If you aren’t familiar with cloud-based software (or software that runs on the Internet instead of on a computer service in one location) be assured that it has many benefits that computer-based software in one location does not. As such, we have found the benefits to be doubly true with cloud-based value analysis software in this age of mega systems, large IDNs, and multihospital alliances.
After developing, deploying, and refining our own cloud-based value analysis software over 15 years ago, we can attest to the fact that cloud-based value analysis software will positively change your VA business in these four ways:
1. Your VA Teams Can Access Their VA Projects Wherever There is an Internet Connection: We work with value analysis coordinators, managers, and directors from multihospital systems as large as 22 hospitals that rarely can have their value analysis teams meet at one location, since their team members are dispersed over a number of cities, counties, and states. Yet, by employing cloud-based value analysis software they can communicate like they are next door to each other.
2. Your Customers Can Send Their Purchase Requests To You Online: One of the value analysis best practices that have emerged over the last few years is having your customers submit their new purchase order requests online in real-time to their value analysis department to start their healthcare organization’s VA process. This feature is especially important to your customers since their requests can then be triaged to the most appropriate person or persons in their value analysis, purchasing, and accounting departments to speed up their purchase request.
3. Your VA Team Can Update Their VA Projects in Real Time Online: Hopefully all of your value analysis team members are documenting their VA project notes in real time into your VA system to keep all need-to-know parties aware of their activities. We have discovered that the easiest way to do so is by employing a cloud-based value analysis software, since documenting tasks, activities, and notes is almost impossible to maintain if you are using a spreadsheet to do so.
4. Your Customers Can Track the Progress of Their Purchase Requests Online: One of the most frustrating things that can happen to your customers is that after they submit a new purchase request your VA system goes “dark.” Meaning, your requisitioners don’t know where their request is in your value analysis process. A cloud-based value analysis system eliminates this problem, since your customers can log in to your cloud-based value analysis software to pinpoint where their request is in your VA process. In our opinion, this is a basic requirement for any cloud-based value analysis software.
The advent of mega systems, large IDNs, and multihospital alliances makes it even more important for value analysis practitioners to utilize the internet as an enabler for communications, operations, and facilitation of their diverse, dispersed, and harried value analysis team members. The best way to do so, we have found, is with cloud-based value analysis software. To paraphrase an old American Express advertisement, “Don’t try to perform value analysis without cloud-based software.”
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