Advantages of digitalisation in healthcare

Driving digitalisation in healthcare and nursing opens up new possibilities for quickly and extensively servicing customers. Thanks to smart digital systems, healthcare professionals are relieved of various tasks—for example, the necessary but time-intensive procurement of print materials such as business cards, flyers or brochures. Especially in times of staff shortages, this brings enormous relief and helps optimise and streamline daily processes.

Comprehensive care and support services with Korian

Korian has operated stationary care facilities, senior centres, assisted living and outpatient nursing services in France, Germany and other European countries like Italy and Belgium since 2003. In 2020, Korian provided over 227 facilities with around 30,000 beds in Germany. Korian's goal is to provide the necessary support and care for people in every life situation and according to their level of care—and to help them overcome their fears about their current and future circumstances.

Electronic procurement at Korian

Nina Goisl tells us about her daily routine as a graphic designer at Korian: “One of our challenges is that we are only one and a half graphic designers, but need to design bespoke flyers, business cards, etc. for over 250 facilities and outpatient services.” Here, we need a clever solution to reduce the workload for graphic designers and save time in everyday business: A print shop that’s accessible for all Korian family facilities is the best solution. Korian’s graphic design team independently built such an ePrint shop with around 100 products—but it fell victim to a hacker attack and all templates were lost.

Smartpro – SIGEL’s secure print-on-demand shop

After this incident, Nina Goisl and her colleague were back to square one. While looking for an alternative to the lost Web2Print shop, Korian discovered Smartpro. “With SIGEL, we found a reliable partner who helped us rebuild the shop, step by step,” says Goisl. Over the course of a year, Nina Goisl from Korian and SIGEL rebuilt the print shop—this time using the e-procurement solution Smartpro.

Digital procurement at Korian before the introduction of Smartpro

Various Korian facilities distribute different print media such as flyers, brochures or business cards to customers and visitors. Before the print shop was launched, Nina Goisl and her colleague had to redesign all print material each time it was needed and ensure that it met Korian’s corporate identity. Goisl created the respective design proposal in InDesign and sent the print-ready PDF to the relevant facility. The facility then had to order the required quantity of print material from a print shop itself. Sometimes, there were revision cycles, for example, if there were content change requests. Additionally, Goisl had to send facility staff detailed instructions for ordering the print from the print shop each time. This whole process was highly organisational and cost a lot of time for both the facility employees and the two graphic designers. With Smartpro, print material procurement has become much simpler and faster.

Optimised e-procurement for Korian – with Smartpro

Thanks to Smartpro, designing, creating and printing media for Korian family facilities can be consolidated in a unified Web2Print solution. Korian created a dedicated closed shop with SIGEL, accessible to authorised staff from each facility. There, they’ll find product design templates crafted by Nina Goisl and uploaded by SIGEL—some are even editable. This means Ms. Goisl only needs to create each design once, which is then reused by all sites. This ensures that every facility uses uniform templates aligned to Korian’s corporate identity. After producing individual print materials, Goisl proofreads them—she can correct typos or minor changes herself—before they're ordered directly via Smartpro. For Nina Goisl, the uncomplicated handling and direct access to various design templates are the tool’s absolute highlights.

Korian – a positive example of digitalisation in nursing

It’s not just graphic designers who benefit from Smartpro, but also the care workers responsible for procuring print materials in each facility. To make it easier for them to get started with Smartpro, Goisl created a comprehensive manual for her colleagues to use as guidance. The ease of use when ordering new print materials saves the care workers a lot of valuable time, which they can devote to their main job: caring for customers. Working with SIGEL, Korian took a major step towards digitalisation in nursing. Of particular importance is the continual exchange between Korian and SIGEL. If she has questions or problems, Nina Goisl always has someone at SIGEL to contact. Thanks to this, not just facility customers, but also graphic designers are “well cared for”—true to Korian’s company philosophy.

What happens next: In-house newspapers in Korian design

In addition to flyers, folders, brochures, flags and cards, in-house newspapers are set to be published in the various facilities in the near future. Newspapers were previously produced according to a template, but each site created them independently and printed them without a revision cycle, which often led to errors. Now, Nina Goisl has created a template for in-house newspapers that is integrated into Smartpro, so all sites can use it. The design template follows Korian’s corporate identity and allows the page count to be flexibly adjusted, or different design templates to be added or replaced. Before printing, Nina Goisl checks the newspapers to avoid mistakes. The in-house newspapers produced using Smartpro nicely represent the various facilities and keep employees and customers informed about current topics and events.