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Aetna calls on ISA
for savvy desktop support
“Supplier development has to be part of our program
to make supplier diversity one of Aetna’s strategic objectives,” says the chief procurement officer
 Aetna (Hartford, CT), the health, dental, pharmacy, group life and disability insurance company, can trace
its supplier diversity efforts back to 1976. That’s when Aetna became a charter member of the Greater New England Minority Supplier Development Council (GNEMSDC), then a new-fledged affiliate of the NMSDC.
“We’ve been active ever since,” says Kristen Hickey, supplier diversity manager. “In the late 1990s an
official program was begun with staff committed to it
and the supplier diversity manager position established, and we’ve been growing ever since.”
In 1999 the company’s total spend with diverse suppliers was 3 percent of its overall spend. Now it’s 7 to 8 percent, Hickey notes.
The operation is headed by Hickey and an associate, with a number of people from throughout the company supporting the area. Joseph Black, Aetna’s chief procurement officer, explains that Hickey also chairs
the company’s supplier diversity advisory council.
“We want our concept of diversity to be more than a procurement exercise; we want it to be the way we think about the business,” he says. Procurement at Aetna is centralized, Black explains, and the council is made up of representatives from many staff areas. “Kristen guides and directs them as they work to integrate supplier diversity into their day-to-day business operations.
“We are not interested in a separate sourcing process,” he adds. “We want to integrate our supplier diversity  processes into how we do business. Everything we do is part of an overall strategy to embed diversity into the fabric of Aetna enterprise-wide.”
Diversity as a business imperative is driven from the top down at Aetna, Black notes. “Our chairman, Ron Williams, chairs the Aetna diversity board, and Mark Bertolini, our president, is on the board as well.”
Certification is essential
The company has always wanted to be sure it’s working with true minority- owned firms. “We have never accepted anything except third-party certification,” Hickey affirms.
Hickey is currently serving as board chair of the GNEMSDC and is also a planning committee member and chair of the GNEMSDC’s business opportunity fair. Aetna’s membership, she says, “helps us benchmark other corporations and connects us with other suppliers. It’s all about networking, and if I don’t have the information myself, I have associates through NMSDC who can get me the information.”
Aetna is a member of the Financial Services Roundtable, a healthcare industry group within the NMSDC. Aetna is also a founding corporate partner of the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce.
Mentoring: focus on informal
“We do informal mentoring of our diverse suppliers,” Hickey notes. “In Connecticut we have participated with Business Link, and a strategic marketing senior executive has mentored a small firm.” On an unofficial basis, Hickey often brings in prospective suppliers to meet people throughout the Aetna organization, share their companies’ stories and get guidance on how to approach larger corporations.
Black, too, sometimes meets with diverse suppliers to talk about ways they can leverage their businesses. “I’ve been working with one of our diverse suppliers who is in a joint venture with a prime supplier of ours,” he says. “I found they have other capabilities I didn’t know about. We’re now looking at a new service where they can be a first-tier supplier. That came about with mentoring.
“While we’ve focused on informal mentoring so far, Kristen and I recognize that embedding supplier diversity into the fabric of Aetna’s strategic objectives cannot be achieved without executive sanction of supplier development as a key component of our program. This has to
be part of our strategic plan for the next three years.”
Supplier diversity summit
This past summer Aetna held its first supplier diversity summit. The day-long event connected key Aetna business representatives and sourcing professionals with potential small-business, minority, woman and LGBT suppliers in IT and business operations areas. Hickey hopes to repeat it on an annual basis.
This year’s event was targeted to potential suppliers in specific commodities, but, “Next year we plan to expand to include other supplier types and possibly current suppliers,” Hickey hopes.
“We know where we are and we know where we want to go. We want to be best in class, and we want supplier diversity to be much more than an afterthought, as it directly relates to Aetna’s core values.”
Integrated Systems does
desktop support for Aetna
Aetna’s relationship with Integrated Systems Analysts (ISA, Alexandria, VA) goes back seven years, Hickey reports. “They provide us with desktop support and other IT services via a helpline, and if they can’t handle something over the phone they send someone out.” The contract has been renewed several times and ISA’s services and responsibilities have expanded each time, she adds.
This long-term relationship had an almost casual beginning. An Aetna sourcing manager met ISA at a business fair, suggested the firm to Hickey and made the introduction. It took more than a year from contact to contract, Hickey adds with a smile.
Starting ISA
Ed Sharp, an engineer by training, is president and COO of ISA. The company, he explains, was founded in 1980 by C. Michael Gooden, who is still chair and CEO.
