Share More: a framework for enhancing collaboration

In a great study McKinsey and Company published last year they showed how companies that use social and collaborative technologies extensively (networked companies in their terminology) outperformed traditional companies. They called it “Web 2.0 finds its payday”.

So if you work for a networked company – congratulations. Now if your company is part of the vast majority of companies struggling through some forms of collaboration but not seeing enough benefits, how do you get to the payoff stage?

In this following series of posts, I’ll try to offer a methodology and examples for how to do just that. Elevate the level of collaboration and create a fully networked organization one step at a time.

We call this process Share More.

The premise is simple, for each business area or function, find a real world business challenge where collaboration can make a difference. Implement it. Move to the next one.

Creating the overall framework is like creating an association wheel for the term “Share” in the middle:

Sharing can be with just a few team members or with the whole company. It can be internal or external. If you stop and think about all the interactions you have in a week, which causes you the most pain and time? Can these interactions be made simpler using technology? Can you Share More?

The first Share More solution I’d like to address is process and workflow solutions.

Share Process

Process and form automation is all about tracking and control. The real dramatic change is in giving managers and administrators visibility into every step and log of every change and update. It can also speed the process up and save effort in typing information into other systems, initiating emails or filing paper into physical files.

We’ve worked with a large hospitality organization to automate all HR and Payroll related forms through the use of InfoPath and SharePoint and learned a lot of valuable lessons that can be valid to many a process automation:

• Strongly enforce data integrity: Most forms are created to collect data that will be fed eventually into another system. Therefore data input must come from the same source system it will end up in. Values and choices have to be restricted to valid combinations and open text fields limited to a minimum. The cleaner the data is, the less trouble it will cause down the road.
• Know how organizational and reporting hierarchy is maintained: While you may know what system holds the organizational reporting structure, knowing that it’s 100% accurate and maintained up to date is a lot harder. Since some forms require sending confidential information like salary for approval, the wrong reporting relationship can compromise important information. Consider masking personal or confidential information if it is not essential for the approval requested (while the data, encrypted, can still be part of the form)
• Don’t over customize: like our beloved tax code, approval workflows can get extremely complicated and convoluted as organizational politics that evolved over the years created special cases and more exceptions than rules. Codifying these special cases is expensive and prone to change. Consider it an opportunity to streamline and simplify the rules.
• Augment with stronger 3^rd party tools: while the core systems – like SharePoint contain built in (and free) workflow mechanism, it is limited in the control, flexibility, scalability and management as it comes out of the box. Some 3^rd party tools like Nintex and K2 BlackPoint provide added flexibility and scalability. For a price.
• Version deployment: Forms and process will change. How will updates be deployed without interfering with running flows and processes?

In future posts I’ll explore other opportunities for Sharing More including Sharing Insight, Sharing Responsibly and we’ll look into specific opportunities for collaboration and sharing in insurance and healthcare.

Hello, Newman.

The U.S. Postal Service is in dire financial straits and, like many businesses, in danger of shutting down completely if it doesn’t cut costs.

Would you be able to cope with a postal meltdown?  Would your policyholders still receive policies and bills?  Or would you have to migrate to UPS or FedEx for all your correspondence because you still haven’t been able to conduct all your transactions electronically?

By now, most carriers have been conducting business with their policyholders and agents offering electronic delivery of everything from applications to renewal notices. But there are those that still require some transactions to be conducted by “snail mail.” If the U.S. Postal Service were to shut down as early as this year, what would they do?  Would the burden of these transactions then be rest with the agents, and if so, how would they react?  Would those carriers be the carrier of choice when they’re not so easy to do business with because of these manually necessary steps.

Obviously, the first step for most carriers is delivering policy documentation leveraging a modern document generation tool, very quickly followed by a method to accept premium payments online and set up automated account withdrawals. Both of those are fairly straightforward projects that can be done relatively quickly and easily.  But the more complicated transactions of policy amendments and audit reporting are where many carriers lag behind.  That’s where the postal shut down would really hurt. Policies like Worker’s Comp or General Liability that require businesses to report remuneration and sales figures on a regular basis rely on communication, and if that cannot be done electronically, it will become much more complicated and a longer process if paper documents have to be sent around.

You don’t want your agents to become your Underwriting Assistants and bill collectors.  You want them to stay out there pushing your products and generating business.  You want to be the carrier that’s easy to do business with and the independent agent’s carrier of choice.  If not, you may find that you’ll need to start a postal department to handle all those deliveries to policyholders.

