EY facilitated three workshops for this health care organization, designed with a future-back approach — starting with the organization’s vision and connecting it to the metrics that drive progress toward those goals. Workshop attendees represented all the regions and supply chain operations in scope across the organization.
During the sessions attendees shared over 100 ideas on how to translate the organization’s supply chain vision into tangible actions. EY guided the workshops with deep health care sector knowledge and synthesized the findings for executives. The recommendations from these sessions would shape the strategy EY created for effective data management throughout the organization.
The biggest learning achieved through these collaborative workshops was that many people had faith in their own metrics and related processes within their regions, but not in the data management processes across the organization. Resources reported following over 375 metrics (85 of which were unique), consulting 130 different dashboards and reports, and using 15 technology systems and platforms. The quality of their data and metrics was questionable because it came from many sources, at different times — some devised manually, others in a dashboard used infrequently, following varying definitions. What qualified as “on time” for one hospital was totally different from another hospital, even though they were part of the same network. Most data from the dashboards and platforms was only as reliable as the most recent manual update.
“We quickly realized through these focus groups that we had no data standardization across our organization,” this health care organization’s Chief Supply Chain Officer said. “We needed a common set of definitions, numbers, analytics and tools that flowed throughout all our hospitals and offices, and those systems needed to be regularly used and trusted by our people.”
Through more dialogue facilitated by EY, participants began narrowing down the list of metrics, dashboards and reports they used to determine what data management processes should be retained and which operations could be reduced. Participants voted on the value of specific reporting practices and provided input on the tools they found most accurate and user-friendly.
“One hundred thirty dashboards were ultimately streamlined into one cohesive console,” the Chief Supply Chain Officer said. “This new dashboard allows us to quickly track performance, see inventory and manage volume across our network’s supply chain.”