Q: You referred to Cloud and CRM. Can you tell us where you are in your Cloud transformation, migration and CRM journeys? In that context, where does your core transaction platform for the health system, Epic, fit in?
Timothy: Great question! We’ve focused on getting those Tier-one platforms and EMR such as, Epic, on the provider side, along with the core claims processing, financial billing, payment systems on claims systems to support the health plan side. We’ve migrated both into Microsoft’s Azure Cloud. We have multiple segmented instances where we control who accesses what systems across that.
We also have regional instance as a direct primary to support that and so, the bulk of our compute, as well as all of the data and reporting, is up in that cloud. We spent time on this and have a provisional patent that’s tied to what we did with our cloud transformation. That patented solution will be leveraged with our lessons learned over the past three or four years, which are more than just how to get something in the cloud, such as, how do you change from CAPEX to OPEX? How do you convince the board in ELT about the value of cloud beyond just saving dollars?
It’s about agility, how fast you can move, spin-up and spin-down, how easily you can interact with other cloud-based systems and technologies like Salesforce and CRM. That’s one of the tools we rolled out — Workday on April 1.
These are all Cloud-based systems that can interact better in a Cloud environment. One of the things we pushed hard over the past months, and which will emerge soon, is a spin-off, a for-profit Cloud IT services organization built-up in terms of capability. The aim was to get talent to keep growing and do what they want to do in a for-profit world within a new company, a joint venture, where those folk can grow while we retain and get the best technology folk that will work for an environment like that without thinking of their primary IT job being working for a not-for-profit health system.
That’s a tremendous story in terms of what we did, how we learned how to do that effectively, and how we ate our own dogfood. Now, we have a framework in a construct that is licensable and driven towards a pattern that is real IP. Thus, we can help other health systems or payviders on their foundational journeys to the cloud while helping them realize the benefits of all these other areas and components.
I’ll briefly also answer the CRM component. There are number of CRMs today and the most recent one that we rolled out leveraged Salesforce inside our health plan. But I would like to think of it more as a CRM or a contact ecosystem of all those omni-channels – something that’s more than just your standard, old school CRM. Even if people don’t think Salesforce is old school, the old school deployment of a CRM or a call center is very different than where it needs to be in terms of a true contact center or contact ecosystem.
