← Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
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- [00:00]
Jacob Emerson
Hello everyone. This is Jacob Emerson with the Becker's Healthcare Podcast. Thanks so much for tuning in. Today we're going to be talking about modernizing the core and how ERP drives resilience in healthcare operations. So joining me for today's discussion is Anthony Coletta, who's a healthcare industry advisor at Workday. Anthony, thank you so much for taking the time to be with me here on the podcast.
- [00:23]
Anthony Coletta
Well, thanks for having me, Jacob. Great to be here.
- [00:25]
Jacob Emerson
Yeah, absolutely. And before we dive into everything, we want to talk with you about, Anthony, can you tell us a little bit more about yourself, your background in healthcare and what it is that you do today at Workday?
- [00:35]
Anthony Coletta
Sure, sure. So I started out my career in public accounting. I made the move to Healthcare in 2011. First moved to West Bend Medical Group where I spent the majority of my career in healthcare. It was a multi specialty physician practice located in New York covering areas of New York and Connecticut. We were about 2,000 employees, 400 plus providers and 60 plus specialties. And I ultimately became a CFO there in 2019, overseeing areas such as the financ, department, procurement, payroll, revenue cycle, total rewards as well as our ERP function. Kind of got thrown into the fire there pretty quickly into my tenure as CFO when Covid started impacting the business early 2020. But I was able to, during my time there, see the business grow from about 150 million top line revenue to about 450 million top line revenue all the way up into an acquisition that we had at the end of 2021 with Summit Health and CityMD that I helped to coordinate. And the resulting entity was about a $2 billion organization. And today I am a healthcare industry advisor at Workday.
- [01:42]
Jacob Emerson
Fantastic. Well, like I said, we're really glad to have you sit down and chat with us. I want to dive right in by talking a little bit about enterprise resource planning. We know that when health systems around the country, they feel pressure in times of economic volatility to pause their strategic initiatives. And yet we are hearing and seeing from leaders all over the country about how they're strategically investing in enterpr platforms like enterprise resource planning. So talk to us a little bit about why ERP and what's driving this urgency from your perspective, Anthony?
- [02:18]
Anthony Coletta
Yeah, well, I think from, from my perspective, you know, we've really seen a lot of unprecedented events occur in the last several years, which has really stressed the need for access to to quality data to be able to pivot quickly. So we've had Covid, you know, back in 20202021 impacting businesses. And then today we the political climate impacting businesses, whether it's changing federal policy and regulations that are directly impacting health care today. So while there are certain actions for which leaders need to wait for more clarity on, that does not mean that organizations should be standing still. So a lot of executive leaders are realizing this and they're taking action by looking to move forward with investment and improve systems that are holding them back today. So you really want to be able to bring insight into the best direction. So when you're faced with that decisive moment, you're well informed. Every leader really wants access to readily available and reliable data. You want reports that you can turn to. You want dashboards that have information that you're comfortable with, that you can access, you can interact with and get insights that you need. And these are things that are catered to you and your role as a leader within an organization. And then also the ability to have access to ad hoc reporting is extremely important. So through all the twists and turns that these unprecedented events take and lead an organization through, you find yourself asking for certain reports and requests that you didn't previously ask for. So the ability to be able to pivot, get new views of the data so you can act accordingly is really important. And also, this all culminates with having confidence in data. If you're on a system today, like I was previously, before we had moved and went through a finance a transformation with our erp, there was just a lot of lack of confidence in the data that we had. So the ability to bring confidence to leaders and so that they can make really informed business decisions is something that makes everyone feel better about the state that you're in. And leaders really, you know, they want the ability, in addition to be proactive so that, you know, what I just described is more of a reactive scenario. So when you're faced with these scenarios here, you want to have the ability to be proactive. And so this leads to things such as scenario planning. And today, that could mean when you're trying to understand how an organization should handle tariffs and the impact that it's going to have on your business, you want to be able to scenario plan and say, how are if this tariff scenario works out this certain way, what pivots do we need to make? Or if it works out a different way, how would that look? And so understanding that so you can go in, tell your board, tell your leadership that you have confidence in the plan that you have in place really makes everyone feel better about the situation. And this is work that needs to be done now so that when you're faced with that next market shock, the infrastructure and those efficiencies that you're gaining are already in place. And so you have already the ability to speed up your time to reporting and also remove inefficiencies that you're dealing with today, whether that be recruiting processes, procurement workflows, or just having a platform to lean on and feel confident in.