Is Legacy Modernization Just Procrastination?

There is no doubt that replacement of core systems for insurers has been very popular over the past six years or so.  With the advancements in technology enabling vendors to provide solutions that are configurable, and more easily maintained with “plug and play” technologies that can be upgraded by less technical resources, insurers are taking advantage and moving in to new lines of business and new territories, expanding their footprint.  It allows many small and mid-size insurers to better compete with the leviathans who once staved off competition due to their enormous IT staffs.

But many of these insurers have been in business for scores of years, and have successfully relied on their older technology.  Does the advancement in technology along with ubiquitous connectivity mean that the mainframes and older technology systems just have to go?  Does just refacing the green screens with new web-based user interfaces mean that the carriers that do so are just procrastinating and putting off the inevitable?

A recent blog in Tech Digest posed that question to which I would reply, “Why?  If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”  With the horrible economy, many people who need a bigger house aren’t dumping the one they have and buying another, they simply add-on.  The core systems within a carrier are very similar.  If the system you have now works well for its use and if you want to expand in to new lines, you don’t need to rip out that old system and pay for an expensive funeral, just add-on and integrate.  This will start your company down the path to more flexibility which can be supported by a system that is specifically designed to bring all your information into one place – Policy360 based on CRM.

Utilizing a system designed to bring data together from multiple sources allows you to keep your existing technology, leverage the capabilities of new systems, and present and manage that information in a much more accessible and user friendly manner.

Is plastic surgery on your legacy systems really just putting off the inevitable?  Or is presenting a fresh look that sees into the future allowing you to keep costs down while expanding service and capabilities.

Paying Too Much for Custom Application Implementation

Face it. Even if you have a team of entry-level coders implementing custom application software, you’re probably still paying too much.

Here’s what I mean:

You already pay upfront for fool proof design and detailed requirements.  If you leverage more technology to implement your application, rather than spending more on coders, your ROI can go up significantly.

In order for entry-level coders to implement software, they need extra detailed designs. Such designs typically must be detailed enough that a coder can simply repeat patterns and fill in blanks from reasonably structured requirements. Coders make mistakes, and have misunderstandings and other costly failures and take months to complete (if nothing changes in requirements during that time).

But, again…   if you have requirements and designs that are already sufficiently structured and detailed… how much more effort is it to get a computer to repeat the patterns and fill in the blanks instead?   Leveraging technology through code generation can help a lot.

Code generation becomes a much less expensive option in cases like that because:

• There’s dramatically less human error and misunderstanding.
• Generators can do the work of a team of offshored implementers in moments… and repeat the performance over and over again at the whim of business analysts.
• Quality Assurance gets much easier…  it’s just a matter of testing each pattern, rather than each detail.  (and while you’re at it, you can generate unit tests as well.)

Code generation is not perfect: it requires very experienced developers to architect and implement an intelligent code generation solution. Naturally, such solutions tend to require experienced people to maintain (because in sufficiently dynamic systems, there will always be implementation pattern changes)  There’s also the one-off stuff that just doesn’t make sense to generate…  (but that all has to be done anyway.)

Actual savings will vary, (and in some cases may not be realized until a later iteration of the application)but typically depend on how large and well your meta data (data dictionary) is structured, and how well your designs lend themselves to code generation.  If you plan for code generation early on, you’ll probably get more out of the experience.  Trying to retro-fit generation can definitely be done (been there, done that, too), but it can be painful.

Projects I’ve worked on that used code generation happened to focus generation techniques mostly on database and data access layer components and/or UI.  Within those components, we were able to achieve 75-80% generated code in the target assemblies.  This meant that from a data dictionary, we were able to generate, for example, all of our database schema and most of our stored procedures, in one case.  In that case, for every item in our data dictionary, we estimated that we were generating about 250 lines of compilable, tested code.  In our data dictionary of about 170 items, that translated into over 400,000 lines of  code.

By contrast, projects where code generation was not used generally took longer to build, especially in cases where the data dictionaries changed during the development process.  There’s no solid apples to apples comparison, but consider hand-writing about 300,000 lines of UI code while the requirements are changing.  Trying to nail down every detail (and change) by hand was a painstaking process, and the changes forced us to adjust the QA cycle accordingly, as well.

