STORIES & SOLUTIONS FOR THE MODERN BUSINESS USER

Back when I was in medical school – a million years ago – students spent hardly any time in the hospital or working with patients until their third year. My third year began on July 1, and on that date, I found myself rounding on the colorectal surgery service of a huge hospital. Jokes aside, beginning my real medical training with surgery was quite the plunge into healthcare. While I had a ton to learn about surgically related diseases and treatment, understanding what I could and could not touch in the operating room was among the most important lessons to master. After surviving a few days in the OR, I moved onto more essential preparation for a clinical career.

ERP projects represent significant change for organizations. They are high risk, high-value initiatives, and often are scrutinized heavily. How well organizations prepare for the change and how it will impact the people, is a significant predictor of success. While ERP projects are often heavily supported by IT, ERP projects should be viewed as business investments and led by the functional workstreams.

The term “OK BOOMER!” (capital letters intentionally and ironically used) has been omnipresent lately. I first took notice of it last month when a member of the New Zealand parliament used it against an arguably older fellow member who was heckling her during a speech about the climate crisis. The recipient of her retort may not have understood its meaning, but those of her generation certainly did. Similar to “talk to the hand,” this expression dismisses the other party and ends the conversation, yet it’s more biting than that. “OK BOOMER!” implies that the recipient can’t even understand where the other party is coming from – as if there’s no common background or even language, hence there’s no need to continue.

Users of any ERP system must have access to the right data at the right time. This ERP user access must be policed, in other words, they can’t have access to everything, all the time. This is especially true when you consider that 37% of your employees, on average, use your ERP system. This includes anyone from a worker on the shop floor to your CEO, but each employee requires different levels of access to data.  Here are some useful pieces of advice to improve your ERP user access strategy.

I’m no project manager (PM), I promise you that. I don’t like deadlines; I sometimes skip over details that I find boring or monotonous; for the love of all things holy, I do not live for spreadsheets. I believe all of these character flaws rule me out of any project management position. That said, I acknowledge that without project managers, nothing would get done. I’m glad PMs exist and that they’re good at what they do. While I don’t have the skillset or mentality of a project manager, I wholeheartedly agree with a key PM credo: the need for a guiding principles statement for information technology (IT) projects big and small.

Almost every organization says that it is trying to change to meet the increasing demands of customers. This means adopting new technology, or even embarking upon a wholesale digital transformation.

I recently read a fascinating article in JAMIA about using Agile development techniques and stories to prioritize, create, and test clinical decision support (CDS) tools in healthcare information technology (IT). I wanted to share it because I think Agile in general, and stories specifically, can be leveraged in many different ways that benefit clinicians and patients.

The global Electronic Health Record (EHR) market is currently valued at $31.5 Billion and growing at 6% per year.  According to KLAS research, Epic and Cerner dominate the market with a combined 85% market share among large, 500-bed U.S. hospitals.

While the threat of ERP implementation failure sounds scary (and practically expected), a recent Mint Jutras study found that 67 percent of manufacturers and distributors rated their implementations as successful or very successful. With proper planning and buy-in, a successful ERP implementation can save your organization money and improve back-end processes. Here are the morbid missteps to avoid and keep your ERP project out of the implementation graveyard.

I’ve always been fascinated by minimalism. Be it philosophy, architecture, or design. The ethos of “less is more” seems contradictory at first, but it proves accurate and predictive in many aspects of life, or at least in my life. Much as the Fibonacci sequence shows up in random places all throughout nature, I find the concept of minimalism popping up in my clinical world and professional world.