After spending weeks scanning job listings and showing up as your best-dressed self to job interviews, you’ve finally come across the perfect role. You exceed the requirements, and you have a lot of relevant experience, as well as the soft skills the company is after.

All that’s left is a return phone call saying, “Come on by to discuss your employment with us!”

That call never comes though. Why is that? Could it be because your last name isn’t something like Smith?

The immigrant workforce, visible minorities, women, and historically overlooked groups have demonstrated increased success when a company hires more diverse workers.

Attracting—and especially retaining—a diverse workforce should be an important focus for employers in all sectors.

Progressive HR and recruiting companies like career.place aim to remove biases one hire at a time.

Formed in 2016, career.place has been diversifying hiring processes and compliance through a SaaS-based solution that put applicants through an anonymous, consistent, and semi-automated hiring funnel. Using the software, employers advance anonymous candidates who meet the company’s needs and remove those who simply don’t qualify. This technology helps applicants demonstrate they are qualified for positions, and the right people can move forward to the final stage in the hiring process.

Career.Place won three Bronze Stevie® Awards including Woman of the Year in Business Services Industries, Startup of the Year in Business Services Industries, and Entrepreneur of the Year in Computer Software in The American Business Awards®.

The Paradox of Hiring: Anonymity Brings Back Humanity

Melissa Dobbins, founder and CEO of career.place, built the company on the simple premise – bias has no place in hiring. Job seekers and employers are noticing her company’s unique approach; which starts by defining the needs of the job, and anonymously evaluating candidates against those needs, thereby focusing on what matters without the distractions of what is not.

Of course, diversity and compliance are in the news a lot, and this has perfectly positioned companies like career.place to solve the diversity-related problems companies are having now or will potentially have.

Career.Place has created a software solution where applicants are evaluated based on the employer’s criteria, including criteria such as requirements, soft skills (measured by integrated assessments), and responses to job-scenario and situational questions. All unrelated information about the applicants are hidden including name, education, titles, and other biasing information typically found on a resume – think “The Voice” but for applicants. The process is efficient, fair, and eliminates the need for time consuming resume and phone screens.

“Ironically by removing applicant identities, including their gender, age, ethnicity, favorite sports team, and other biasing and irrelevant information, we are giving applicants their voices back.” says Dobbins. “Imagine the great talent overlooked because of details like not knowing the right keywords to get through an automatic filter or having a gap in work history. By removing that information, and replacing it with information like qualifications, soft-skill assessments, and responses to job scenario questions, great talent will stand out because they are great.”

Change agents driving for a better tomorrow

Organizations gain valuable perspectives from diverse talent. There are many reports and studies that show diversity is good for business, but fundamentally, it just makes sense – companies will more effectively sell, support, and engage with a market if they reflect the full diversity of that market. Unfortunately, conscious and unconscious biases get in our way, constantly nudging us to hire others like us, rather than those who are best for the role, the company, and the mission. Dobbins details her experiences dealing with this before starting her company.

“When applying for jobs, I have been asked some very odd questions that I suspect my male counterparts have not had to deal with. For example, probing questions about if I would leave work to pick up my child if she were sick– indecently, that line of questioning is illegal. I have been asked if I could fire people because it is emotionally difficult, if I could handle difficult personalities, and if I would be interested in a single contributor role (i.e. a demotion) before being evaluated for the position at hand. What do you think my experiences would be like if those who interviewed me didn’t know I was a woman? What would your experiences be like if in your next job application the company doesn’t know what you are – just what value you bring?”

“These stories are universal. I have never met anyone who hasn’t experienced bias in one form or another,” continues Dobbins. “For me, I became obsessed with becoming part of the solution – a way for people to be evaluated fairly and consistently based on their skills and qualifications, and not assumptions made based on what they look like or what’s on a resume. And so career.place was born.”

A diverse workforce is good for business, good for communities, and good for the employees. There is no silver bullet for creating a diverse, engaged workforce. It is a future that will take many change agents – from entrepreneurs, like Dobbins, who are creating solutions to support unbiased hiring to those who are engaging and cultivating talent across every demographic group. Together we will succeed and the impact will be profound.

