Although integrating systems and automating transactions are essential to efficiently running a health-plan organization, it is people -- not systems -- who have the greatest potential to improve personal health, drive out inefficiencies, and reduce operational and medical costs. Every day, members, providers, and employees -- not PCs or servers -- make decisions and take actions that affect health outcomes and care costs. By taking advantage of innovative technology tools to improve people-driven processes, your health-plan organization can evolve into a customer-centric, highly collaborative, and knowledge-driven enterprise.
To date, information technology hasn't played a larger role in people-driven processes because, unlike administrative machine-to-machine transactions, much of people's day-to-day work is beyond the reach of conventional line-of-business (LOB) applications such as customer relationship management (CRM), care/wellness management, and core administrative transactions. These applications are designed for routine tasks and structured business processes. Human workflow, on the other hand, is non-routine, unstructured, and highly collaborative, and it often runs end to end across the workplace, home, and multiple company boundaries.
The present-day disconnect between people-driven processes and the workflows often found within LOB applications explains why it's so difficult and time-consuming for employees, employers, providers, and consumers to collaborate at turning information into results. This "results gap" can be bridged only by easy-to-use technologies that work the way people work, connecting users to the people, information, and applications they need to do their jobs. Instead of imposing structured processes on people, solutions need to adapt to the unstructured way that individuals and teams communicate, share information, and work together.
Successfully manage and improve human workflow
To meet the needs of today's health plan organizations, technology needs to:
- Connect people, not just systems, to other people, information, and processes.
- Manage processes across multiple applications that were never designed to work together, including:
- LOB applications such as CRM and care management.
- Personal productivity applications such as e-mail, word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation tools.
- Collaboration applications such as shared workspaces, instant messaging, teleconferencing, and social networking.
- Integrate communications into business processes. Communication is the glue that holds human workflow together, and people need the ability to use communications tools such as e-mail, instant messaging, phones, voice mail, scheduling, and Web conferencing from within the applications they use every day.
Microsoft Office Business Applications (OBAs)
A strategy for digitizing and improving people-driven workflow and collaboration
Enter Microsoft's Office Business Application (OBA) strategy, which is made possible by new platform capabilities in the 2007 Microsoft Office system. Office Business Applications are unique among business applications in that they bridge existing LOB systems using the familiar Microsoft Office interface that your people already know. OBAs enable businesses to unlock the value of their current back-end systems by extending the Microsoft Office client or Web parts into business processes in LOB applications such as enterprise resource planning, CRM, care management, and core administrative systems.
Microsoft's OBA strategy enables health-plan providers to bridge the legacy world of structured, transactional processes to reach the new world of non-routine, unstructured, and people-driven processes. It provides a next-generation platform that supports direct-to-consumer connections, delivery of actionable information within the context of existing workflow and digital lifestyles, and end-to-end collaboration with providers and trading partners-all while integrating with existing core systems. This makes it easier for people and teams to communicate, share insights, and work together from the workplace, from home, and across multiple company boundaries.
The Microsoft Office system
The out of-the-box capabilities of the 2007 Microsoft Office system-including unified communications, collaboration, enterprise content management, business intelligence, enterprise search, and workflow-can help health-plan providers solve critical business issues faster, using fewer resources and with less complexity. The Microsoft Office system is a complete, familiar, and flexible platform that bridges the gaps between people-driven processes and LOB applications by:
Connecting people to other people, information, and processes within the context of their existing digital work style and the familiar applications they already use every day.
Managing communications, insight, document sharing, and human workflow within and beyond the enterprise.
These capabilities help health-plan organizations:
- Increase the value of their existing technology investments.
- Increase individual and team productivity.
- Streamline people-driven processes.