Code generation is not a new concept.  There are TONs of tools out there, as demonstrated by this comparison of a number of them on Wikipedia.  Interestingly, some of the best tools for code generation can be as simple as XSL transforms (which opens the tool set up even more).  Code generation may also already be built into your favorite dev tools.  For example, Microsoft’s Visual Studio has had a code generation utility known as T4 built into it for the past few versions, now.   That’s just scratching the surface.

So it’s true…  Code generation is not for every project, but any project that has a large data dictionary (that might need to be changed mid stream) is an immediate candidate in my mind.  It’s especially great for User Interfaces, Database schemas and access layers, and even a lot of transform code, among others.

It’s definitely a thought worth considering.

Product-based Solutions Versus Custom Solutions : Tomb Raider or Genesis?

The Product-based Solution is where most of Corporate America is going for IT today.  The talent required to povide a successful implementation (one you actually renew license maintenance on rather than let let quietly die an ignominious death) requires the tenacity, deep specialized product  knowlege (read arcane dark arts), and courage of a cinema Tomb Raider.  The team required has to know the target product as well as Indiana Jones knows Egyptology; with equivalent courage, problem-solving skills, and morals (one can’t be squeamish hacking a solution into submission) to be able to achieve a usable solution versus an embarrassing product snap-in.   In addition to their product skills the team must be able to quickly navigate the jungle of existing applications with their mysterious artifacts to get the proper integration points and data (Gold! Gold! I say!).

What if the team can’t or don’t navigate your jungle of existing applications or do not know all of the idiosyncracies of the product to be installed?  Well you get an Embarrassing Product Snap-In (Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect $200, Do Flush Career).  Every seasoned IT professional has seen one of these puppies, they are the applications you can’t get anyone to use.  Usually because the do not connect to anything users currently work with, or have real usability issues (Harry Potter vs. MIT interface).  Yes, the product is in.  Yes, it tests to the test plan criteria.  Yes, it looks like post-apocalypse Siberia as far as users are concerned (What if we install CRM and no one comes? Ouch! no renewal for Microsoft/Oracle, bummer).

Custom Solutions are more like Genesis, Let there be Light! (ERP, CRM, Order-Entry, you get the picture).  It is a Greenfield Opportunity!  The team you need is just as talented as a Product-based Solution, but very different.  They need to be able to create a blueprint of your desires, like a rock star architect for a signature building.  The team needs to be experts in software engineering and technology best practice.  As well, the team needs to be able to translate your user’s meandering descriptions of what they do (or not) into rational features resembling business process best practice.  That was Easy!

In the case of custom the risk is creating Frankenstein, rather than new life (It’s Alive!, It’s Alive!).  Again, every seasoned IT professional has seen one of these embarrassing creations (Master, the peasants/users are at the gate with pitchforks and torches!).  The end result of one of these bad trips (Fear and Loathing in ERP) is the same, but usually more expensive, than the Product-based alternatives.

Debby Downer what should I do?  Reality is as simple as it is hard; pick the right solution for the organization, Product-based or Custom.  Then get the right team, Tomb Raider or the Great Architect of Giza.

Is Custom Development Dead?

Is Custom Development dead? After the last two years of custom development’s nuclear winter, (following 2008s Financial Armageddon), one would think the the Grim Reaper did his best in the blast. I really hope not, designing and building strategic systems make the more mudane aspects of software engineering worth enduring the mind-numbing syntactical pain of creation. Nothing like the smell of napalming the competition with a totally new way of doing business in the morning (my view of “Apocalypse Now” with a business bent). Maybe, just maybe, I hope rumors of Custom Development’s death are greatly exaggerated.

Did Custom Development die of natural causes, maybe pulled off of life support by risk-hating Executive Management as a perverse form of parental control after the financial snafu (Custom Development moves from PG-13 to XXX)?  Off-the-Shelf software products and the ever increasing cost of continuing maintenance really hurt Custom Development as a viable systems choice, but is that enough to put it down? Cloud and “nouveau Cloud” technologies (read SaaS, SalesForce.com) may have provided the coup de grace.  I seriously doubt it, every time I look into the Cloud I get serious PTSD flashbacks to the 70s and 80s IBM Mainframe World Domination (OMG there is a 3270 in the corner!!).  At least there was alot less hype and easier choices back then (Nobody got fired picking IBM!).