Gooden, also an engineer by training, was always interested in computer systems. He had dreamed of building a business since he was a kid, Sharp says. “When he retired from the Navy he saw some opportunities and took the plunge.”
In the Navy Gooden was an engineering duty officer, involved with computers and displays on naval ships. He started ISA as a computer-oriented company focused on defense issues and “grew up very strongly in the government sector,” primarily the DOD.
On the government side
In its government work, ISA fills the niche of explosive-hazard mitigation at Air Force, Army and NATO bases. This is clearly highly technical work, beginning with GIS and ending with a plan for base safety consistent with established rules for munitions storage, Sharp explains. ISA has been involved in laying out new Air Force, Army and joint service facilities in various parts of the world for the past twenty years, and has developed a computer-based system for locating munitions in accordance with safety rules and criteria, the nature of the munitions and other uses of the facility.
In all, the company has done assessments and studies at several hundred facilities. It also provides help desk assistance for safety officers at U.S. and NATO offices around the world, including a help desk for personnel using the mitigation tool.
Developing tools for desktop support, Sharp notes, “is as natural for us as developing tools for explosive-hazard mitigation. And desktop support for a company like Aetna is not, in principle, very different from support for the Army, the Air Force and NATO.”
Diversifying
In the early 1990s CEO Gooden “took steps to diversify via acquisitions which helped us get into commercial accounts,” Sharp explains. “We grew tremendously from that point, and the company is now roughly 70 percent commercial and 30 percent government, which is still primarily DOD.”
Today ISA is a “corporate plus” member of NMSDC. It received its certification in the early 1990s, “part of our corporate thrust when we were first moving into the commercial world,” Sharp says.
The company is also ISO 9001:2000 certified and has a Q1 status with Ford Motor Co.
Getting started with Aetna
When the Aetna sourcing manager introduced ISA to Aetna’s supplier diversity group ten years ago, “Aetna told us there was an RFP coming out for desktop work, and perhaps we could participate as a subcontractor,” Sharp recalls.
“We said we would be glad to participate, but we would like to respond to the total RFP rather than looking for a smaller role. In the end we did respond, talking in detail about how we would provide and manage the services drawing on our experience in government contracts. We impressed Aetna with our discussion of the process and how we would do it. We met their managers, had one-on one conversations and got good feedback.”
A new Aetna executive squashed the deal by withdrawing the RFP, but later it was reissued and ISA was selected as national provider of desktop hardware maintenance upgrades and services related to some 40,000 Aetna employees. “We did the transition over the first ninety days and they were pleased with our response. We made a good first impression,” Sharp concludes.
...and going on
At the end of three years the contract was put out for bid again. “It was an open and tough competition and once again we were awarded the contract,” Sharp says. Last year it was put out again and again ISA prevailed.
“We have a good two-way street relationship with Aetna,” Sharp believes. “Work is discussed on both sides and there’s an element of practical compromise. We consider it a win/win.”
Installations and desktop service
ISA, Sharp explains, does not provide equipment and does not sell computer hardware. “We
do installations,” he says. “We are warranty-certified for all the brands; and desktop service is the core of our business.
“In our responsibilities to Aetna, maintaining and supporting so many systems, we collect tremendous amounts of data. We know what fails and what the warranty costs are; we are right in the middle of that.” While ISA does not make the selections, it does work with assessment groups at Aetna, providing information based on data collected from their environment.
“The contract itself has grown and changed,” Sharp adds. “Our work has grown and evolved
as Aetna has grown.”
Track record
The existence of this long-running contract and Aetna’s willingness to act as a reference are important for ISA. “In the commercial world we are often an unknown, certainly not a household name,” Sharp says.
“Good references like Aetna’s can bridge the gap from being unknown to being the core
of someone’s business. Aetna is a key element for us from a growth and marketing point
of view.”
“At the NMSDC meeting in Las Vegas, NV last year, they introduced us to several companies they knew and were very helpful.”
ISA is active in NMSDC’s Virginia affiliate, supporting its programs and helping to bring in corporate sponsors. Freddie Mac, another ISA client, “is a strong supporter for the chapter
and we have worked on events with both Aetna and Freddie Mac,” Sharp says.
“The council’s roles of introducing minority businesses to corporate businesses and helping
the diverse businesses meet each other are crucial to us.”
ISA CEO Gooden has worked with a number of smaller companies on an informal basis, “helping them get a little off the ground.”
Customizing the services
Desktop support is essentially a commodity, not technically unique, Sharp says. “But we
have evolved a way to customize our services to meet client needs, focusing on two-way communication using several Internet-based tools.
“We have found a way to take a commodity service and tailor it to client needs so it goes beyond the service itself. That is how we provide continuous value.”
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