For more information about Melissa Dobbins or career.place, go to www.career.place.

https://www.career.place/single-post/2018/03/19/Do-Not-Hinder-Diversity-with-Bias-in-your-Hiring-Process-Have-a-Plan

For most people, participating in conversations and listening to music are easy to take for granted. For those with hearing impairment, these everyday activities are a major challenge.

Over the past 71 years, Phonak, which is based in Zurich, Switzerland, has been working to eliminate those hurdles for customers around the globe. After many years of dedication in the industry, the company’s achievements now include a litany of technological breakthroughs, each resulting in hearing devices that are more discreet, effective, and versatile than ever before.

A member of the Swiss corporation Sonova Group, Phonak launched the world’s first behind-the-ear hearing aid in the early 1970s, and a few years later, they introduced the first digitally programmable hearing device. In the 1990s, Phonak developed the market’s smallest FM receiver, which paired with a wireless transmitter to minimize background noises and to enhance the clarity of individual voices.

The desire to push the boundaries of hearing technology still drives the company today, resulting in a series of high-profile accolades. Phonak recently launched Audéo B-Direct, the first hearing aid that can connect to any Bluetooth®-equipped mobile device. The product, which earned the organization a Silver Stevie Award for Best Product at The American Business Awards® this summer, automatically senses the user’s surroundings and adjusts the output to make answering phone calls and holding conversations simpler.

On the heels of that achievement, Phonak was named winner of the Gold Stevie for Best Product at The International Business Awards®. This time it was for its cutting-edge Virto B-Titanium hearing aid. Developed using custom 3-D printing, the device capitalizes on titanium’s lightweight and superior strength. The result is a hearing aid that’s virtually unnoticeable to the outside observer.

“The Stevie Awards are an extremely important achievement to us. They demonstrate our ongoing commitment to create a consistent, scalable, sustainable competitive advantage within Phonak,” says John Urbaniak, Associate Director, Media Relations US Hearing Instruments at Sonova.

Helping Families Cope with Hearing Loss

The firm’s management has made research and development a top priority going forward. In April, Phonak announced a new audiological center of excellence at its audiology research center outside of Chicago, Illinois, United States. The center will serve as a hub for independent research, as well as ongoing collaborations with a network of top audiology experts and institutions around the globe.

“Tackling everything from pediatric to profound hearing loss, Phonak remains committed to creating hearing solutions that change people’s lives and help them thrive socially and emotionally,” Urbaniak says.

The Swiss company is using its stature in the industry to increase awareness of hearing loss solutions. To that end, it recently partnered with a charity called Songs of Sound, which helps improve access to hearing loss testing and the technology to help correct it.

With support from sponsors like Phonak, Songs for Sound holds a free weekend retreat each year that educates families of children with hearing loss about new technologies. It also teaches them how to navigate the health care system in order to get optimal care. In addition to the camp, the partnership with Phonak helps assist the organization’s Hear the Music Project and mobile clinic tours, which provide 10,000 to 15,000 people a year with access to free hearing tests.

Phonak also works to reduce the stigma that sometimes surrounds hearing loss by leaning on successful hearing-impaired celebrities. For example, it inked a sponsorship deal with stand-up comedian D.J. Demers, a contestant on season 11 of America’s Got Talent. His performances often revolve around his experiences as a youth in need of hearing aids.

The organization also turned Swiss aerialist Jason Brügger into a brand advocate. In this role, he’s involved in a range of projects worldwide to help support those with hearing impairments. Additionally, U.S. golfer and Deaflympics gold medalist Kaylin Yost was a guest keynote speaker at Phonak-sponsored summer camps for children with hearing loss.

“With these ambassadors, we've been able to reach thousands through conferences, community outreach, and speaking opportunities,” adds Urbaniak.

In doing so, the company known for developing state-of-the-art technology has also helped hearing-impaired people heal on an emotional level, too.

“Publicity is absolutely critical. A good PR story is infinitely more effective than a front-page ad.” —Richard Branson

Richard Branson is the prominent British business mogul with over 400 companies under the Virgin Group and a net worth of $5.1 billion. His insights on public relations (PR) and advertising come, quite obviously, from a great amount of success and experience.