It is possible Custom Development died offshore (simple Mickey Finn, bag over the head, Shanghaied and Held for Ransom!)?  While Business Processes and System Maintenance have done reasonably well offshore (Castor Oil of the Corporate world, let Mikey take it!), strategic custom development has had less success.  Quality innovation that can transform a corporation really requires a local team steeped both in the host company and surrounding culture.  Plus, Custom Development tends to have a high infant mortality rate so it is best attempted in short phases supported by an Agile Methodology, definitely not in Offshore’s financial model wheelhouse.  So I don’t think Offshore is implicated.

There is the theory that evolution has spoken and Product-based Solutions have succeeded Custom Development, just as mammals succeeded dinosaurs.  Product companies would like you to believe that, but does that seem plausable (Land of the Lost, Jurassic Park where are you?)?  While Product-based solutions have advantages in success rates and cost, they by their nature lack the true freedom that drives raw creativity and innovation.  Custom Development is that wellspring.

The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself!  Adversity to risk is curbing animal spirits, creativity, and innovation, ….for now.  Custom Development is not dead and will return from its vacation with Puff in the Cave by the Sea when Jackie Paper locks-and-loads and we begin some serious innovation and transformation with strategic custom software systems (BTW thats when the Jobs return too!).

Your Company’s Social Debut

Planning Your Company’s Debut or Strategy in the Social Media Sphere

Corporations have long been regarded by the law as having “legal personality”-  which means they have rights, privileges, responsibilities, and protections just like humans (with some differences, like marriage).   It should come as no surprise then, that they’re acting like humans more and more – now they’re relaxing with friends, and socializing! As communication gets easier through digital technology, humans are now able to interact with corporate personalities.  And these personalities are just beginning to awaken to the new freedoms they can find in the digital landscape.

If you’re like me, and I bet you are, you are both human, and, also a part of bringing business personalities to the social scene. In this capacity, I recently attended SocialTech2010 in Jan Jose, CA, right from my desk in NYC.

As the Twitter stream flowed by rapidly with commentary and quotes from the speakers, I watched and listened to advice, case studies and stories from the experts on Social Media for Business. I came away with the recognition that Social Media for business is just like a big networking cocktail party!

Companies aren’t accustomed to acting as social creatures and the adjustment will take some time. We all had to learn social skills growing up; companies can do the same. There are a few things that etiquette would require of a cocktail party attendee and that’s the same strategy the speakers at SocialTech2010 are recommending:  Know who you are, be interactive and respectful, don’t gossip, be a good listener, and don’t be afraid to share yourself.

As businesses gain proficiency in this kind of interacting, they follow an arc towards maturity. Kathleen Malone of Intel outlined the following 5 stages of a Social Media Approach:

1)      Listen: In this stage a company finds out: What are people saying about my Brand and/or my field? Where are they having this discussion? Who are the major players and influencers?  Services like Radian6, which Malone says Intel deployed 18 months ago, make this possible.

2)      Analyze: This is the time to read the room/space, figure out what your angle will be when you eventually do pipe up. Which conversation will you enter? What are your expectations? Why are you going to participate?

3)      Create: This is the stage where the business comes up with something appropriate to say. To participate effectively in the conversation, Malone says your content should be: useful, interesting, human, “snackable” (meaning in bite size pieces, easily consumed), inspiring and should cater to egos and build community.  

4)      Engage: In this stage you go public and enter the conversation, getting your content out there in new ways and/or by participating in the conversations that already exist.

5)      Measure: Your social media approach is not complete without an understanding of how you’re doing. The internet is an amazing forum for measuring how people behave with your content, and you should use a variety of tools to understand the response to your forays. Measuring properly will provide insight on how to proceed, both in the ongoing conversation, and with the business itself.

Both Malone and Brian Ellefritz of SAP outlined the natural evolution of Social Media programs at large companies  – first there are what Ellefritz calls “Grass Roots” efforts, where excited individuals branch out in ways that are unpredictable and non-uniform. He says companies should encourage these exploratory missions. Leadership will begin to emerge internally, and informal education will get the ball rolling. Following the “Grass Roots” period, Ellefritz sees “Silos Form.” This may not feel 100% smooth, but is an important step, as “coop-eteition” (a kind of cooperating/kind of competing relationship, sort of like sibling rivalry that spurs each one on) sees different silos jockeying for position. During this step, Ellefritz encourages companies to “invest in leaders, not laggards”, and to get the players from various silos together to learn from each other.  Also, he says, “don’t wait too long for governance.”

