This document discusses considerations for medical technology organizations deciding whether to build or buy an integration platform to connect their devices and data to electronic health records. It notes that while building internally allows more customization, buying an existing solution can reduce costs and risks while freeing up resources for innovation. Key factors include whether integration is core to competitive advantage, the rapid pace of change in healthcare IT standards, and partnering with a vendor specialized in interoperability.
Intelligent Security: Defending the Digital Businessaccenture
Companies need to move their cyber security efforts away from traditional defensive approaches toward a proactive stance aligned with the organization’s business objectives. Explore the five most common issues companies will face to achieve this stance, and approaches to dealing with them.
White Paper IDC | The Business Value of VCE Vblock Systems: Leveraging Conver...Melissa Luongo
The Business Value of VCE Vblock Systems: Leveraging Convergence to Drive Business Agility
In the past decade, information technology (IT) evolved from an enabler of back-office business processes to the very foundation of a modern business. In the increasingly digital and mobile world, the datacenter is often the first and most frequent point of contact with customers. The ability to innovate quickly lies at the heart of today’s changing business models. Businesses expect their IT investments to accelerate their pace of innovation, provide flexibility to meet new demands, and continually reduce the costs of operations.
Converged infrastructure is essential for many companies to ensure that their datacenter infrastructures can meet today’s challenges. The business rationale for deploying converged infrastructure goes far beyond traditional IT feeds and speeds. Customers using converged solutions like VCE’s Vblock Systems (Vblock) realize lower costs, greater levels of utilization, and reduced downtime. VCE customers in this study recognized business benefits such as improved organizational agility, faster application development, increased innovation, and improved employee productivity.
IDC interviewed 16 VCE Vblock Systems customers to understand and quantify the benefits delivered by their Vblock converged infrastructure deployments. Vblock Systems are built by VCE using compute, network, and storage technologies and virtualization software from Cisco, EMC, and VMware.
IDC found that by using Vblock Systems, these organizations recorded improved business outcomes and that these improvements are increasingly driving IT investment decisions.
All VCE customers interviewed for this study generated substantial business value by consolidating their IT infrastructures with Vblock. IDC calculates that these VCE customers will generate five-year discounted benefits worth an average of $384,202 per 100 users by using Vblock, which will result in an average return on investment (ROI) of 518% and a payback period of 7.5 months.
Wolters Kluwer and Risk.Net present the current challenges, priorities and trends influencing banks’ investment in risktech and assesses how they can drive better value in the future. Survey report.
CHIME LIVE Webinar: Digital Maturity in Health Systems – The DigiM Framework ...Damo Consulting Inc.
CHIME LIVE Webinar
Digital Maturity in Health Systems – The DigiM Framework and How to Use it with Sara Vaezy and Paddy Padmanabhan
Learn Objectives:
- Understanding digital maturity in health systems
- Applying an objective, structured assessment tool such as DigiM to evaluate digital maturity
- Developing a roadmap for accelerating technology-led transformation
Health systems have been on a digital transformation journey for the past few years. However, there is no structured framework to assess the maturity of health systems, specifically from a technology enablement standpoint. Damo Consulting’s DigiM framework addresses this gap with an online assessment tool that helps healthcare leaders benchmark themselves against their peers. The framework also assesses the relative maturity of the digital transformation vision against the execution of the strategy.
Using recently concluded research and data points from self-assessments by several health systems, this session will provide a roadmap for digital transformation leaders looking to take an objective view of their progress and prioritize their investments to meet their enterprise goals.
For queries, write to info@damoconsulting.net
Information Rich, Knowledge Poor: Overcoming Insurers’ Data ConundrumDeloitte United States
The ability to effectively harvest and harness data across the enterprise is quickly emerging as a competitive differentiator in the financial services industry. In the insurance sector specifically, a number of pioneers are already making healthy strides toward mastering information management, but for most companies that have not yet fully invested in this transformation, growing market mania around "Big Data" and looming regulatory changes that demand increased data transparency continue to generate considerable anxiety.
While many insurers have already spent and continue to spend heavily on core-system and technology modernization, most still find their efforts have fallen short of expectations and needs when it comes to information management. If data is expected to be realized as a strategic asset, insurers can no longer continue to merely tweak existing systems and business models to clear this data management hurdle.
However, operationalizing information management enterprise-wide is neither an easy nor short-term exercise, as demonstrated by programs already under way at companies that have pioneered the effort. But for many, the potential benefits to be derived from successfully organizing, governing, consuming and analyzing available data assets — both internal and external — are likely well worth the investment.
Still, to achieve holistic data fluency, optimize data exploitation and realize a positive ROI, insurers will need to dismantle numerous roadblocks embedded in their current infrastructure, hardware and software, corporate culture, and business models.
Information rich, knowledge poor explores challenges and potential solutions to mastering information management and realizing data as a strategic asset.
Intelligent Security: Defending the Digital Businessaccenture
Companies need to move their cyber security efforts away from traditional defensive approaches toward a proactive stance aligned with the organization’s business objectives. Explore the five most common issues companies will face to achieve this stance, and approaches to dealing with them.
