The RPA software market will total $2.9 billion in 2021, according to Forrester. RPA is a hot topic this year, accentuated by the ramifications of COVID-19. Hospitals and health systems are looking for automation tools that can be deployed quickly and easily as part of their digital strategy, without interruption to the larger IT infrastructure. RPA reduces costs, supports workers, and helps teams build greater resilience in an ever-challenging IT landscape.
It’s important to focus on the right projects in order to see the greatest reward from RPA efforts. Whether it’s copying and pasting text, pointing and clicking, or saving changes in one program and importing them into another, look for processes that have repetitive tasks and may require multiple steps. According to Deloitte’s study on digital impact, digital maturity is measured in business benefit. Transformation efforts fail to deliver when organizations struggle to translate the execution of digital programs into tangible results for the organization. It is important to identify the right processes to automate, in order to achieve digital maturity and a fast ROI. Pairing a human workforce with a digital workforce helps you streamline tasks and processes, providing an early win and establishing a good foundation for future digital growth (i.e. digital maturity).
Identify the low-hanging fruit.
It’s important to have leadership support behind any digital initiative. The role of the digital transformation team in most hospitals and health systems is not to build a technology offering from the ground up, but rather to build a strategy that works for digital health. This begins by identifying the right projects, the anticipated changes, and the time requirements necessary to implement a digital vision. To identify the low-hanging fruit, select a process that is repetitive and rules-based. Make sure the process is well defined and that you understand the workflows. As Brad Cox, Director of Patient Accounting at Northwestern Medicine stated, “We understood our lowest-value tasks. We started in an area that we knew would show a significant ROI right out of the gate, and we used those initial automations as our ‘cash cow,’ to be able to invest in additional automations after demonstrating their value.”
Build a strong foundation for success.
Once projects have been identified for greatest impact, start with one area and expand from there. At Boston Software Systems, we guide healthcare organizations on the best areas to apply RPA initiatives for the highest-value and greatest impact. We usually begin by making single tasks run smoother in one area. Once the benefits are realized, it’s easy to see the potential for additional automation projects in other areas or departments. A lot of people begin with the back-end processes in healthcare finance, claims management, payment processing, and denial management. As Brad Cox noted, “The coolest project may not be the best project or provide the greatest return. Initially, everyone saw RPA as a distraction. Now that we have the foundation, and we’ve seen the positive impact on our investments, we have a backlog of automations our team wants to put in place. They needed to see the value first.” A strong foundation for success depends on the right partner. We understand the obstacles as well as the rewards, and will help you build the right RPA strategy for long-term success.
Fulfill your customers’ expectations.
Fulfilling the objectives of your clients and managing their expectations is the first rule of success. The immediate goal should be to ensure automation is flexible enough to adapt to the needs of the end user, making their job less stressful in today’s challenging healthcare environment. Rapid change is not about implementing a new technology and expecting it to deliver on its own. It’s about listening to the needs of the user, and recognizing that until you meet their expectations, any digital strategy is incomplete. With all the COVID-induced changes over the past nine months, it’s been even more important to align to the needs of a distributed workforce, establish trust, and solicit buy-in at every opportunity. This not only ensures usability, it creates long-term sustainability and organizational success.
This is our trademark at Boston Software Systems. KLAS Research uncovered that 100% of clients interviewed stated they would purchase from Boston Software Systems again. Expectations were exceeded and long-term relationships established.
Why Boston Software Systems?
A digital strategy begins with the right team. We have 30 years of healthcare-specific experience. Give us a call. We won’t take up much of your time. With most of our automations up and running in < 60 days, savings are right around the corner.
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