The next evolutionary phase in a corporate Social Media Program is “Operationalizing” – where leadership becomes clear, channels become well formed and in alignment with the divisions in your business.  Tools begin to consolidate and more emphasis on measurement and results appears. By this point your business may have headcount devoted to social media, and content should become less problematic, less of a focus, because it’s running more smoothly.  During this stage it’s important to align and integrate silos, and focus on strategy, ownership, metrics and priorities.

After this shift, the next phase is what Ellefriz calls “Lifestyle.” This is when the Social Media program has engaged and competent employees and success is understood and positive outcomes are frequent. This is a level of Social Media implementation that is fairly rare in today’s scene, though Ellefritz points towards Zappos as an example of a company that may be at this level.

.. .. ..

The wonderful thing about participating in social media is that it lets your personality out! For a business that hasn’t previously seen itself as the kind of entity that has a social life, this might seem daunting at first.  That’s why Ellefriz’s evolutionary arc makes so much sense to me. The way I see it, people and businesses want more than ever to get clear on who they are, and who they want to be, in order to present themselves well, and to participate in Social Media conversations. The best advice is to be authentic. Just like at cocktail parties, the people you’re conversing with generally know if you’re “full of it”, or if you’re being sincere.  Your conversational counterparts like to be complemented, offered nuggets of useful information, and generally considered and included.

For businesses, (and the teams of people that perpetuate them) this will mean really focusing on what the goals are, what opportunities exist to communicate clearly and uniformly around these interests, finding “friends” out there to talk with, and owning up to the inevitable minor mistakes that are so easy to make along the way. Since SM is such a public sphere, the resulting increased level of transparency is going to make businesses change and open up in new ways.

Coachdeb:”RT @MarketingProfs: “When someone says they need a Facebook strategy, a Twitter strategy, I say… Wait! Take it back… What’s your story?” @scobleizer #mptech”

So, armed with the Social Media/networking party analogy and with the stages of approach and evolution path laid out before you – what are you waiting for?  Participate!

Here are 10 tips to consider as you get started:

1)      Go where the fish are – target engagement carefully where the conversation already is.

2)      Social Media is Local. The goal is to be uniform while being decentralized – Intel communicates internally with their 1000 “Registered Social Media Practitioners” with guidelines and trainings (some mandatory). Intel also has their own internal newsletter that aggregates Social Media content – Malone says this makes management comfortable as well as keeps everyone updated.

3)      Have a Content Calendar for the year to coordinate Social Media messaging across channels and people, and to keep it focused on your message. Kathy Malone said at Intel, 2/3 of the content that gets put out falls under the guidelines of their content strategy calendar.

4)      Consider in advance how to manage Social Media Risk. One of the most interesting things Jaime Grenny of SalesForce said at SocialTech2010 is that all their employee training videos on Social Media strategy (and how to use online video for B2B marketing) are up for the public to see on YouTube (here).  This level of transparency lets everyone know what to expect upfront.  Malone outlined a “prevention/detection/response” approach in which 3 teams worked from different angles to mitigate risk on the social media front. And experience teaches: “if you screwed up, fess up”, and be transparent.

5)      If your company is doing moderation of dialogue, consider having a light hand to keep the conversation honest – as Intel puts it, they let the good and the bad in, but moderate the ugly – mostly meaning profanity and non-constructive comments, and they’ve found their audience appreciates it.

6)      Build a business case for your business so you know why you’re entering into Social Media – not only will it legitimize your efforts internally, but it’ll provide clarity for your message. Will it extend customer service? Will it increase SEO? Can you use it to create brand advocates and champions? Can you collect ideas on where to take your product?

7)      To measure, use Context. As with all web metrics, in order to understand what’s happening you need to understand the context of your data, and compare it to a baseline to view trends. Knowing your goals will assist you in setting up context.

8)      People are the Platform – Laura Ramos of Xerox encourages us to get our people out there and seen. Show video of your thought leadership. Get your salespeople to share their stories and knowledge with the rest of your company and make them heroes. Build relationships, and let your existing customers create new business for you. Social Media Marketing is not about reaching many to influence a few but engaging a few to influence many!