White Paper IDC | The Business Value of VCE Vblock Systems: Leveraging Conver...Melissa Luongo
The Business Value of VCE Vblock Systems: Leveraging Convergence to Drive Business Agility
In the past decade, information technology (IT) evolved from an enabler of back-office business processes to the very foundation of a modern business. In the increasingly digital and mobile world, the datacenter is often the first and most frequent point of contact with customers. The ability to innovate quickly lies at the heart of today’s changing business models. Businesses expect their IT investments to accelerate their pace of innovation, provide flexibility to meet new demands, and continually reduce the costs of operations.
Converged infrastructure is essential for many companies to ensure that their datacenter infrastructures can meet today’s challenges. The business rationale for deploying converged infrastructure goes far beyond traditional IT feeds and speeds. Customers using converged solutions like VCE’s Vblock Systems (Vblock) realize lower costs, greater levels of utilization, and reduced downtime. VCE customers in this study recognized business benefits such as improved organizational agility, faster application development, increased innovation, and improved employee productivity.
IDC interviewed 16 VCE Vblock Systems customers to understand and quantify the benefits delivered by their Vblock converged infrastructure deployments. Vblock Systems are built by VCE using compute, network, and storage technologies and virtualization software from Cisco, EMC, and VMware.
IDC found that by using Vblock Systems, these organizations recorded improved business outcomes and that these improvements are increasingly driving IT investment decisions.
All VCE customers interviewed for this study generated substantial business value by consolidating their IT infrastructures with Vblock. IDC calculates that these VCE customers will generate five-year discounted benefits worth an average of $384,202 per 100 users by using Vblock, which will result in an average return on investment (ROI) of 518% and a payback period of 7.5 months.
Wolters Kluwer and Risk.Net present the current challenges, priorities and trends influencing banks’ investment in risktech and assesses how they can drive better value in the future. Survey report.
CHIME LIVE Webinar: Digital Maturity in Health Systems – The DigiM Framework ...Damo Consulting Inc.
CHIME LIVE Webinar
Digital Maturity in Health Systems – The DigiM Framework and How to Use it with Sara Vaezy and Paddy Padmanabhan
Learn Objectives:
- Understanding digital maturity in health systems
- Applying an objective, structured assessment tool such as DigiM to evaluate digital maturity
- Developing a roadmap for accelerating technology-led transformation
Health systems have been on a digital transformation journey for the past few years. However, there is no structured framework to assess the maturity of health systems, specifically from a technology enablement standpoint. Damo Consulting’s DigiM framework addresses this gap with an online assessment tool that helps healthcare leaders benchmark themselves against their peers. The framework also assesses the relative maturity of the digital transformation vision against the execution of the strategy.
Using recently concluded research and data points from self-assessments by several health systems, this session will provide a roadmap for digital transformation leaders looking to take an objective view of their progress and prioritize their investments to meet their enterprise goals.
For queries, write to info@damoconsulting.net
Information Rich, Knowledge Poor: Overcoming Insurers’ Data ConundrumDeloitte United States
The ability to effectively harvest and harness data across the enterprise is quickly emerging as a competitive differentiator in the financial services industry. In the insurance sector specifically, a number of pioneers are already making healthy strides toward mastering information management, but for most companies that have not yet fully invested in this transformation, growing market mania around "Big Data" and looming regulatory changes that demand increased data transparency continue to generate considerable anxiety.
While many insurers have already spent and continue to spend heavily on core-system and technology modernization, most still find their efforts have fallen short of expectations and needs when it comes to information management. If data is expected to be realized as a strategic asset, insurers can no longer continue to merely tweak existing systems and business models to clear this data management hurdle.
However, operationalizing information management enterprise-wide is neither an easy nor short-term exercise, as demonstrated by programs already under way at companies that have pioneered the effort. But for many, the potential benefits to be derived from successfully organizing, governing, consuming and analyzing available data assets — both internal and external — are likely well worth the investment.
Still, to achieve holistic data fluency, optimize data exploitation and realize a positive ROI, insurers will need to dismantle numerous roadblocks embedded in their current infrastructure, hardware and software, corporate culture, and business models.
Information rich, knowledge poor explores challenges and potential solutions to mastering information management and realizing data as a strategic asset.
Accenture's six-country survey among 180 C-level health executives says adoption of AI is measured, but real.
The survey assessed beliefs about market maturity, practical and clinical challenges to the adoption of AI in healthcare.
Enthusiasm for AI (artificial intelligence) is high among health executives, with people skills the most important implementation success factor.
Sufficient staff training/ expertise is rated the most important success factors for AI implementation (ranked in top three by 73 percent of execs).
Visit https://accntu.re/2T4KuXb to learn more.
Selection of a standard collaboration platform and toolset used to be easy: Microsoft or IBM Lotus. Now there are many competitors in this market, fueled by the rise of Web 2.0 collaboration paradigms, requiring organizations to know what the problem is they are trying to solve.
This storyboard will help you:
•Understand and identify collaboration opportunities that exist within your organization.
•Identify leading vendors and compare capabilities.
•Select the right solution to implement.
Organizations are embracing the need to support teams with enterprise collaboration solutions.
