Your One Stop Checklist for Moving to the Cloud

For healthcare organizations that are seeking to improve productivity, increase efficiency, and reduce costs while improving care quality, a cloud-based ERP system is the perfect move to kick off your digital transformation strategy. Organizations that haven’t made the move to cloud yet are likely to be running a newly implemented EHR that is only partially, if at all, connected with your legacy ERP.

As healthcare C-suite leaders receive more pressure to lean supply chain costs and prove technology ROI, now is the time to draft your plan to move or get cloud ready. Taking time now will make it easier to move when the time comes. Here are some of the top considerations when building your cloud strategy:

Know the End Goal

Identify key strategic business and technology goals. Is moving to the cloud a cost-savings initiative? Is the goal to streamline IT operations? Gain access to new functionality? Take a close look at what you want to get out of a cloud solution to ensure the investment meets the business needs.

Conduct a comprehensive assessment of existing IT infrastructure and current processes to understand current state and future requirements. Take time to conduct analysis and look at what can be improved with a streamlined or automated approach. Beyond automation, look at where you can eliminate waste, redundancies, and inefficiencies.

Step-by-Step or Full Speed Ahead

It’s also important to consider how you want to make the move. Some organizations choose to move all their systems at once, while other businesses may find it more manageable to move in sprints. Focusing the sprints by business area can help lower the shock of change or disperse it. Sprints should be aligned with the business operational and financial strategies. A well-planned migration roadmap will minimize disruption to the business, support efficient use of resources, and ensure critical business needs are addressed.

Executive Engagement

Executive buy-in ensures technology goals align with business goals. Help senior management understand how new processes would benefit the organization, provide more timely information, enhance security, and offer flexibility as the business grows. Getting leaders engaged early can prepare the organization for change and support a successful go-live.

Prepare your Data

Similar to Dr. Craig Joseph’s theory on GIGO for EHR systems, the same applies for ERP systems. If you put bad data in, you’ll get bad information back. It is important to clean your data ahead of migration to eliminate any garbage in your new ERP system, allowing for more accurate information for better decision-making.

Ensure Strategies Align

Review vendor product roadmaps and research their direction. Connect with current users and organizations similar to your own who have recently made the migration to get a better idea of what to expect from your project. Consider an industry-specific ERP to address goals specific to healthcare out-of-the-box.

Planning for Post Go-live

Think about how software updates and patches are currently managed. Are there challenges with resources and technical skill availability? Cloud solutions manage the upgrade process automatically, making it all the more vital to have resources available for testing. A managed services partner can help fill these resource gaps, enhancing your cloud experience to help drive down resolution time and offload customer responsibilities that remain after your migration.

Moving to the cloud is more than a technology change, it’s a culture shift requiring a deliberate approach to organizational change management to help people navigate new systems and way of doing things. Early understanding of the impacts of change can guide better decisions and outcomes and user adoption. It also ensures the organization devotes the right amount of resources to change.

Whether your organization has embarked on its digital transformation journey or preparing to get started, there are things you can do now to ensure success in the future. ERP should be aligned with your digital strategy to improve how you collaborate with suppliers, employees, and anyone that interacts with your organization.