I admit to gadget addiction. The latest catastrophe is a gyro-operated camera stabilizer manufactured by Ken Labs.
Do not visit their web site ! – you will want one too and end up being out of pocket $4,000 or more.
Seriously, healthcare software accessories are not all that different. You have core modules and then, well, there are extras.
I love the revenue but I warn clients about ordering our knowledgebase product, our portal plug in, our process mapping tool unless they are committed to actually using these products. You do have to put data into them or they will have nothing to process.
How do we get to where options become a source of sleepless nights?
My take is it’s a combination of buyers listing features in RFIs/RFPs and vendors reading these and badgering their development teams to add in features/functions, ready for the next RFI/RFP. The resulting “bloatware” can take a perfectly good software product and cause it to collapse under its own weight.
In many of the LinkedIn Discussion Groups, people ask whether they should first get technology and later figure out what to do with it. The most recent debate is about ERP software versus BPM.
Is it best to first map out your processes and then figure out how to use best practice templates to guide the processing of instances or should a customer start with the run time resource allocation, leveling and balancing environment and then build best practices?
Or, should the customer look for an integrated software suite that does both? And, what if the customer already has a legacy run time environment that does not seamlessly link to a BPM or ACM/BPM software suite? Should the customer keep the legacy system or replace it?
None of these decisions are easy but the main point is the more moving parts you end up with the higher the acquisition cost, the longer the training and if you end up not using certain features/functions, why go through all of this?
Bottom line, it’s best to first plan, then operationalize. And, be careful when you go shopping !
Alice: Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?
Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.
Alice: I don’t much care where.
Cat: Then it does not matter which way you go.