Addressing Sales Practice and Conduct Risk in the Canadian Marketaccenture
In this new Accenture Finance & Risk presentation we discuss how Accenture can help Canadian banks effectively manage their reputation and conduct risk challenges. Learn more: https://accntu.re/2NHfWp2
Data to Insight to Action: How Analytics can drive High Performance ruttens.com
Data to Insight to Action: How Analytics can drive High Performance
High performers are five times more likely to aggressively use information and analytics to improve decision making and business performance than lower performers
Companies that invest heavily in advanced analytical capabilities outperform the S&P 500 on average by 64%
Companies that invest heavily in developing analytical skills and adopting an analytical mindset recover quicker from economic downturns
Your Challenge
As the market evolves, capabilities that were once cutting edge become default and new functionality becomes differentiating.
Vendors use a lot of marketing jargon, buzzwords, and statistics to sell their solutions, making objective evaluation rather difficult.
The endpoint protection (EPP) market is overcrowded and fragmented, resulting in information overload and consequently, a difficult vendor assessment.
Disparate product solutions are being bundled into one-off solutions or suites, often resulting in less efficient solutions than the more niche players.
Imminent obsolescence is an issue. Previous EPP solutions have not adapted with the rapidly evolving threat landscape and are no longer relevant, resulting in breaches or vulnerabilities.
Critical Insight
Don’t let vendors and market reports define your endpoint protection needs. Identify the use cases and corresponding feature sets that best align with your risk profile before evaluating the vendor marketspace.
Your security controls are diminishing in value (if they haven’t already). Develop a strategy that accounts for the rapid evolution and imminent obsolescence of your endpoint controls. Plan for future needs when making purchasing decisions today.
Endpoint protection is a matter of defense in depth and risk modelling, there is no silver bullet protection and mitigation solution. As end-client-technology providers release regular product/software updates, security tools will become outdated. Multiyear endpoint protection commitments will leave you playing a constant game of catch up.
Impact and Result
The solution is a holistic internal security assessment that not only identifies, but satisfies, your desired endpoint protection feature set with the corresponding endpoint protection suite and a comprehensive implementation strategy.
Use this blueprint to walk through the steps of selecting and implementing an endpoint protection solution that best aligns with your organizational needs.
A strong communication capability between the business and IT ensures the alignment of business requirements with delivered IT functionality and value. Use this storyboard to understand common barriers to effective requirements management, tactical solutions to overcome these barriers, and how to achieve a high level of project success.
This storyboard will help you:
•Understand the common barriers to effective requirements management
•Learn how organizations have solved these challenges
•Implement your own tactical solutions to enable effective communication of business requirements for IT projects in your organization
•Achieve a high level of project success
Whether an organization develops its own applications or implements packaged solutions, the success of the project depends on the clear communication of business requirements in terms IT can understand and deliver.
Financial Services - New Approach to Data Management in the Digital Eraaccenture
How current is your data management strategy? As technology—and the requirements and business drivers around it—changes, financial services firms will need to change their approach to data management. To guide your approach, see the three building blocks to Accenture’s data management framework covered in this presentation.
Healthcare Reform & Physician Loyalty: What Can CRM Do To Support ACOs?Perficient, Inc.
Martin Sizemore, Enterprise Architect at Perficient, and Lisa Anderson, CRM Solution Architect at Perficient, discuss Consumerism in Healthcare, Physician Practice Challenges & Alignment, and provide a Physician Loyalty Campaign Demo
IBM Center for Applied Insights Study.
Hybrid cloud is the de facto state of IT. Leading organizations are blending traditional and cloud infrastructures to achieve better business outcomes—from reduced costs and improved productivity to business growth and digital transformation. What’s more, they’re using hybrid cloud to springboard to next generation activities that allow them to disrupt and capture new markets.
DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION IN THE NEXT NORMAL: How consumerism, technology and th...Damo Consulting Inc.
What was assumed to be a transformation journey stretching over several years has now shrunk to a matter of months, and the pace of change is accelerating. Paddy Padmanabhan and Ed Marx, the authors of the first book published on healthcare digital transformation since the pandemic hit us, discuss 5 major themes in healthcare’s digital transformation, and what the next normal looks like.
They will present findings from recent research on how mid-tier systems must approach transformation.
1. How COVID-19 accelerated the timelines for transformation
2. Why health systems must go beyond just telehealth
3. Why digital leaders must develop enterprise roadmaps
4. How CIO’s can transform IT to support digital health
5. How technology decisions must deliver enterprise-level impact
Faster and Cheaper Clinical Trials: The Benefit of Synthetic Dataaccenture
Take the innovation leap: Four things pharma companies can do now for a synthetic data-driven approach to clinical trial design. https://accntu.re/3vjVjVs
Craft an End-to-End Data Center Consolidation Strategy to Maximize BenefitsInfo-Tech Research Group
Your Challenge
Data center operating costs continue to escalate as organizations struggle with data center sprawl.
While data center consolidation is an attractive option to reduce cost and sprawl, the complexity of these projects makes them extremely difficulty to execute.
The status quo is also not an option, as budget constraints and the challenges with managing multiple data centers continues to increase.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
Despite consolidation being an effective way of addressing sprawl, it is often difficult to secure buy-in and funding from the business.
Many consolidation projects suffer cost overruns due to unforeseen requirements and hidden interdependencies which could have been mitigated during the planning phase.
Organizations that avoid consolidation projects due to their complexity are just deferring the challenge, while costs and inefficiencies continue to increase.