- [05:30]
Jacob Emerson
Absolutely. And let me follow up with something you said at the beginning of your answer there, Anthony, about all the disruption caused in this space during COVID We really saw a lot of health systems accelerate their ERP modernization back during the pandemic. So what lessons do you think surfaced back then about implementation and adoption? And what advice would you give the leaders listening in in terms of how to prepare for similar transitions given some of the volatility we see today?
- [06:00]
Anthony Coletta
Yeah, well, if there's one thing that we learned is that there was really a lot of weaknesses in areas for improvement that were exposed within organizations. Leaders struggle to answer questions. Questions that were, like I mentioned before, were being asked for the first time that we didn't previously have the ability to answer. This really highlighted the importance of having infrastructure in place beforehand. So for us, it was all about having answers that positioned ourselves well. So like I mentioned, the ability to scenario plan. You know, when it came to Covid, for us, this was about understanding our volume shifts. So our business got impacted pretty significantly. We saw a huge drop in volume that really impacted our revenue. And that's something that, you know, we needed to figure out what levers we could pull to be able to accommodate that so we can stay solve it from a, from a cash flow perspective. So we need to figure out where do we have flexibility and areas that we can look to to react accordingly. It also serves as a communication platform for us, the ability to get information to the hands of people, give them documentation that they, that they were looking for. With all the new policies that were being put out there in terms of COVID sick time and things of that nature, where do they go to get information? So we had a platform where it was very easy for them to figure a central landing page that they can go for all of those answers and then just providing insights to executive leaders and clinical staff. The clinical staff needed information specific to them and their team so that they can manage it on a regular basis and react accordingly as well as executive leaders. And I think across the board we realized the value in just keeping everyone informed to the ability that was relevant to them and so that was something that everyone appreciated. Communication was key, especially during that time. And I think just a lesson learned, it really emphasized that you can install a fire suppression system when the house is already on fire.
- [08:03]
Jacob Emerson
Absolutely. No, it makes sense. Be prepared for these kind of things ahead of time. It's great advice. Is there anything else you'd mention, Anthony, before we move on in terms of specific areas of focus for leaders during a rollout?
- [08:17]
Anthony Coletta
Yeah, well, I think when you're, when you're rolling out, you're going through a large transformation, organization wide, and you want to get as much feedback as you can. This includes, you know, expanding it to as many team members as possible. So not just your functional teams like your hr, your finance teams, but you also want to include your clinical and operational teams and figure out how the decisions that we're making are going to impact them and how we can also make their lives easier throughout this process because it is an organization wide transformation and we, we really want to ensure that we're taking advantage of best practices. We don't want to just continue to do what we're doing today. This is something where we're making an investment in the business. And you want to ensure that you're taking the time to understand what you might not have been doing correctly before and what best practices are out there today. To really get that to come through within your organization, you have to identify champions, people who are going to encourage that ask questions, not be okay with the status quo and really push people to think outside the box. And, and a lot of times it starts with thinking with the end in mind. You want to ensure that your end state is what you're striving for and you have, want to have a clear vision for that because a lot of times it's easy to look to take shortcuts throughout that process. So you really want to stay true to that vision. And lastly, I think it's also an opportunity for a lot of people to improve their, their own professional reputation, to learn something new, get exposed to a different area within the organization that, that you were not before and, and really develop yourself as a professional.
- [09:52]
Jacob Emerson
So let me ask you about some top operational priorities that we are consistently hearing about from hospital leaders today. They want to break down silos and they want to integrate data across their departments. So how do you think that modern ERP systems are supporting this shift in terms of those priorities? And what are the outcomes or the KPIs that these leaders should be tracking to really demonstrate value Moving forward?
