Posted on behalf of Jeff Ford, Director of Client Services
Managed Services, Outsourcing, Professional Services, Software Services; these can all be four letter words when it comes to Budget Approval. Maybe you’re purchasing new software or just looking to get the most out of what you already have, but you’ve decided purchasing services is an appealing option. You know it’s the right thing for your hospital, but the Approval Board has a list of questions for you. The main one? Why are we paying someone else to do work your staff can handle? Let me give you the ammunition you need to answer this question. Or better yet, just print this out and hand it to them.
Purchasing services allows you to keep your staff happy and doing what they’re best at.
First let the Board know, yes, your staff is incredible! They are talented, efficient and experts in their field. They do magical things on a day to day basis. Software services is a cost-effective way to allow them to keep doing those things. In every article you read about employee satisfaction, two common topics consistently pop up: allowing employees to work on what they’re most passionate about, and not wasting their time. When you bring in a new piece of software or look to revive a past purchase, you might be asking your employees to do something outside of what they enjoy, outside of what they’ve spent their careers training for, and outside of what you pay them for. It will require a lot of time training and stumbling, creating frustration.
Service Engineers live and breathe the software you just purchased.
As you and your staff know, when you do something every day you become an expert in it. You start to pick up tips and tricks that can only be learned through attrition. You find ways to templatize things to make it so you’re not reinventing the wheel every time a new initiative hits your desk. When you’re bringing in a new piece of software, you don’t have this knowledge base. But the vendor does. They are going to be able to bring projects to completion exponentially quicker than your staff. Do a cost analysis on that. How much will the services cost vs how much will the projected lost time cost the hospital? You’ll typically find Professional Services are priced at a level that makes a lot of sense to take advantage of.
Utilizing Professional Services will lead to a higher ROI on your software purchase.
It won’t be an initiative that is purchased and left behind. The services team will be engaging your resources and pushing the project forward. They will also know all possible use cases for the software, perhaps even outside of those that you originally purchased it for. Taking advantage of a vendor’s service team leads to efficient projects with a known timeline. We have the experts, take advantage of it!
In the healthcare industry, everyone is working towards the same goals. Getting the most out of your software and getting the best out of your people leads to top patient care. Managed Services is often the best path to those results.