Impact and Result
Successful data center consolidation will have an immediate impact on reducing data center sprawl. Maximize your chances of success by securing buy-in from the business.
Avoid cost overruns and unforeseen requirements by engaging with the business at the start of the process. Clearly define business requirements and establish common expectations.
While cost improvements often drive data center consolidation, successful projects will also improve scalability, operational efficiency, and data center redundancy.
The New Role of the Architect - Central to growing your business in today’s d...Capgemini
In the digital era, the role of the architect is becoming less technical, and is more closely getting aligned to business strategy. Architects are able to help the business envision its future and integrate IT into the business, providing better value for money, faster benefit realization and improved market competitiveness.
Accenture's six-country survey among 180 C-level health executives says adoption of AI is measured, but real.
The survey assessed beliefs about market maturity, practical and clinical challenges to the adoption of AI in healthcare.
Enthusiasm for AI (artificial intelligence) is high among health executives, with people skills the most important implementation success factor.
Sufficient staff training/ expertise is rated the most important success factors for AI implementation (ranked in top three by 73 percent of execs).
Visit https://accntu.re/2T4KuXb to learn more.
Selection of a standard collaboration platform and toolset used to be easy: Microsoft or IBM Lotus. Now there are many competitors in this market, fueled by the rise of Web 2.0 collaboration paradigms, requiring organizations to know what the problem is they are trying to solve.
This storyboard will help you:
•Understand and identify collaboration opportunities that exist within your organization.
•Identify leading vendors and compare capabilities.
•Select the right solution to implement.
Organizations are embracing the need to support teams with enterprise collaboration solutions.
Addressing Sales Practice and Conduct Risk in the Canadian Marketaccenture
In this new Accenture Finance & Risk presentation we discuss how Accenture can help Canadian banks effectively manage their reputation and conduct risk challenges. Learn more: https://accntu.re/2NHfWp2
Data to Insight to Action: How Analytics can drive High Performance ruttens.com
Data to Insight to Action: How Analytics can drive High Performance
High performers are five times more likely to aggressively use information and analytics to improve decision making and business performance than lower performers
Companies that invest heavily in advanced analytical capabilities outperform the S&P 500 on average by 64%
Companies that invest heavily in developing analytical skills and adopting an analytical mindset recover quicker from economic downturns
Your Challenge
As the market evolves, capabilities that were once cutting edge become default and new functionality becomes differentiating.
Vendors use a lot of marketing jargon, buzzwords, and statistics to sell their solutions, making objective evaluation rather difficult.
The endpoint protection (EPP) market is overcrowded and fragmented, resulting in information overload and consequently, a difficult vendor assessment.
Disparate product solutions are being bundled into one-off solutions or suites, often resulting in less efficient solutions than the more niche players.
Imminent obsolescence is an issue. Previous EPP solutions have not adapted with the rapidly evolving threat landscape and are no longer relevant, resulting in breaches or vulnerabilities.
Critical Insight
Don’t let vendors and market reports define your endpoint protection needs. Identify the use cases and corresponding feature sets that best align with your risk profile before evaluating the vendor marketspace.
Your security controls are diminishing in value (if they haven’t already). Develop a strategy that accounts for the rapid evolution and imminent obsolescence of your endpoint controls. Plan for future needs when making purchasing decisions today.
Endpoint protection is a matter of defense in depth and risk modelling, there is no silver bullet protection and mitigation solution. As end-client-technology providers release regular product/software updates, security tools will become outdated. Multiyear endpoint protection commitments will leave you playing a constant game of catch up.
Impact and Result
The solution is a holistic internal security assessment that not only identifies, but satisfies, your desired endpoint protection feature set with the corresponding endpoint protection suite and a comprehensive implementation strategy.
Use this blueprint to walk through the steps of selecting and implementing an endpoint protection solution that best aligns with your organizational needs.
A strong communication capability between the business and IT ensures the alignment of business requirements with delivered IT functionality and value. Use this storyboard to understand common barriers to effective requirements management, tactical solutions to overcome these barriers, and how to achieve a high level of project success.
This storyboard will help you:
•Understand the common barriers to effective requirements management
•Learn how organizations have solved these challenges
•Implement your own tactical solutions to enable effective communication of business requirements for IT projects in your organization
•Achieve a high level of project success
Whether an organization develops its own applications or implements packaged solutions, the success of the project depends on the clear communication of business requirements in terms IT can understand and deliver.
Financial Services - New Approach to Data Management in the Digital Eraaccenture
How current is your data management strategy? As technology—and the requirements and business drivers around it—changes, financial services firms will need to change their approach to data management. To guide your approach, see the three building blocks to Accenture’s data management framework covered in this presentation.
Healthcare Reform & Physician Loyalty: What Can CRM Do To Support ACOs?Perficient, Inc.
Martin Sizemore, Enterprise Architect at Perficient, and Lisa Anderson, CRM Solution Architect at Perficient, discuss Consumerism in Healthcare, Physician Practice Challenges & Alignment, and provide a Physician Loyalty Campaign Demo
IBM Center for Applied Insights Study.
Hybrid cloud is the de facto state of IT. Leading organizations are blending traditional and cloud infrastructures to achieve better business outcomes—from reduced costs and improved productivity to business growth and digital transformation. What’s more, they’re using hybrid cloud to springboard to next generation activities that allow them to disrupt and capture new markets.
DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION IN THE NEXT NORMAL: How consumerism, technology and th...Damo Consulting Inc.
What was assumed to be a transformation journey stretching over several years has now shrunk to a matter of months, and the pace of change is accelerating. Paddy Padmanabhan and Ed Marx, the authors of the first book published on healthcare digital transformation since the pandemic hit us, discuss 5 major themes in healthcare’s digital transformation, and what the next normal looks like.
They will present findings from recent research on how mid-tier systems must approach transformation.
1. How COVID-19 accelerated the timelines for transformation
2. Why health systems must go beyond just telehealth
3. Why digital leaders must develop enterprise roadmaps
4. How CIO’s can transform IT to support digital health
5. How technology decisions must deliver enterprise-level impact
Faster and Cheaper Clinical Trials: The Benefit of Synthetic Dataaccenture
Take the innovation leap: Four things pharma companies can do now for a synthetic data-driven approach to clinical trial design. https://accntu.re/3vjVjVs
Craft an End-to-End Data Center Consolidation Strategy to Maximize BenefitsInfo-Tech Research Group
Your Challenge
Data center operating costs continue to escalate as organizations struggle with data center sprawl.
While data center consolidation is an attractive option to reduce cost and sprawl, the complexity of these projects makes them extremely difficulty to execute.
The status quo is also not an option, as budget constraints and the challenges with managing multiple data centers continues to increase.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
Despite consolidation being an effective way of addressing sprawl, it is often difficult to secure buy-in and funding from the business.
Many consolidation projects suffer cost overruns due to unforeseen requirements and hidden interdependencies which could have been mitigated during the planning phase.
Organizations that avoid consolidation projects due to their complexity are just deferring the challenge, while costs and inefficiencies continue to increase.
Impact and Result
Successful data center consolidation will have an immediate impact on reducing data center sprawl. Maximize your chances of success by securing buy-in from the business.
Avoid cost overruns and unforeseen requirements by engaging with the business at the start of the process. Clearly define business requirements and establish common expectations.
While cost improvements often drive data center consolidation, successful projects will also improve scalability, operational efficiency, and data center redundancy.
The New Role of the Architect - Central to growing your business in today’s d...Capgemini
In the digital era, the role of the architect is becoming less technical, and is more closely getting aligned to business strategy. Architects are able to help the business envision its future and integrate IT into the business, providing better value for money, faster benefit realization and improved market competitiveness.
Get a bit of introduction on HTML and other languages, as well as gain an understanding of how the web browser and web server work in tandem to deliver web pages!
Asia investing and corporate governance thought leader Koon Boon Kee, adjunct professor of accounting at Singapore Management University, presents at Value Investing Seminar 2014.
How to build an it transformation roadmapInnesGerrard
An estimated 80 percent of #businesses will need to transform their current IT efforts to keep up with new business expectations and technological developments. These include investments such as cloud computing, IoT and BigData projects.
Looking for great content on Physical Security? you have to check this out then. I am so fortunate to be able to contribute to this content for Ingram Micro! Let me know what you think. Thanks
100 day plan - Technology Vision Australian Perspectiveaccenture
Put this 100-day plan into action to gain a deeper understanding of who your core users are and identify opportunities to better serve individual needs.
In today’s globalized, competitive marketplace, being able to leverage technology to deliver faster turnaround times, meet lower pricing goals and provide customizable options can mean the difference between sustainability and irrelevancy. In this ebook, we’ll explore some of the leading solutions transforming the manufacturing industry:
- Automation for cost savings
- 3D printing for improved productivity
- Smart data for quality assurance
- Connectivity for safety and communication
- Security solutions to protect it all
Learn more: http://ms.spr.ly/6006Twegg
This document brings together a set
of latest data points and publicly
available information relevant for
Digital Customer Experience
Industry. We are very excited to share
this content and believe that readers
will benefit from this periodic
publication immensely.
In Automated Controls It’s No Longer the Traditional Build vs. BuyMelissa Luongo
Exploring an Alternative Perspective | An Infogix Position Paper by Lane Lambert and Chris Kosin
Decades of experience and research have shown that organizations maximize their return on investment (ROI) when they build or buy solutions that automate core processes. While making the build versus buy decision for automated or ancillary data integrity controls, an organization needs to determine if it is in the business of controls and how each option impacts Capital Expenditures (CAPEX) and Operational Expenditures (OPEX) budgets. “Buy to standardize, build to compete” has been an IT mantra for many years. Yet, executives responsible for developing an automated controls strategy continue to struggle with this question. The decision not only impacts the ability of an organization to meet its immediate controls needs but also has longstanding influence on the ability to maintain and sustain an internal control environment that is aligned with business needs. The rule of thumb has been: if the system is a requirement for business, “buy” is the answer; conversely if the system provides a competitive advantage, then the answer
is “build.”