The sentiment also simply makes sense. The art of storytelling has connected generations, communities, and cultures for as long as humans have existed. Storytelling—or, in a broader sense, communication—is a foundational pillar of any civilization, culture, or people. The story and the emotion it elicits are why songs sell and why people celebrate holidays, attend events, and, ultimately, make purchases. 

PR tells a company’s story, and that story often connects a business with people in a stronger way than an often-overlooked print ad or a radio clip that goes in one ear and out the other. PR doesn’t act in a vacuum, though. PR, marketing, and advertising are all connected, and this trifecta can make or break a brand.

PR and marketing services are changing and evolving in the world’s fast-paced, global, and tech-saturated economy. Business analysts already project marketing services will be greatly affected by advancements in artificial intelligence.

Now, agencies are converging PR and marketing services to compete and to rise above the digital clutter.

This makes sense, given PR and marketing are connected at their cores. Offering digital marketing and PR services in tandem only strengthens the deliverables and elevates the brand. This isn’t a new idea; it’s just being reinvented on a digital platform.

SparkPR, who won the Bronze Stevie® for Public Relations Agency of the Year in the 2018 American Business Awards, has 20 years of experience in digital marketing. Specializing in helping innovation-minded companies transform their brands with powerful storytelling programs, SparkPR uses the latest digital analytics to amplify PR programs. Services include content and social development, programmatic distribution, paid media, and data-driven insights to inform strategic planning and to measure go-to-market plans.

This strategy has proved successful. Some of the world’s most innovative startups and industry leaders, including eBay, Electronic Arts, Flickr, Mozilla.org, Nokia, NVIDIA, Skype, the Economist, Trulia, Verizon, Visa, Yahoo!, and Walmart Labs, have partnered with SparkPR and reaped the ROI.

The methods SparkPR uses are adaptable to quickly growing tech and investment programs, too. For example, SparkPR provided comprehensive strategic communications and marketing services for blockchain and cryptocurrency leaders through what they call “Sparkchain.” This guides successful token sales to growing companies post-ICO, and Spark has emerged globally as the preferred partner for these highly specialized services.

The company’s ability to deliver has strengthened startup opportunities. A startup that might normally prepare for months to secure venture funding is able to create a business, launch it, and raise tens of millions of dollars in less than three months.

“Funding was secured for concepts, not betas, and money was often from wealthy individual investors, not VCs,” says Spark's co-founder Donna Burke.

Zucker develops strategies for written and creative content for their clients. She notes that many of the company’s startup clients successfully exit through acquisitions or go public through IPO, thus demonstrating how a successful partnership with SparkPR delivers ROI.

SparkPR aims to constantly stay updated with developments in cutting-edge technology, as well as to maintain the ability to translate those changes into a wider landscape.

“Collaborating with like-minded innovators is always ideal—especially those who are creating the next era of the Internet,” says CEO, Alan Soucy. “It’s truly an era of transparency, efficiency, and trust.”

SparkPR is one example of a company that has sought to raise the global tide and is fighting to stay ahead of the rapid changes. They also seek to be adaptable by offering various mobilized marketing and PR services, which have traditionally been separated—at least by department in the business world.

True to their storytelling mind-set, SparkPR believes their client successes and awards, such as the recent Stevie Award, will elevate their brand as well as their story, as the world enters a new digital age of marketing and the Internet. And, as Branson aptly stated, that story will do far more for them than any front-page ad.

Dental health is extremely important to growth, as well as overall health. The proper development of jawbones and muscles affects speech patterns, as well as supporting an attractive appearance, and these are just some of the many benefits of having access to a proper dental plan.

Staying on top of your dental health by informing your doctor about noticeable issues is, unfortunately, easier said than done. For a third of Americans, having access to the most basic dental care is hugely problematic, and it largely boils down to cost.