9)      Social is relevant. Here are some Stats – René Bonvani of Palo Alto Networks says that FaceBook has a 96% penetration in enterprise, meaning that only 4/100 people aren’t using it at work! He also said that only 1% is posting on Facebook but that people are 69 times more likely to use FaceBook chat than to post.  Another impressive Bonvani stat: 69% of business buyers use social media to make purchasing decisions.  No matter the numbers, it’s clear that with the cost of communication dropping close to $0, as social beings, we’re using the web to communicate more often with more people, and in smaller chunks regularly.

10)   Social media has to be part of WHAT you do, not something else you do. Jeremiah Owyang in his keynote said that the only difference between the Social Site and your business is the URL. He says that in the radical future, websites will be dynamically assembled on the fly based on social profiles. URLs and domains won’t matter – the web will be sorted around people and contextual situations.  Because of this, ads will become useful content.  This is already evident.

So – Get out there and participate!

Edgewater Technology provides strategy, consulting, web metrics, and implementation expertise to help you focus on the best ways your company can engage in these dynamic communities and track your success!

PAS Replacement – Planning and Forethought: Worth their weight in gold

As the economy continues to sluggishly creep up the road to recovery, firms have varying notions for how to best position themselves for success when the market changes.  As noted in a recent survey by SMA (Strategy Meets Action) of 28 insurance executives, one of the top ten imperatives for insurance companies in 2010 is enabling a “fast path for new product development.”  This objective, of course, is constrained by the systems that support the current product offerings, and these systems inevitably arise as the roadblock to achieving the business objective. 

Tightly coupled with this objective of quicker time to market on product offerings is the inevitable need to increase efficiencies in current key business systems.  Whether by enabling communications between disparate systems for a more holistic view of the insured, or simply working to decrease the endless sea of manual, paper-based processes, there are several related steps that should be considered from a competitive advantage standpoint; but we’ll get to that topic another day. 

Within a single organization, multiple policy admin systems have likely been deployed – each with the best of intentions to streamline operations, allow for enhanced product offerings, consolidate numerous existing platforms…  all of these are typical scenarios in the companies we’ve worked with.  The challenges come when companies realize that a nine month time to market for a new product offering won’t position them well in the competitive landscape.  Whether that turnaround involves a highly skilled back office implementation team, or slamming the product into the current system, updating a myriad of sprinkled interfaces to just to get it out the door, the reality still exists – the systems just can’t compete. 

In response to this realization, we’ve had many discussions with companies who are looking to replace or consolidate their policy admin systems, and have experienced significant pain in the past in trying to do so.  The foremost suggestion I’d offer relates to the stage that is consistently undervalued and poorly positioned:  planning.  It’s critical to realize the importance of adequate planning before you go down any path.  We’ve seen time and again organizations who short change the planning and requirements process thinking that they have it under control.  Companies who say they haven’t had any problems to date and things are running smoothly likely have limited or no visibility into the actual state of progress, deliverables, and budget on any of these replacement projects, which all surface at the 11^th hour when everything turns from “green to red.” 

When it comes to implementation and delivery, these companies find massive divergence between their expectations and the pending solution due to lack of preparation and planning.  I won’t even get into the pitfalls we continually encounter in the requirements gathering and definition process; again, a topic for another day.  But simple questions like, “Has the business case been defined and executive sponsorship obtained?”, or “What is your initial rollout strategy?” must be answered, and agreed to before you even start the package selection process. 

You have to ask the question: What were you looking for in a new system?  Look at your competitive landscape, and focus on what makes your company unique (hopefully in a positive way), and provides you a competitive advantage in your space.  As you embark upon the package selection process, there are many platforms that may have flashy, robust functionality (as the vendors will be more than happy to demo  when you get to that stage of the process), but you need to focus keenly on the specific functionalities that will enhance your organization’s differentiating factors, and look under the covers.  Whether you’re doing the vendor selection yourself or with assistance from a consulting firm, be sure to dig deeper on the key requirements you’ve noted, and ensure the demos meet *your* critical scenarios to avoid purchasing a flashy platform that fails to meet your needs.  When all is said and done and your peers ask how the current system is working (if you’re fortunate enough to get it up and running), while it may be lovely to have the newest flashy system, if it doesn’t meet the original business objective and enable your key differentiating factors, it might as well be a Fisher Price play set.