In this paper, we propose an alternative way to look at Build vs. Buy by splitting “buy” into two options: – pre- packaged offering and configurable solution. The pre- packaged offering refers to an off-the-shelf product, while a highly configurable solution combines the virtues of a “build” solution with the flexibility and adaptability of a “buy” solution that is faster to deploy and removes the risk inherent in building internal controls. Regardless of the solution, the decision points remain the same: CAPEX vs. OPEX cost, time to deployment, internal politics, regulatory compliance mandates, architecture, IT staff competencies and strategic importance to the organization’s bottom line. However; as IT departments are increasingly stretched thin, in part due to increased data governance, audit, and overall challenges to close fragmented data integrity gaps, the case for a highly configurable data integrity controls solution becomes a compelling consideration to deliver a tailored system that capitalizes on the benefits of both building and buying. Leading organizations that use Infogix Controls have achieved significant cost savings (up to 80%) compared to internal development options. In addition, implementing Infogix Controls has enabled these organizations to rapidly deploy controls to efficiently meet changing business and audit needs. This position paper provides a framework to compare and contrast build versus buy by evaluating buy in two dimensions – pre-packaged vs. configurable – to delve into the financial and non-financial implications of these options.
Learn How to Maximize Your ServiceNow InvestmentStave
Understand how leading companies are adopting an aPaaS strategy
Learn the evolution of ServiceNow's platform capabilities
Assert IT's influence over shadow IT practices
Should I outsource, and how much should I outsource? This article enlists compelling reasons for IT outsourcing in an increasingly digital world, making the decision a no-brainer, it also highlights the risks that one should consider while making the commitment. Check out this tutorial.
We have developed a four-part framework to help companies determine organizational areas that could be best served by the cloud. By aligning technology with business strategy and understanding how the organization must adapt, companies can optimize the impact of their cloud investments.
1. Healthcare
An integration platform for your
medical technology organization
Facing the ongoing question of building vs. buying
Medical technology organizations spend years—sometimes decades—building life-saving and life-enhancing
technology, with the specific goal of helping patients. But with new rules and regulations in place surrounding
electronic health records (EHR), and a shift in focus from volume- to value-based reimbursement, your organization
also needs to consider how to link data from your device to the patient’s EHR.
Many organizations struggle with the question of whether to create a point-to-point integration solution from
scratch or purchase existing resources from outside. It can turn into a perennial dilemma.
But deciding whether to build or buy technology can have strategic implications, as well. Simply choosing “make”
when the capacity exists, or “buy” to avoid investment when your organization has adequate capital, might work
some of the time. But a wrong decision can have dramatic, enduring consequences, according to a report by
A.T. Kearney.1
For medical technology companies in the post-Affordable Care Act world, the build versus buy question now holds
special relevance. Medical technology companies must change core aspects of their business to align with the
value-based agendas of their health system customers, a Deloitte report notes.2
At the same time, companies need to move more rapidly and take different approaches than they used to in order
to maintain their innovative edge, a KPMG survey reveals.3To compete aggressively, they must collaborate with
more partners and pursue greater integration with suppliers and providers.
2. 2Healthcare Industry Perspectives
3 Guidelines for building or buying
4 Cost considerations of building
versus buying integration technology
5 Can you keep up with the pace
of change?
6 Consider the time and
talent required
7 Choose a partner with deep
industry insight
8 Make a smart decision
Table of Contents
3. 3Healthcare Industry Perspectives
Guidelines for building
or buying
Following are some considerations to help your
company navigate the build versus buy decision when
it comes to creating an integration platform.
Know your business strategy—Can you make a
strong business case for building in house? Assuming
you have the internal HIT Java, .Net, and coder
expertise required, as well as the capital to invest,
fundamentally, a strong business case can be made if
the solution in question is something that heavily
influences or builds your core competitive advantage.
Define your competitive advantage—In defining your
core competitive advantage, the question is fairly
straightforward: Why do your customers come to you?
As a medical technology organization, the answer
most likely relates more to the quality, safety,
reliability, and innovativeness of your solution(s), such
as niche software, medical devices, or tele health,
than to your ability to deliver connectivity with
physician, hospital, and health system EMRs. And that
connectivity is crucial to interoperability. You need to
consider whether it’s a differentiator that only you can
offer, or something available from an established
vendor as a core offering.
Explore what already exists—Put another way, if
respected connectivity solutions with long track
records of success are already available to do the job
for you, why reinvent the wheel? The need for
interoperability looms so large in healthcare now that
it has spawned an industry of its own.
Consider this: High quality portable operating systems
have already been developed to spare you from
having to develop an operating system for your
device. You can purchase or download one of these
systems and then build your solution on top of it.
The same holds true for an integration platform. You
don’t need to build your own network infrastructure.
You can access an effective third-party solution that
has already been successfully implemented in
hundreds of hospitals and healthcare facilities around
the world.
Also, determine if building the technology yourself
adds to your intellectual property to make your
organization more successful or profitable. If you can
answer yes, then score another point in favor of
custom development rather than buying from outside.
But if the solution in question is not closely tied to your
competitive edge, and if it is not something that
defines who you are and distinguishes you in the
market, then it might not be worth investing the
requisite resources. As the late business consultant
Peter Drucker so aptly said, “Do what you do best and
outsource the rest.”
Develop a custom solution—Some healthcare
providers, such as Montefiore Health System, are
partnering with startups like Menon Group in various
ways to build their own custom applications.4
The approach has advantages, including functionality
that can be incorporated from the outset and tailored
closely to the organization’s unique needs. However,
custom-built applications also open IT developers and
the company to risks and extensive losses of financial,
technological, and other resources, if the technology
does not work and the application ultimately fails.