Steven C. Bilt, CEO of Smile Brands Inc., bit into this problem and cofounded Smile Brands in 1998 and OneSmile in 2015. He eventually combined the two businesses and now oversees 5,500 employees and affiliated providers at approximately 400 U.S. locations. Bilt is also a founding member and former president of the Association of Dental Support Organizations.

“Our CEO, Steve Bilt, is a master at creating an effective corporate culture,” says the company’s chief marketing officer, Jody Martin. “He believes that, to be successful, the mission has to be motivating, both personally and financially to employees; inclusive to all employees, not just a few; and continually reinforced in a variety of ways.”

Incorporating recognition and a mindset of giving is also integral to the Smile Brands culture.

“At Smile Brands, every employee wears a blue ‘Smiles for Everyone’ wristband, and we continually celebrate everyday miracles. This includes calling out employees who do amazing things,” says Martin. “We also have the Smiles for Everyone Foundation, which provides donated dentistry to people in need here and abroad.”

Bracing Themselves

The cofounders of Smile Brands reacquired the company in August 2016 after prior ownership drove the business to the brink of bankruptcy. Despite this rocky start, Smile Brands won Stevie Awards in The American Business Awards® and the Stevie Awards for Great Employers.

“The team worked tirelessly on a highly successful turnaround,” says Martin. “Winning the Stevie Awards helps to validate all that hard work and the fact that Smile Brands stands apart in terms of financial strength and company culture.”

Bilt also reached a 97 percent approval rating, based on the past year’s Glassdoor reviews from Smile Brands employees and affiliated dental providers. Those numbers are sure to keep Smile Brands grinning from ear to ear!

A Simple Concept

As Smile Brands Inc. grows in to one of the largest providers of support services to dental groups in the United States, dentists can spend more time caring for their patients and less time on the administrative, marketing, and financial aspects of operating a dental practice.

This is an important step in the dental industry because new research continues to show links between chronic oral infections and heart and lung diseases, stroke, low birth weight, and premature births. Smile Brands aims to further build and to bundle comprehensive general dentistry with specialty care and to streamline experiences for both dental care practitioners and patients.

Even with all these moving parts, everything still comes back to one foundational and simple concept: smiles for everyone.

Winners were announced today in the 2018 People’s Choice Stevie Awards for Favorite Companies, a feature of The International Business Awards®, the world’s only international, all-encompassing business awards program which is now in its 15^th year.

The worldwide public vote was conducted this summer, with the highest number of votes deciding the winners in a variety of industries. More than 22,000 votes were cast. All Stevie Award winners in the Company of the Year categories of this year’s International Business Awards were eligible to be included in voting for the People’s Choice Stevie Awards.

The crystal People’s Choice Stevie Awards will be presented to winners at The International Business Awards banquet on Saturday, 20 October at the InterContinental London Park Lane Hotel.

Tickets for the event are now on sale. The winners of peer-adjudicated gold, silver, and bronze Stevie Awards will be presented with their awards along with the People’s Choice Stevie Awards. Stevie winners were selected from more than 3,900 nominations received from organizations and individuals in 74 nations.

The winners of the 2018 People’s Choice Stevie Awards for Favorite Companies are:

- Business/Professional Services: TELUS International
- Computer Software: Accedia JSC
- Diversified Services: Glance Technologies
- Entertainment/Internet/Media: DRF Deutschland Fernsehen Produktions GmbH & Co. KG
- Financial/Insurance: Cebuana Lhuillier
- Manufacturing: Makers Nutrition
- Other: College Works Painting
- Real Estate: Stockdale & Leggo
- Telecommunications: Azercell Telecom LLC
- Transportation: Egypt Express

Although Alan Stillman didn’t invent the phrase “TGIF,” he knew how universal the feeling was, and he opened the first TGI Fridays restaurant in 1965 in New York, United States.

As the original casual dining bar and grill, TGI Fridays offers authentic American food and legendary drinks, and it’s all served with genuine personal service.

Bringing people together to socialize and to celebrate the liberating spirit of Friday was the restaurant’s founding premise, and from this was born the brand promise: in here, it's always Friday.

