IT teams at healthcare organizations bear the burden of managing and maintaining large suites of platforms, applications, and data sources to enable efficient healthcare delivery. It’s a lot to juggle all at once, and without a structured way to support these goals, technology teams often struggle.
This was the case at Atlantic Health System (AHS), a non-profit healthcare company in New Jersey. For years, IT teams at AHS struggled to coordinate core IT processes underlying healthcare delivery. And previous attempts to improve operations had been less than successful, even after implementing a new IT Service Management (ITSM) platform to solve these challenges. AHS found this legacy system hard to use, as it offered limited scalability and integration issues that required dedicated resources to correct.
In essence, the platform created as many problems as it solved. It wasn’t until AHS implemented the Cherwell Service Management ITSM that they began to see the full benefits of a mature IT service strategy.
What the Right ITSM Can Do for You
AHS saw near-immediate results with Cherwell’s solution behind them. Out of the gate, they were able to implement ITIL processes for Incident Management and Change Management, followed by a Configuration Management Database that revolutionized how AHS managed IT processes. Doing so produced substantial savings in direct costs and long-term scalability:
- Cost savings of $100,000+ across upgrades, configuration, and maintenance compared with their previous ITSM solution.
- Ability to extend Cherwell into other key business processes, including HR, Payroll, and Employee Wellness systems.
- Two additional levels of ITSM maturity improvement.
- New platform capabilities to further extend IT operations, including 10 new custom applications/processes.
The T4S Take: Process Flexibility Is No Longer Optional
The secret behind AHS’s success was the openness of Cherwell’s Service Management tools with other key IT applications. A full-fledged digital transformation was outside AHS’s grasp before the implementation, but after, AHS was able to make changes at the application level without disrupting pre-built customizations and code.
In many ways, this shift was the spark that lit the fire of rapid digital growth across their organization. Without Cherwell, AHS would still be struggling to coordinate basic IT processes, never mind deploying new solutions to further boost growth and profitability.
In our view, the connection between mature digital strategies and better financial performance is inarguable. Companies need ways to build out their processes and maintain flexibility if they hope to stay competitive in a world where so many companies are embracing modern IT services.
Questions to Ask for Your Own Digital Transformation
As your organization considers its own goals and potential solutions to support them, remember AHS’s story and keep the following questions in mind:
- Does your current IT delivery model support your business goals in an efficient way? Or is it holding your IT teams back?
- Do your IT solutions offer full extensibility with your other business processes?
- How well does your platform support new builds for applications and processes that further enable your IT service goals?
Overall, ask yourself this: Has your organization embraced the idea of technology as a chief accelerator for growth? As AHS’s story showed, the right platform deployed at the right time can open the doors to a wide range of services and process improvements that were never possible before.
View the full rundown of Atlantic Health System’s digital transformation here.