4. 4Healthcare Industry Perspectives
Cost considerations of
building versus buying
integration technology
A custom solution gives you the opportunity to design
an application to your specific needs and fine-tune it
as needed. That flexibility remains one advantage of
the in-house, do-it-yourself approach; however, it’s
going to cost you a premium.
On the other hand, many external solutions come
ready built with capabilities that meet and exceed the
needs of the market majority, so that you just need to
configure them, rather than customize. In addition, an
outside solution can help you:
Offload must-have functionality—When a function
becomes a must-have while no longer differentiating
the product, offloading that functionality onto a
specialized third-party can be a cost-saving, low-risk
strategy to keep pace with market changes. You may
believe that there are no costs associated with
building and maintaining your own integration
platform, but when you scratch beneath the surface,
you might find the opposite to be true.
Free up resources for innovation—You might be
able to custom-build an integration platform and make
it work, but considering the competitiveness and
unpredictability of the current environment, ask
yourself whether you really want to allocate resources
to an IT development and maintenance load this large
when your IT dollars could be more prudently spent
on product innovation that will strengthen your
core offerings.
“More than other manufacturing sectors, medical
devices have a special stake in innovation,” says Chris
Stirling of KPMG. “The nature of the business requires
companies to elevate their performance to offer better
life-enhancing and life-saving technologies.”5 The
same holds true of other organizations as well.
Reduce risk—Even if you consider an integration
platform to be a core strength for your company,
building one will probably cost more than buying a
solution from an outside source. There is no need to
gamble on a custom strategy when a solution has
already been developed by a vendor whose sole
focus is supporting the solution and keeping on top
of standards.
When it comes to connectivity in the current
environment, the goalpost is always moving. You can
build your own cloud solution, for example, but you
will still have to contend with the development of
interfaces for a host of disparate systems.
Cut maintenance and staff costs—There are many
cost-associated reasons why choosing an outside
source is a good idea, starting with the savings
associated with maintaining applications on your own.
Ruby
CMYK: 10, 100, 100, 2
CMYK Color Palette
Graphite
CMYK: 25, 18, 12, 55
Coral
CMYK: 0, 65, 100, 0
Amber
CMYK: 0, 38, 100, 0
Citrine
CMYK: 2, 10, 100, 0
Ruby
Light: 10, 100, 100, 2
Dark: 10, 100, 100, 22
Graphite
Light: 25, 18, 12, 55
Dark: 25, 18, 12, 75
Coral
Light: 0, 65, 100, 0
Dark: 0, 65, 100, 20
Amber
Light: 0, 38, 100, 0
Dark: 0, 65, 100, 0
Citrine
Light: 2, 10, 100, 0
Turquoise
Light: 71, 0, 48, 0
Dark: 71, 0, 48, 20
Topaz
Light: 61, 0, 0, 0
Dark: 75, 20, 0, 0
Azure
Light: 75, 20, 0, 0
Dark: 95, 45, 0, 0
Cobalt
Light: 95, 45, 0, 0
Dark: 87, 70, 0, 0
Sapphire
Light: 87, 70, 0, 0
Turquoise
CMYK: 71, 0, 48, 0
Topaz
CMYK: 61, 0, 0, 0
Azure
CMYK: 75, 20, 0, 0
Cobalt
CMYK: 95, 45, 0, 0
Sapphire
CMYK: 87, 70, 0, 0
5. 5Healthcare Industry Perspectives
An external solution partner will also bear the
burden of:
■ Maintaining and managing applications
■ Replacing and training IT staff
■ Assuming responsibility for system and data center
capacity
■ Adding new customers and maintaining those
customers over three to five years
■ Staying competitive with external solutions that
provide niche offerings to customers, such as
connecting to disease registries or pulling data
from wearables and placing it back into patients’
electronic health records
Can you keep up with the
pace of change?
Think about the rapid evolution in standards for
interoperability in HIT, most recently with the
development and implementation of Fast Healthcare
Interoperability Resources (FHIR), spearheaded by
Health Level Seven International (HL7) and the
industry-sponsored Argonaut Project.6
The resources and expertise needed to stay on top of
industry developments like these are daunting. In an
environment as rapidly changing as the current one,
partnering with a vendor that specializes in keeping
abreast of interoperability standards offers a smarter
alternative. Working with an external partner frees you
to funnel resources toward innovations that increase
your ability to remain competitive.
Even if you consider
an integration
solution
to be core IT for your company, it will probably
cost more than buying a solution from an
outside source.
Polaris Health Directions improves efficiency, patient
outcomes and revenue streams with Infor Cloverleaf
Polaris Health Directions analyzes and delivers actionable
behavioral health analytics addressing the emotional aspects
of illnesses, such as cancer, by giving health systems better
insight into expected treatment responses. Using Infor
Cloverleaf®, Polaris has expanded its already-innovative
technology by helping its clients achieve faster, more
streamlined EHR integration, improve patient outcomes, and
create new revenue streams.
By using Infor Cloverleaf, Polaris Health Directions can more
easily monitor behaviors throughout the term of care. This is
especially important for complex and chronic diseases, when
behaviors change throughout the course of treatment. For
those being treated for breast cancer, for example, Polaris
provides a very important innovation—Apple® watches that
gather telemetry information throughout the day. That
information is integrated with the EHR, so even when a
patient is not in front of the provider, she is still being
monitored. The result is a happier, more engaged patient,
and better outcomes.
