Local Healthcare IT Company ranks among the Top 10 companies for workforce training and leadership development for the third consecutive year

March 9, 2010

Clearwater, FL – Training magazine has announced that SCC Soft Computer (SCC) was selected for the eighth time in the nine-year history of the ranking for a coveted place among many of the world’s top companies for workforce training and development. SCC placed in the Top 10 for the third consecutive year with a ranking of ninth overall.

Since 2002, when Training magazine first began its ranking of the top 100 companies for employee-sponsored workforce training and leadership development, SCC's Educational Services department has been chosen from a field of over 10,000 entries to rank in the top 100 companies in the United States. SCC began competing for this award in 2002 and has ranked anywhere from 97th to 51st overall in the Training Top 100.

In 2007, Training increased the field of competitors to 125, included companies from around the globe, and changed the name to the Training Top 125. The Training Top 125 is considered the most elite ranking among Fortune 500 companies for workforce training and leadership development.

• SCC vaulted up the ranking and placed 14th in the 2007 Training Top 125, moving in to the Top 15 and sharing the spotlight with corporate giants.
• In 2008, SCC joined the elite Top 10 and placed 8th in the Training Top 125. With the Company’s placement for the first time in the Top 10, SCC joined the ranks of industry powerhouses and became the first healthcare information technology company to rank in the Training Top 10.
• In 2009, SCC continued its upward climb and secured a coveted position among the elite Top 5 with a ranking of 3rd in the Training Top 125 and became the first healthcare information technology company to rank in the Training Top 5. SCC was featured in the cover story of the February 2009 issue of Training magazine, along with the other Top 5 companies.

On February 1, 2010 the first night of the Training 2010 Conference & Expo at the black tie “Anchors Aweigh” gala at the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, California, SCC’s Educational Services team was thrilled to learn that the Company placed ninth, as they accepted their third Top 10 award and became the first healthcare information technology company to rank in the Top 10 for three consecutive years. To see a complete list of the 2010 Training Top 125, visit Training’s Web site at www.trainingmag.com.

With its placement for the third consecutive year in the Training Top 10, SCC joins the ranks of industry powerhouses PricewaterhouseCoopers (1), ADP, Inc. (2), The Vanguard Group (3), Verizon Wireless (4), KPMG LLP (5), Farmers Insurance (6), Cisco (7), Microsoft (8), SCC Soft Computer (9), and Aetna, Inc. (10). In-depth profiles of each of the companies appear in the February 2010 issue of Training.
Gilbert Hakim, SCC CEO and co-founder shares this, “An anomaly in a world of corporate conglomerates, mergers, and acquisitions, SCC is privately-held company led by the same core management team. We’re going strong after three decades of progressive growth. Over the years, SCC has avoided layoffs and continued to add positions and new career paths, and the company is determined to remain on this track. We use continuing education and employee training to help us stay at the forefront of this highly competitive industry.”

Mr. Hakim continues, “Employee training and competency for healthcare information technology professionals has taken on a special urgency in light of the growing healthcare industry shortage of medical technologists. SCC hires medical technologists for a variety of positions and relies on the subject matter expertise of these professionals. Nationwide, the pool of job candidates in medical technology has been shrinking as the job descriptions continue to get more and more complex. This, coupled with the aging Baby Boomer workforce, has continued to create vacancies that hospitals and laboratories are struggling to fill. Because of this, attracting med techs, in particular those with advanced degrees and industry certifications, is becoming more of a challenge, and SCC has had to find creative ways to attract and retain these in-demand medical professionals.”

“SCC is an organization that recognizes the importance of training and continuing education, and values the contributions made by well-trained employees. In less than 10 years, we have assembled one of the finest professional training teams in the healthcare information technology industry. We’ve built SCC’s Educational Services department from the ground up,” says Don Keller, SCC’s chief learning officer and Vice President of Global Education. “In February 1998, SCC offered 17 instructor-led courses to its clients and 240 employees. Within just three years, we created a department that today serves nearly 1,600 internal clients and over 6,000 external clients with a training staff of 40+ worldwide. We currently offer 14,000+ courses to SCC's clients and staff.”

Mr. Keller continues, “The growth of SCC’s Educational Services department has been fueled by several factors, including a need for better client training and an exponential increase in the number of employees. The success of the department can be attributed to our dedicated and talented team of LIS trainers and subject matter experts, professional development staff, instructional designers and course developers, and communication specialists.”