To share the Friday experience all over the world, TGI Fridays proudly serves guests in over nine hundred restaurants in more than sixty countries. Making every day feel like Friday wouldn't be possible, however, without creating a place where friends feel free to get together. TGI Fridays takes pride in their nearly 74,000 skilled and knowledgeable team members who help serve their guests each and every day.

Connected Experiences

Technology is revolutionizing the restaurant industry, and the influx of mobile capabilities, tablets, online ordering, and even AI-driven automation in the food and beverage space continues to accelerate and to create more meaningful and connected dining experiences.

Chief Experience Officer at TGI Fridays, Sherif Mityas, affirms the impact they’ve felt since winning a Gold Stevie Award®, especially as it pertains to their IT department.

“This is an amazing award for our team and for the organization as a whole. Being recognized as the best IT department of the year in The American Business Awards® is truly an honor, and it has created an immense sense of pride for every team member in the organization.”

By incorporating technology into the dining experience for their guests, TGI Fridays continues to make a concerted effort to create an innovative mindset for their entire brand. In many ways, according to Mityas, they consider themselves a “technology company that happens to sell beer and ribs.”

The team has also been recognized as a two-time winner of the CIO100 award (by CIO Magazine), a Digital50 award winner, and the Most Innovative Team (by the International Franchise Association).

Be Better, Do Better

TGI Fridays doesn’t just celebrate the Friday brand in their restaurants; they also pass that mentality to their staff members. As such, they allow all IT team members to leave early on Friday, which gives people time to enjoy their friends and family and, in turn, to be better and more productive at work.

Their IT team also comprises men and women from all walks of life and backgrounds. Ranging in age from twenty-two to seventy-five, the team members are over 60 percent women, and the minority workers hail from over twelve countries.

“It’s truly an exceptional team that does great things together for the benefit of our millions of guests around the world every day.”
 
A never-ending drive to be better and to do more has allowed a relatively small group to accomplish great things. One of the keys to their success is never settling for how things are expected to be.

“We're always challenging the status quo and asking what’s next,” says Mityas.

Over the past decade, there’s been a sea change in the way people consume video content. Today’s viewers can download and stream multimedia on their computers, as well as on mobile apps, social media sites, and a variety of connected TV devices, such as Roku, Fire TV, and Apple TV.

Thanks to the proliferation of outlets—and a steep drop in production costs—you no longer have to be a major broadcast network or media conglomerate to gain viewers. Now, even small businesses, state and county governments, and churches are using these non-cable outlets, commonly referred to as “over the top,” or OTT, to reach a whole new audience.

While the barriers to entry are certainly less insurmountable than in the past, independent producers still need the tools to upload, manage, and publish their video and audio content on a wide range of media platforms. Lightcast.com has been helping clients overcome this exact challenge since its inception in 2010.

The company, which has offices in the United States (Charlotte, North Carolina) and Europe, bills itself as the one-stop shop for all its clients’ publishing needs. In addition to providing transcoding services—it creates more than a dozen renditions of each video in different bitrates—it offers a fully functional content management system and the ability to distribute multimedia using one of the world’s largest server networks.

It also helps organizations monetize their content by creating advertising, pay-per-view, and subscription strategies. By eliminating the need to work with video ad networks—what it calls the industry middlemen—the company claims content creators can boost their net revenue.

The “Democratization” of Video

“The shift away from mere streaming on websites to OTT has kept all streaming providers and online video platforms on their toes,” says the company’s managing director, Andreas Kisslinger. “Lightcast.com, in particular, has really enjoyed, welcomed, embraced, and promoted this change as we see the new publishing channels and platforms as a huge opportunity for media publishers.”

For Kisslinger, the changes in the media landscape enable organizations of all stripes to amplify their messages and to expand their reach.

“It’s a chance for democratization of information flow, creativity, and entrepreneurship among independent producers, of which many are highly successful,” he says.

Lightcast, whose Media Cloud solution won the Gold StevieⓇ Award  in The American Business Awards® for New Product or Service of the Year in the CMS category, has tapped in to those opportunities as well as anyone. Its software suite now helps support a multitude of media outlets on social media, connected TV, and mobile apps. Today, InTouch Ministries, Foody TV, and All About Golf are among the thousands of clients Lightcast helps connect with new audiences. It’s an impressive achievement for a company that started with little and worked tirelessly with its “bootstraps” mentality.