6. 6Healthcare Industry Perspectives
Consider the time and
talent required
You’ve heard the phrase “not invented here.” It
reflects a way of thinking among many IT
professionals that an application not developed
internally is likely to be inferior. It’s understandable
why many IT specialists assume that the internal team,
which already knows the company’s products
intimately, should also build custom applications for
them. This notion actually might have elements of truth
to it in some cases, such as when using application
program interfaces (APIs).
But it doesn’t make sense for in-house staff to devote
time to building something that is already available.
The time spent developing a custom integration
platform could distract from a focus on your core
competencies.
Even if your IT specialists believe they are up to the
task, keeping current with interoperability standards
and federal regulations regarding HIPAA and
Meaningful Use might not be the best uses of their
time. For example, FHIR is an emerging standard that
many believe will rapidly advance interoperability.
How will your organization adapt to handle both FHIR
and HL7 integrations and the subsequent revisions?
The effort and expertise required to remain up-to-date
with these standards and regulations could quickly
overwhelm your people and slow you down in areas
that focus on the core offering in your organization.
According to a report by Forrester Research, Inc.,
“While the cost of acquiring a third-party integration
solution adds capital expense, making packaged
integration capability available to the development
staff can lead to significant improvements in
developer productivity, lower maintenance costs of
new integration functionality, and provide faster
response time to the business."7
In an
environment as
rapidly changing
as the current one, partnering with a vendor
that specializes in keeping abreast of
interoperability standards offers a
smarter alternative.
Ruby
CMYK: 10, 100, 100, 2
CMYK Color Palette
Graphite
CMYK: 25, 18, 12, 55
Coral
CMYK: 0, 65, 100, 0
Amber
CMYK: 0, 38, 100, 0
Citrine
Ruby
Light: 10, 100, 100, 2
Dark: 10, 100, 100, 22
Graphite
Light: 25, 18, 12, 55
Dark: 25, 18, 12, 75
Coral
Light: 0, 65, 100, 0
Dark: 0, 65, 100, 20
Amber
Light: 0, 38, 100, 0
Dark: 0, 65, 100, 0
Citrine
Turquoi
Light: 71, 0, 48
Dark: 71, 0, 48
Topaz
Light: 61, 0, 0,
Dark: 75, 20,
Azure
Light: 75, 20,
Dark: 95, 45,
Cobalt
Light: 95, 45,
Dark: 87, 70, 0
Sapphir
Turquoise
CMYK: 71, 0, 48, 0
Topaz
CMYK: 61, 0, 0, 0
Azure
CMYK: 75, 20, 0, 0
Cobalt
CMYK: 95, 45, 0, 0
Sapphire
7. 7Healthcare Industry Perspectives
Choose a partner with deep
industry insight
Developing an integration platform requires a
dedicated team of developers, while partnering with
an external solution would provide the resources
needed to:
■ Stay abreast of constantly changing regulations
and standards through support from a large
developer community with industry-recognized
skill sets.
■ Maintain the system.
■ Perform ongoing enhancements and upgrades.
■ Test the application with multiple configurations,
including the more than 200 standard EMRs.
■ Deploy trained support staff to troubleshoot
with customers.
■ Meet aggressive project targets
As articulated by CIO magazine, “If an organization
has an in-house development team, there is always
the push to build because they can supposedly satisfy
all needs. However, from my experience and
observation, it is usually far cheaper and faster to buy
than to build. After all, if a problem has been
adequately solved in a commercial product, why
solve it again? Why not focus on a new and more
interesting problem?”8
Ruby
CMYK: 10, 100, 100, 2
CMYK Color Palette
Graphite
CMYK: 25, 18, 12, 55
Coral
CMYK: 0, 65, 100, 0
Amber
CMYK: 0, 38, 100, 0
Citrine
CMYK: 2, 10, 100, 0
Jade
CMYK: 42, 0, 100, 0
Emerald
CMYK: 60, 0, 95, 0
Ruby
Light: 10, 100, 100, 2
Dark: 10, 100, 100, 22
Graphite
Light: 25, 18, 12, 55
Dark: 25, 18, 12, 75
Coral
Light: 0, 65, 100, 0
Dark: 0, 65, 100, 20
Amber
Light: 0, 38, 100, 0
Dark: 0, 65, 100, 0
Citrine
Light: 2, 10, 100, 0
Dark: 0, 38, 100, 0
Jade
Light: 42, 0, 100, 0
Dark: 60, 0, 95, 0
Emerald
Light: 60, 0, 95, 0
Dark: 65, 0, 100, 20
T
L
D
T
L
D
A
L
D
C
L
D
S
L
D
A
L
D
T
L
D
Turquoise
CMYK: 71, 0, 48, 0
Topaz
CMYK: 61, 0, 0, 0
Azure
CMYK: 75, 20, 0, 0
Cobalt
CMYK: 95, 45, 0, 0
Sapphire
CMYK: 87, 70, 0, 0
Amethyst
CMYK: 67, 90, 0, 0
Tourmaline
CMYK: 4, 94, 46, 0
It does not make sense for
in-house staff to
devote time
to building something that is already available.