Healthcare IT Gets Snubbed in “State of the Union”……So What!

I would not want to be the President right now. No matter what he said on Wednesday night, he undoubtedly would leave someone out; some initiative, some special interest, some high priority agenda item. Then how, with tackling the exorbitantly high cost of healthcare as the single highest profile item on his desk, did he forget to mention Healthcare IT (HIT)? Seriously, how?

There was no mention of the ARRA and HITECH money allocated to demonstrating “meaningful use” of healthcare IT that hospitals, doctors offices, healthcare clinics and every other possible recipient has been scrambling like chickens with their heads cut off to understand for the past 6 months. There have literally been new businesses created to analyze and make sense of this information; new government committees established to oversee the process; experts and pundits claiming this and that on national stages, radio shows, conferences; with all the press HIT has gotten from the day the President was sworn in, you’d think he would’ve give us a progress report, at least from his point view.

There was no mention of the EMRs, CPOE, Clinical Data Repositories, PACS, and Electronic Documentation that are all suitable candidates for the initial projects providers can tackle because of the availability of research and best practices available for these initiatives. No mention of the increased regulations from JCAHO, HIPAA, and CMS. No mention of the accessibility issue so closely related to the President’s broadband initiative that will determine patient accessibility beyond the hospital walls.

There was no mention of the strategies that CIOs, CMIOs, CEOs, and CFOs are utilizing such as data warehousing, clinical data marts, electronic capture of patient information through kiosks (just like when you check in at the airport); clinical alerting to increase compliance with Core Measures and other regulations; and using evidence-based decision making from strong data quality, discrete, standard, timely data collection, and last but not least, enterprise-wide data governance strategies.

Ok, so we were all left out, but as Tom Hanks would say “there’s no crying in baseball”.  Good thing for us, we don’t have time to sit and sulk.  First things first, get your act together.  You will never understand where your weaknesses lie and your opportunities for improvement sit without understanding the information you’re collecting, on a day-to-day basis, across the entire spectrum of your healthcare organization.  The average hospital has 120 different software applications, mostly transactional, that all have their own subset of data. Understanding this vast landscape, and integrating the data and transforming it, in a timely manner, into actionable information, is critical for any executive; the providers able to balance government demanding reform, patients begging for lower costs of care, researchers advancing the standards for higher quality, and the constant advancements in technology will be the ones who not only survive, but emerge from this recession stronger than when they entered. You will be looking for a roadmap!

How often do you perform project triage?

A quick google search shows that the medical concept of triage is commonly applied to evaluating IT projects and other major business initiatives. 

The concept of triage comes from medicine, and in particular medical treatment under difficult circumstances—war, epidemic, disaster—where the number of people needing treatment exceeds the resources available. In such situations, the sick or injured are typically assigned to one of three groups.

 In the business context, it usually means allocating scarce cash and human capital under difficult economic conditions, when the number of ongoing projects exceeds the level available resources.

Project Triage Framework

In the current economic climate, it probably makes sense to perform a mini-triage of your project portfolio quarterly, with an annual triage as the last fiscal quarter approaches.  In addition, you may be faced with the need to triage in emergency situations such as a sudden shift in business strategy, in the face of a new acquisition, or when presented with an across the board budget cut. Periodic review is a cornerstone of an effective project portfolio management strategy. This regular triage can be a valuable form of project insurance. Preventative medicine is always less costly than crisis treatment.

Your triage team should include your senior IT management as well as functional business leadership. Performing project triage is easiest if there is regular, reliable status reporting from the project teams, on their milestone and budget status.

Triage is also easier if your project initiation process includes a business case that assigns a business criticality score to the project. It’s entirely possible that business criticality of a given project might change over the course of the project’s lifecycle, and a master project status tracking document helps the triage team keep track of this.

After reviewing the health of individual projects and their alignment with current business needs, triage will place them into three groups which align perfectly with the medical definition of triage:

1. Persons who are likely to live even if they don’t receive immediate treatment—projects going well that need no additional intervention

2. Persons who are likely to die even if they do receive immediate treatment– projects that you should suspend NOW before they chew up additional resources

3. Persons who are like to live only if they receive immediate treatment– projects that need you to perform an immediate intervention

Our next blog post will cover specific diagnostic tests you must perform on projects that fall into the third group. In the meantime, let us know your apporach to project triage by answering this poll:

How often do you perform project triage?