“We are all young entrepreneurs from various countries. All self-funded and self-made, without any venture capital or connections behind our backs,” says Kisslinger. “Instead of using investment capital, we built our business exclusively with sweat, blood, and tears—and, most of all, the satisfaction of our customers who share their excitement about our products with others."

Kisslinger acknowledges that keeping a trans-Atlantic operation going isn’t always easy, though. The staff has to continually navigate language and time zone differences to make it work. For Kisslinger, however, what they have in common is more important: a desire to go above and beyond for their customers.

One of the company’s keys to success is a relentless pursuit of the perfect multimedia publishing suite.

“We have a proprietary CRM system and database in which we record every feedback, every wish, and every need customers send us. We do this in order to refine the user interfaces and feature sets of our software-as-a-service offering,” says Kisslinger.

This approach helped the company earn numerous awards for product design over the past few years, but for Kisslinger, snagging the Stevie Award was particularly satisfying.

“We regard the Stevie as one of the most important and prestigious awards a business can win,” he says. “It’s boosted the excitement and self-esteem of our teams—especially among our hardworking coders, web developers, and graphic designers. Everyone is especially excited and grateful over this year's award,” he says.

Businesses are rapidly migrating their data and applications to the cloud, and increasingly taking advantage of the flexibility and functionality of providers like Amazon Web Services (AWS). According to one industry report, 71 percent of enterprise-level companies will increase their spending on the public cloud by 20 percent or more in 2018.

While the benefits of replacing on-premises assets with web storage might seem readily apparent, the conversion itself can present some real challenges. In order to avoid a costly misstep, companies need to put a strategy in place that protects their cloud data and ensures applications work as intended.

Cloud Protection Manager (CPM), a solution the United States based firm N2W Software developed, strives to eliminate those worries.

Designed specifically for AWS, the product offers the ability to back up data as often as necessary, and it recovers that data faster than traditional on-site backup solutions.

“It’s a complex and new IT environment that’s viewed with a lot of uncertainty and challenges, but it doesn’t have to be,” says Jessica Eisenberg, an inbound marketer and customer success manager at N2W Software.

Employing a user-friendly web interface, CPM allows users to manage multiple AWS accounts and to configure policies and schedules to take automated snapshot backups. Clients can recover snapshots, individual volumes or even individual files almost instantaneously, and can recover both in another region or in another account.. It does all this while maintaining compliance with various privacy standards, such as HIPAA, a health data security law in the United States, and the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation.

The solution is especially important because, under its Shared Responsibility Model, Amazon is only responsible for the cloud infrastructure itself. However, the customer may assume liability for application software and utilities that it installs on the platform.

The solution is especially important because, under its Shared Responsibility Model, Amazon is only responsible for the cloud infrastructure itself. However, the customer may assume liability for application software and utilities that it installs on the platform.

Big Clients Sign On

The roots of N2W Software date back to 2010, when AWS user Uri Wolloch realized the need for simpler and more scalable backup and recovery capabilities. Wolloch quit his job and began working from home for almost two years to create the first beta version of Cloud Protection Manager.

Since its release, CPM has been used in virtually every vertical market, including finance, health care, mobile, IT, transport, and media. Companies rapidly joined in as enterprises started to weigh the risks of even short periods of downtime. The company’s client list—now totaling more than 1,000 enterprises worldwide—includes the likes of Coca-Cola, Southwest Airlines, Cisco Systems, Oracle, Dyson, Harvard University, and media giant Time Inc.

“Our existing customer base contains the most progressive and forward-looking enterprises in the world—ones which are most interested in acquiring the latest and best cloud backup and disaster recovery technology in order to be prepared for the growing number of data breaches, ransomware attacks, errors, bugs, and weather-related disasters,” Eisenberg says.

The tech community seems to believe growth will only continue as more companies migrate to the cloud. N2W Software, based in West Palm Beach, Florida, United States, completed two rounds of funding in 2017, which was when it also brought in Jason Judge as its new CEO and Andy Langsam as COO.

