Healthcare organizations are under increasing pressure to protect patient data, provide mobile access to information and applications, improve patient outcomes through advanced analytics—and, of course, do all of these things while reducing costs.
In order to respond quickly to new market demands, healthcare organizations rely on outside consultants to help them develop practical IT strategies and identify innovative technology such as HP ConvergedSystems. Unfortunately, not all strategy engagements lead to a healthier bottom line. In fact, strategies that fail to follow these five, time-proven tips can ultimately end up costing organizations more money and valuable market agility.
Tip #1: Get the right people in the room.
Changes in IT affect the entire business, which is why you need more than IT people in the room when you are having a strategic discussion. To get the proper perspective and create a strategy that aligns with business goals, you need the right people in the room—not just infrastructure people, but applications and industry experts too—and, most importantly, you need business users from operations, accounting, marketing, and various lines of business.
Tip #2: Create an actionable strategy.
It’s not enough to know what to do. Strategic engagement will explain how to do it: what processes to follow, pitfalls to avoid, and detailed instructions that give the full benefit of their experience because, after all, you are hiring them for the reason that they’ve done this before and you haven’t.
Tip #3: Identify what needs to get done first, next, and later.
We call this a three-phase strategy, and it’s the cornerstone of our own healthcare consulting solution, Healthcare Advizer. Essentially, it means knowing which projects have the highest ratio of effort-to-impact and focusing first on those initiatives that can deliver the biggest benefit in the shortest amount of time. We even plot these initiatives using axis of impact and difficulty of implementation to help customers visualize which projects deserve their attention and effort first.
Tip #4: Emerge with a roadmap for the next 12 months or more.
A short-term or partial strategy isn’t a strategy at all. Healthcare organizations need stability and direction, and that comes in part from building consensus around IT strategies for the foreseeable future. As part of our Healthcare Advizer solution, we collect reams of business data during the interview process and then have a cross-discipline team of experts review that data for 30 days to ensure that what emerges is a workable, practical plan for the next 365 days or more. In addition to planning and building your solution, Rolta AdvizeX can also help you manage your solution for optimal performance and cost efficiency.
Tip #5: Look for evolutionary change, not revolutionary change.
Businesses don’t leapfrog into the future; they arrive there step by step. We believe that the best solutions take advantage of the technology and the skills you have today. For example, if you are using HP technology but haven’t moved to a converged infrastructure yet, we’ll recommend HP ConvergedSystems to reduce costs and improve performance. We also offer several no-fee assessments including HP ConvergedSystems solution sizing, server consolidation analysis, and virtual desktop analysis to ensure the next step is the right step.
There are plenty of reasons why healthcare organizations should look at updating their IT strategy, including new regulations, mergers and acquisitions, and new IT leadership. There are also many new technologies on the horizon that can make a profound difference in healthcare IT operations, from cloud computing and big data to virtual desktop infrastructures. ▪