has been equally as many Sunday’s where I have been pepped up by good coverage for clients.

Thankfully yesterday was the latter. As well as a mention in yesterday’s Sunday Business Post  for Anthony Joyce & Co in my previous post  my client Openplain, the Dublin software company, received more deserved recognition in a great feature on them in the People In Business section, which focuses on Irish businesses that have a unique angle. In this case Openplain are the only Irish company that make software that companies can use to get a holistic view of their IT costs, thus allowing them to save a good chunk of cash on software licenses and programmes that they don’t use. This is an all too familiar occurrence in Ireland at the moment where companies weighed down by their Celtic Tiger Hangover with too many costs weighing them down from the boom.

One of these major costs are IT, with companies paying for too much software that they don’t use, which can be a very expensive mistake to make. On average Openplain can IT software costs for companies by 25%; back in Novemember they estimated that a medium sized company of 100 employees could cut €42,00 per year in software costs alone: http://www.republicpr.ie/2009/11/24/save-fortune-electricity-costs/

Yesterday’s featured focused on the good work that award-winning entrepreneurs Jon Mulligan and Damien O’Brien are doing helping Irish financial services companies cut their IT software costs. Here is a link to the article http://www.thepost.ie/peopleinbusiness/open-season-to-help-save-on-it-spending-48635.html which has also been pasted in below.

The Sunday Business Post: Open season to help save on IT spending
18 April 2010 By Dick O’Brien

As Irish businesses struggle to cope with the continuing weak economic environment, the focus for many is on cutting costs in a bid to maintain their margins.

It is a prime market for any company promising to help clients to save money. One of them, Dublin-based software firm Openplain, said it had experienced strong growth over the past 12 months.

According to Jon Mulligan, managing director of Openplain, the company specialises in analysing customers’ IT expenditure and identifying areas in which they can make savings. One of the company’s main products is Office metrics, which looks at an organisation’s entire business process, from the initiation of transactions, through back office processes and on to how a product or service is delivered.

‘‘Managers know how many transactions are being completed every day, and how long they are taking,” said Mulligan.

‘‘They can compare agents or teams, and identify inefficient work practices. That can be as simple as identifying excessive personal web browsing or discovering training requirements.”

Openplain was founded by Mulligan and technical director Damien O’Brien in 2006. The pair are both software industry veterans, having previously worked together at Baltimore Technologies.

In 2008,Openplain won the Inter Trade Ireland All-Island Seedcorn Business competition, which it followed later that year by winning first prize in the Docklands Innovation Park awards. Backers of the company include the AIB Seed Capital Fund, a number of private BES investors and Enterprise Ireland.

Mulligan said Openplain’s main focus at present was its Licence metrics software.

Managing software licences is a headache for most businesses, involving issues such as ensuring that money isn’t being spent needlessly on software which isn’t used, and avoiding penalties for running unlicensed software.

Licence metrics monitors a firm’s software usage in order to identify any licensing issues or under-utilisation. ‘‘We’ve just completed a project with a company in the financial services sector which we rolled out to 1,000 desktops,” said Mulligan.

‘‘It found that it had Microsoft Project on 450 computers, but in the previous three months it had only been used by 80 people. The company was paying subscriptions and maintenance on those subscriptions which were totally unnecessary. Another example is that it had 200 copies of Adobe Acrobat, but only had 45 people using it.”

There are about 80,000 users of Openplain’s system worldwide. Some of those are using a pared-down, free version of the software, and the challenge for the company is to persuade them to upgrade to the paid version.

‘‘Recently, through our own direct sales activity, we have been picking up a number of larger Irish clients,” said Mulligan.

‘‘They are mainly in financial services, but we would serve all markets, especially anyone doing a lot of back office processing.”

He said Open plain was already profitable and was on track to achieve a fourfold or fivefold increase in turnover this year.

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Cut business costs intelligently

One of the first costs businesses often look to cut is staff, this is normally because it is the easiest and quickest option to do. However, it is also one of the least intelligent options because staff are a company’s greatest assets (not costs) and are critical to the long term success of the company.

Openplain, Ireland’s only supplier of workplace analytics software, have put together this video on how businesses can cut costs intelligently. This includes significant savings on electricity via changes to IT habits and simply not paying for software that isn’t used or is duplicated.

Following these steps could make a real difference to your business and save you considerable costs.

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