At that time, the organization’s physical presence swelled to keep up. It now has a development center in Haifa, Israel, as well as satellite offices in Edinburgh, Scotland, and Bucharest, Romania. In January, the private Swiss firm Veeam announced its acquisition of N2W Software for $42.5 million, saying it will continue to operate the business as a wholly owned subsidiary.

Award Boosts Product Awareness

Among the rewards of the buyout was an introduction to the Stevie® Awards, several of which Veeam won in 2015. 

“We knew the Stevies were the premier business awards and that the awarding body is an organization that takes honoring achievements and innovation very seriously,” Eisenberg says.

The panel of judges recognized N2W Software this summer for its pioneering technology. In 2018, N2WS won a Gold Stevie Award in The American Business Awards for New Product or Service of the Year category for Software – Cloud Storage & Backup Solution. The judges noted the efficacy and disaster recovery benefits of CPM, as well as its specialized features, such as robust reporting, alerting, auditing, and dashboard functions.

“The excitement surrounding our company and product is clear recognition of the company’s progress and main goal: to create peace of mind for our customers with valuable data and mission-critical applications in the public cloud,” says Eisenberg. “It has already brought added awareness for customers on AWS that both small glitches and disastrous backup failures can be easily avoided and any single level of downtime can be mitigated.”

There’s nothing more aggravating for a healthcare patient than driving to a pharmacy to pick up a prescription and then learning his or her insurance company won’t cover the cost.

It’s a frustrating scenario for retailers and doctors, too. A significant portion of the medications the pharmacy staff fill won’t be taken home by the patient. Providers then have to go back to the beginning, contacting insurance providers to see if another drug will be covered by the patient’s insurance plan.

The shift toward electronic prior authorization, or ePA, is trying to put the brakes on those system inefficiencies. This trend has been steadily gaining momentum, thanks to wider electronic health record (EHR) usage and new state-level laws aimed at cutting medical costs and improving patient outcomes.

For those who work in the health care industry, it can be hard to keep up with all those developments. Each year, the technology firm CoverMyMeds works with an advisory group of industry experts to publish the annual ePA National Adoption Scorecard, which highlights the progress of ePA in the United States. Readers get up-to-date information on individual state mandates involving prior authorization, as well as updates on what’s happening at the federal level.

The 2018 edition of the scorecard also includes sections on two new areas of opportunity: real-time prescription benefits (RTPB) and solutions geared toward specialty medications.

“As electronic prior authorization implementation continues to increase, the industry is looking for new ways to enhance ePA functionality to benefit industry stakeholders, to continue fueling adoption from pharmacists and providers, and to benefit the patient,” says Perry Lewis, VP of industry relations at CoverMyMeds, whose main offices are in Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio, United States.

The latest version of the innovative report earned the company a Gold Stevie® Award for the Best Annual Report in the Online/Electronic category at The 16^th Annual American Business Awards..

“The Stevie Award validates all the hard work we put together on our scorecard,” said the CoverMyMeds VP of industry relations, Lewis, at the awards ceremony.

Automating the Process

Even today, many prior authorization requests to the pharmacy and health plan are completed manually—usually by phone or fax. This time-consuming process often leads to patients to abandoning their prescriptions at the pharmacy 36 percent of the time, according to CoverMyMeds.

That creates perils for the patient, who sees an increased risk of future health complications by not taking a prescribed medication. It also means the various players in the health care industry—providers, pharmacies, and insurance plans—allocate unnecessary resources to getting a drug approved. The scorecard notes, for example, that providers who rely exclusively on electronic preauthorization spend 2.5 fewer hours a week on these tasks.

It’s no wonder, then, the sector is quickly gravitating toward ePA, a trend that the proliferation of electronic health records has aided over the past several years. ePA streamlines the process by allowing a physician or other provider to initiate the approval while using the e-prescribing feature of the EHR.

“The most successful ePA strategies also connect the pharmacy to initiate an ePA that was missed at the point of prescribing, and they allow the provider to complete a pharmacy-initiated PA electronically in their EHR or in a designated ePA web portal,” the scorecard says.

