This month we are pleased to feature Kel Koenig, Director of IT Operations and Shared Services at Dean Health Plan! We spoke with him and got the following insight into what he and his team are up to, what they like about UWEBC events, and how you can take some things that he’s learned and put them into practice for your company.
What Kel is working on:
In his field of IT, Kel explains the biggest trend is the shift to the cloud. With this shift, it is important to be careful about what and how much to shift to the cloud and fully understand how this affects the financial model. This shift results in significant increases in redundancy and availability, but the cost needs to be paid for in one aspect or another especially when trying to get data out of the cloud.
Specifically at Dean Health Plan (DHP), Kel and his team are in the process of integrating with Medica, a company in Minneapolis. A lot of DHP’s current focus is on forming the partnership between the two companies right now. He told us that the integration has been going well so far, and everyone is very excited about it!
How Kel and his team benefit from UWEBC:
Kel enjoys taking full advantage of his UWEBC membership to further his work goals, like the one above. He likes the ability to interact with other professionals and take advantage of all the different aspects of the consortium. He mentioned that when DHP was in an agile journey, the UWEBC was an extremely valuable resource and allowed his teams to envision how they could mature further and highlight what they’ve already achieved with an agile mindset.
Kel’s favorite UWEBC events are the Agile Transformation SIG meetings. He especially liked attending these meetings during DHP’s agile transformation. Kel remembers “walking away from those meetings feeling very energized and ready to implement improvements.” He loves how he and his team can attend these events, hear about other company’s journeys, and reflect on how they can leverage new ideas within their own company.
A tip from Kel on how you can get the most out of your UWEBC membership:
As a UWEBC primary liaison for his company, Kel’s goal is to ensure the company’s awareness of all the opportunities the UWEBC has to offer for its members. He does this in a few different ways, including making sure there are accurate distribution lists to ensure the correct people receive the regular UWEBC announcements emails, and to help widen the audience, increase exposure, and gain interest. After the Annual Conference each year, Kel also ensures his team reports back to the entire IT department to share what they learned. By doing this, everyone on the team can gain knowledge from UWEBC events!
Although Kel grew up here in Wisconsin, he is a Tampa Bay Buccaneers fan (pre Tom Brady). He is a huge fan of Mike Alstott and has supported the team since then. However, his wife remains a Packers fan. They have two kids, one a Buccaneers fan and one a Packers fan!
We thank Kel for his great participation and contribution to UWEBC this past year. We can’t wait to see more collaboration in the coming years!
Published August 3, 2022
Dylan Kopf and Jenny Zhang, Marketing Student Assistants