To make its workplace health and wellbeing services accessible across the UK, BHSF cannot afford interruptions to its essential systems. The company set out to reduce the risk of unplanned downtime.

BHSF moved its core applications to IBM Power Systems servers hosted and managed by Meridian, gaining new capabilities such as data encryption and data masking, alongside higher availability.

People work best when they feel at their best. As a result, investing in employees’ physical, mental, and financial wellbeing yield benefits for everyone: the staff member, their employer and society at large. 

BHSF is a not-for-profit organization built on this ethos. With a proud history dating back to 1873, BHSF builds better workplaces by helping individuals get the support they need to flourish. In recent years, the organization has embarked on a digital transformation to help ensure that its services stay in lockstep with its customers’ needs.

Richard Evanson, Head of Group IT and Projects at BHSF, explains, “Before, most of our claims were submitted and processed on paper. Today, half of all claims come in via our online portal and are managed digitally from end-to-end. While automation helps our staff work more efficiently, it also places high demands on our IT systems. As the proportion of digital applications rises year-on-year, the availability of our IT systems is becoming more important than ever.”

To protect against interruptions to its services, BHSF began looking for a more robust alternative to its existing IT infrastructure. At the same time, the organization saw an opportunity to strengthen its information security capabilities and liberate its IT team from time-consuming management tasks.

“Our customers depend on our services being available when they need them, so downtime is not an option,” says Richard. “The COVID-19 pandemic saw greater demand for mental health support, and we were determined to be there for our 350,000 policyholders throughout the crisis and beyond. We decided the time was right to look for infrastructure experts we could trust, so we could focus on becoming even more customer-centric.”

BHSF is taking advantage of performant IBM technology to respond faster to customers and help working people across the UK access the health and wellbeing services they need sooner. The IBM Power Systems environment supports a new robotic process automation solution, which streamlines manual tasks and reduces response times further.

“We’ve increased our daily claims-processing rate from 150 to 1,000 claims per person per day,” comments Richard. “We now issue 4,000 invoices a month. Our digital transformation continues apace, with high-performance IBM Power Systems technology playing a key role.”

By moving to the cloud, BHSF has also freed up more time to focus on strategic priorities, confident that its IT environment is in the best possible hands. The organization is channeling this extra time into innovation, helping it to preserve its leading position. 

“Outsourcing our IBM Power Systems environment to Meridian freed up the equivalent of one full-time employee, and when you’re a team of 13, that makes a big difference,” says Richard. “We don’t have to maintain in-house infrastructure skills, as Meridian’s team of dedicated IBM Power Systems and IBM i experts run the hardware for us. At the same time, we gain access to valuable new IBM Power Systems capabilities that contribute directly to our competitive edge—and Meridian ensures we can use them to their full potential.”

In the unlikely event of a technical issue, BHSF can now recover much faster. As a result, the organization can offer customers greater continuity of service, fulfilling its goal of being there whenever its needed.

Richard concludes, “Working with Meridian, we’ve reduced our recovery point objective so that we can restore data from within a few minutes of a disaster rather than 48 hours, which means a lot to our customers. Even better, we achieved all this while keeping IT costs flat, and shifting our spend from CAPEX to OPEX. With help from IBM and Meridian, we’re achieving our goal of putting our customers’ needs first, every time.”

BHSF (link resides outside of ibm.com) is a not-for-profit health and wellbeing provider headquartered in Birmingham, UK. The organization offers a range of products and services including occupational health, employee benefits, insurance and employee support.

Meridian (link resides outside of ibm.com) is a proven leader in the UK’s enterprise technology sector, with over 40 years’ experience of helping clients build powerful, reliable IT solutions that create real value. Today, Meridian is one of very few technology partners with the skills to provide true end-to-end solutions across a full spectrum of domains, including Infrastructure, Cloud, Security, Software and Artificial Intelligence. Meridian delivers projects in the UK and worldwide as a member of Meridian Group International, a network of skilled resources that combines global reach with local expertise.