“When email goes down, lives are lost.”
The statement by Partners In Health’s vice president of technology is one that held strong in Kent Larson’s mind as he worked with the Boston-based nonprofit’s team to improve its global communications to deliver high-quality healthcare to impoverished communities worldwide, from Haiti to Rwanda to Siberia.
Given its mission, resource allocation at PIH has always prioritized the needs of people over systems. But, with communication systems becoming expensive to maintain and increasingly deficient, PIH decided to migrate to Microsoft Office 365, giving them a reliable and secure communication toolbox.
Larson, Director of Microsoft Delivery Excellence Consulting at Perficient, oversaw Perficient’s implementation of the system and realized the impact it would have from the onset.
“When you arrive in the PIH office, you see pictures on the walls of people of every nationality and in disadvantaged situations. You realize how much PIH impacts lives around the world.”
“The PIH team is committed to helping others and made this project a priority. We worked with a very dedicated team that was willing to travel the globe to make the technology work for those that depend on it.”
Kent Larson
Seeing the technology environment go from one that was constantly failing to one that is operating consistently and effectively proved the most rewarding part of the project, Larson says. His team brought together the technologists and project management discipline to implement the new messaging system on time and ahead of budget.
“We were able to partner effectively with the PIH IT department to complete the deployment and provide effective knowledge transfer,” he says. “Our work continues in the collaboration space implementing SharePoint Online in the first quarter of 2015.”
Larson says he’s thankful for the opportunity to collaborate with PIH, and the experience has reminded him of what is important in life: helping others.
“Seeing what PIH does in this world and the dedication of its founders, employees and partners, is truly humbling. I see that I, as a professional, can make a difference at work as well as in my personal life by working for the disadvantaged.”
Larson writes more about the project in a post to Perficient’s Microsoft blog here.
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