SCC President and co-founder, Jean Hakim observes, “For SCC to be able to provide the best products and the best service to our clients, we must ensure that our staff members receive the best possible training and the tools they need to keep their skills up-to-date. Employee retention in this competitive industry is a real issue, and at SCC we’ve looked for creative ways to improve employee retention, get employees onboard from Day One, and continue to get existing employees onboard.”

SCC placed in the Top 10 based on the Company’s qualitative and quantitative response to the publication’s questionnaire, as well as SCC’s commitment to a blended learning approach to education and training by offering multiple methods to enable SCC clients and staff to become expert users of SCC’s robust healthcare information system software applications. Because the healthcare industry is undergoing dramatic change on many levels, prompted by advances in medicine and healthcare information technology, regulatory changes, and the global economic crisis, SCC has reengineered the business to address the challenges faced by their clients and staff. In tandem with the Company’s structural changes, SCC is creating a culture of learning in the organization and revising their approach to developing senior leaders who will face unprecedented challenges related to changes introduced by the U.S. government to the nation's healthcare programs, including a national healthcare plan and new regulations on the use of genetics to personalize treatments and cures.

To qualify for consideration for placement in the Training Top 125, training and development services could not be the company’s core business; however, the type of industry and size of business was not limited in the award criteria.

• Quantitative data analysis – directed by Training magazine and conducted by an independent auditing, research, and statistical firm – accounted for 75% of the total score and included annual revenue, number of employees, number of hours dedicated to training, employee turnover/retention, training as a percentage of payroll, and budget as percentage of payroll.
• Qualitative data, which accounted for 25% of the total score and was measured by the editorial staff of Training magazine, is a subjective look at each company’s overall application, including best practices, new training initiatives, leadership development, strategic training goals, and talent management.

Each applicant submitted an application that included detailed data regarding the company’s training program. Training magazine made their selection over a three-month period. The process began with an in-depth review of the applicants’ figures by the auditing firm. An editorial team of judges from Training magazine then evaluated the applications, using a point-based scale, as well as open discussions and interviews for the more subjective application areas.

On the quantitative side, an outside research company scores the application in five different areas:
• Training Program/Scope (including hours of training, number of trainers, training budget, best practices, and outstanding initiative) (worth 25 percent of score)
• Tuition Reimbursement (worth 10 percent of score)
• Training Infrastructure and Delivery (new this year) (worth 20 percent of score)
• Evaluation/Metrics (worth 25 percent of score)
• Human Resources (including competency maps, compensation tied to training, employee satisfaction surveys, length of service and turnover, job openings filled by internal candidates, and percentage of new hires referred by employees) (worth 20 percent of score)

On the qualitative side, Training editors look for:
• demonstrable results
• progress of programs
• innovation
• success factors
• training strategically linked to business goals
• corporate commitment to training
• the potential applicability of best practices companywide and to other organizations and industries
• the ingenuity of outstanding initiatives (usually a fairly new program that hasn’t had a chance to demonstrate long-term results) and their potential to become best practices

In addition to securing a Top 10 position for the third consecutive year, SCC Soft Computer was recognized with a new award for 2010: Top Evaluation / Business Metrics Score for the quantitative portion of our submission, which was rated by an outside auditing firm.

About Training
Training magazine is the leading business publication for learning and development and HR professionals. It has been the ultimate resource for innovative learning and development—in print, in person, and online—over the last 30 years. Training magazine and Training magazine Events are produced by Nielsen Business Media, a part of The Nielsen Company, a global information and media company. For information, please visit, www.nielsen.com.

About SCC Soft Computer
Since 1979, SCC Soft Computer has been meeting the needs of the healthcare industry by providing powerful, clinical information solutions to hospitals, large IDNs (integrated delivery networks), and laboratories. SCC's SoftLab has been recognized as the market standard for its robust functionality and ease of instrument interfacing, including robotics. Celebrating its 30-year journey of innovation and excellence, SCC is at the forefront of laboratory, genetics, blood services, outreach, pharmacy, and radiology information systems software development and offers full suites of Web-enabled clinical information management system solutions.

For more information, contact Don Keller at donk@softcomputer.com or (727) 789-0100 x4654.

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