A lot of ERP implementation projects fail. And a failure to get ERP employee buy-in is one of the primary reasons. On average, 37% of employees use a company’s ERP system according to a Software Path report; that’s a big percentage of your workforce that needs to be invested in using the system to its full capability. Let’s look at a few ways to improve the odds that employees will buy-in or even push to get that new ERP.
“Never waste a good crisis.” This quote has been ascribed to various sources, but whoever said it was wise. Often, one can make significant progress in a short amount of time when the environment is unstable. Normal rules go out the door. Maybe this is because there’s an existential crisis and something had to be done to save the organization from doom. Perhaps a leader has exited and before the management vacuum is filled, a long dormant project is resurrected and quickly implemented under the radar. Whatever circumstances led to the crisis, enterprising folks often take advantage to get stuff done.
Epic’s annual User Group Meeting (UGM) is coming up next week, August 26-29, 2019. Whether you’re one of the 9,000 healthcare luminaries with an all-access pass to the great content available at Epic UGM 2019 or you are spending time combing the interwebs for the latest news and happenings in Verona, we wanted to take a moment to appreciate Epic Founder and CEO Judy Faulkner’s innovation and creativity in costume choices for past keynote addresses. Anyone familiar with the Epic story knows Judy is known for her groundbreaking data goals as well as her all-in commitment to UGM conference themes.
I was recently reading an article in the Wall Street Journal titled “Everyone hates customer service; this Is why.” It’s an amazing piece detailing how customer service is getting worse while businesses leverage technology to understand how poorly they can treat their customers before they lose sales. Yeah, I just wrote that. Some businesses have learned that they can mistreat their paying customers without deleterious effect, and have taken advantage of these findings to do just that (hello cable and phone companies.) Other more “respectable” groups are using technology to do more with less, and I want to focus on them.
I recently read an article in the New York Times titled “Undercover in a Hospital Bed.” It describes how hospitals and medical centers are contracting with “secret shopper” consultants. Being a secret shopper at a fast-food restaurant or a retail clothing store is fairly straightforward: walk in, pretend you’re a customer, observe how you’re treated and if employees are complying with company standards, make a purchase, and walk out. When it comes to being a secret shopper in a hospital or emergency department (ED), the stakes are a bit higher.
There is a well-known concept in computer science called Garbage In, Garbage Out (or GIGO for short). You need not be a brain surgeon to figure out what it means. If you enter bad data into a program or an algorithm, you’ll get bad data as output. No duh. Seems self-evident to me. That said, I’m not sure everyone has adopted the GIGO way of life, and it’s making me sad.
Healthcare IT is such a foreign language to people who don’t think about the intersection of health and technology every day. Before I entered the field, similar to other healthcare newcomers, I thought nothing of the nurses’ or doctors’ notes, aside from whether the blood pressure number they told me was normal. We are not too far removed from the days of paper everything, but I now find it interesting to see the magic behind the technology curtain.
As many of my readers know, I used to work for a software company which is based near Madison, WI that makes a popular electronic health record (EHR). I won’t name the company to help protect their privacy. I practiced primary care pediatrics for many years before moving over the vendor side, so the ways of a large corporation were foreign to me in many aspects. While this might sound odd, what follows is a true story.
Historically, community, critical access, and rural hospitals didn’t have many options when it came to their enterprise systems. Tight margins and limited technical support have held smaller hospitals back from being able to invest in enterprise-scale ERP systems. Often, disconnected systems and paper-based processes were often put in place for materials management, financials, human resources, etc.
I recently read an article in Wired magazine about what sound design is with respect to information technology (IT) and why sound design is so important. I admit that I’ve rarely thought about this field of software development, but it really is important. What exactly is sound design? The author introduces the concept this way: “How do you know whether Siri heard you? Just as in human interaction, good communication is about the flow of conversation, the ongoing exchange of information.” Sound designers try to ensure that the two-way communication between humans and technology works, intuitively and naturally.