Today, 90 percent of insurance payers use ePA, and 96 percent are committed to implementing the method soon. Meanwhile, virtually every pharmacy chain in the country has expressed an intention to use ePA. A growing number of states are adopting ePA language aimed at speeding up the usage rate.

Since its inception in 2008, CoverMyMeds has been at the forefront on this industry change, offering a platform that incorporates nearly every payer and prescription drug on the market. The company, which McKesson Corporation acquired in April 2017, now works with more than 500 EHRs, 62,000 pharmacies, and 700,000 providers in the United States.

The organization launched its yearly National Adoption Scorecard in 2015 as a way to help key stakeholders stay current on legislative updates and other news involving ePA implementation.

The Stevie win not only gave CoverMyMeds a valuable accolade but helped motivate the company to build on the scorecard’s success.

“Since learning about the award,” Lewis says, “the team decided to create a second report that provides an objective overview of real-time benefit check, a technology innovation that surfaces patient-specific prescription benefit details at the point of prescribing.”

References: https://www.covermymeds.com/main/insights/rtbc-scorecard/ 

Real estate is about more than just helping people buy and sell houses; it’s about building communities where families and friends can thrive. Long & Foster (L&F) has guided people home since 1968, and it has become the no. 1 independent brand, by sales volume, in the United States. The productive commercial and residential business has sold more than $31.1 billion worth of buildings, and they helped people buy and sell homes nearly 85,000 times in 2017 alone. To cap it off, they also produce and publish Long & Foster magazine that won the Silver Stevie® Award for Best Print Publication in The 2018 American Business Awards.

Pushing the Boundaries

L&F is a full-service brokerage firm that offers residential and commercial real estate, mortgage, settlement, insurance, property management, corporate relocation, and vacation rental services.

Over the last year, they overhauled and improved their magazine by pushing the boundaries with art, design, and editorials. Winning the Silver Stevie helps validate those important changes.

“We'll continue to push the magazine in this direction by adding quality content and leading-edge design that serve our readership,” says the magazine’s managing editor, Spencer Macli.

L&F Real Estate has over 230 offices, stretching from Raleigh, North Carolina, United States, to Fair Haven, New Jersey, United States, and from Martinsburg, West Virginia, United States, to the Atlantic Ocean. It represents nearly 11,000 agents in seven Mid-Atlantic and Northeast states, plus the District of Columbia in the United States.

Starting Small with Big Aspirations

L&F has been around for 50 years, and naturally they’ve witnessed many major changes in the real estate industry. However, they consistently adapted and evolved to remain a leader in the marketplace. In recent years, they’ve experienced firsthand how technology has had a significant impact on real estate—specifically on the way buyers and sellers conduct research.

“There is an abundance of web and mobile apps that have altered the real estate industry in a positive way,” Macli says. “Staying ahead of trends and being a technology leader are at the heart of our mission, and that is why we continue to adapt to the changing ways our clients and potential clients access information about real estate.”

Two guys in a tiny office originally founded the company with little more than a desire to be the best real estate company for agents, employees, and clients. This idea grew into the largest independent real estate brand in the country.

“Cofounder Wes Foster still comes into the office, and he is regularly spotted in the cafeteria talking with employees and offering ideas and encouragement. Without his dedication and commitment, this award-winning magazine would never have been possible. If there's one person to thank for the Stevie, it's likely him,” states Macli.

The Ripple Effect

L&F serves an audience that spans the entire Mid-Atlantic region and is comprised of an engaged readership interested in all aspects of luxury living. To provide the best product for that audience, L&F team members habitually research ideas, discuss their creative direction, and challenge each other.

One particular partnership has been influential in the publication’s success: Christie’s, one of the world’s most recognizable luxury brands. Last year, L&F earned Christie's Affiliate of the Year, which, no doubt, had a positive ripple effect on the magazine.

“Our team strives to surprise and to delight our targeted audience on every page of every issue,” says Macli. “This is the core of our mission as we offer unique insight into luxury living.”