- [10:21]
Anthony Coletta
Yeah. Well, one of my biggest priorities when I was going into that transformation for my organization was ensuring that we had much better data connectivity across all platforms, not just within our finance infrastructure and our HR infrastructure. We understood before how slow an organization could move if you actually had to take data out of the core system, move it into spreadsheets, and then manipulate it there. It just became an exercise that caused a lot of frustration in terms of having different versions. And it was tough to tie back data when you're. When you're moving it out and of a core system. And that just led to a lack of confidence in what we were ultimately presenting as reportable information to leadership. And also it really was an opportunity for us to build a strong foundation, improve our ability to scale and support growth. So this was something that, you know, talking about supporting growth, being able to standardize onboarding workflows and bringing speed to value realization. When you have M and A activity, you know, the intent of that is to bring greater value to your organization. And you want to realize that value and you want to realize it quickly because a lot of times organizations are looking to move on to the next MA event. And so they don't want to be bogged down by having to onboard it and hold up their next move because of that. And lastly, on the growth component, the ability to isolate business unit performance is also important so you can understand the ROI that you're achieving from that particular investment. And if you need to make any modifications for any future M and A activity using. Using your HR function as well as an area for cost savings was something that I looked towards by getting insight into where were their high attrition areas, the areas that we spent a lot of recruiting costs on that we could potentially address. And not only that, but was there something. Was there an underlying issue that was causing that attrition that we could address to actually prevent? It was something that was really important. Reducing time to source and onboarding is something that an ERP system does really well. I've seen organizations achieve 35% increase in recruiter efficiency by having a quality ERP system and then also from a financial perspective, having less reliance on overtime, not only reducing costs, but also not having to ask your employees to work as much. So that leads to improved employee morale. You also have areas across the board. It goes into your purchasing function, standardizing purchasing workflows to be able to guide spend that you want your organization and your team members who are ordering to be able to stay consistent with that spend. Reducing bottlenecks throughout the process to prevent supply shortages and also be able to consolidate spend to identify areas where vendors can be consolidated to potentially leverage economies of scale in that regard. And lastly, you really want to ensure that you're making the right decision, because at the end of the day, what is the cost of making the wrong decision? And that's something that's not always quantifiable. And so that's something where just taking the right steps throughout the process, having the right data in place is something that's going to lead to great value. Something that a lot of times it's hard to actually quantify, but can be significant in terms of a business's outlook.
- [13:48]
Jacob Emerson
Understood. Well, so many great insights there for our audience. Anthony, before we go, what else are we missing? We've got a lot of healthcare leaders listening in right now. Anything else you want to share with them that we didn't get to touch on today?
- [14:01]
Anthony Coletta
Yeah, a lot of times it's, it's hard to identify when is the right time to invest in technology. It does take times and a lot of times there are competing priorities that are, that are going on. But you need to ask yourself, what value are you getting from waiting? Because once you get set up on the platform for the future, you're able to start separating yourself from competitors. If that's important to you, you're able to also be better prepared to respond to certain market shocks. Additionally, I think seeing the shift in what new ERP systems are doing, there is a great disparity between what the more modern ERPs are doing versus the old. If you want to have the top quality talent working for your organization and have a more engaged workforce, I think providing them with the best tools to do their job is really important. And lastly, one of the things that was really important to me in terms of my vision for what I wanted to produce for my teams was, was being able to build a brand not only for myself, but also for my team. So I didn't want to be the team that couldn't provide an answer in a meeting. I wanted to be the person that our team was. Our leadership team was constantly turning to, to answer questions and be that, that partner when things got tough.
- [15:13]
Jacob Emerson
Fantastic. Well, Anthony, thank you so much for taking the time to sit down with us and for sharing your perspective with our audience. We really appreciate it.
- [15:22]
Anthony Coletta
All right. Thanks for having me.
- [15:24]
Jacob Emerson
Absolutely. And I'd also like to thank our podcast sponsor, Workday. You can tune into more podcasts from Becker's Healthcare by visiting our podcast page@beckershospitalreview.com.