I knew it was going to be a long, winding road when the salesperson at the dealership called me to ask if I was trying to sell him something. Huh? I’m trying to buy a car. It was clear to me at that moment, and for the four months that followed, that this was going to be a different buying experience. I also realized that I needed to keep a journal about my experience so that I can apply the lessons to my customers. I won’t bore you with all the gnarly details, but I will briefly share some of the lessons I learned about #customerexperience that apply to all of us as we offer products and services to businesses and individuals.

Customer Experience – My Definition

There is probably no shortage of definitions on the web for the phrase “Customer Experience”. I did not look any of them up. Most of us don’t have to either. It’s like being in love. You know it when it’s happening and require no dictionary.

I will give you my definition: “Every interaction in the buying process makes me feel loved, respected and cared for because the seller understands my journey and wants this to be the absolute best experience I have ever had.” I should feel like the process was so well designed that they really cared about my happiness and take pride in creating a raving fan. The experience should be crafted and finely tuned, with craftsman-like pride. It is meant to be remarkable and to produce joy.

It’s Not about the Car

This post is not about the #MustangMachE, its manufacturer #Ford or the dealership (who will remain anonymous). It’s about how I feel right now after plunking down real money. Money that I worked hard to earn. It’s about about how the combination of product, people and process made me feel throughout the buying process. Ironically, the car itself is substantially better than the experience and that is my first lesson.

Lesson #1 – Great Products, Services and Solutions are Table Stakes

Nobody cares if your product, service or solution is a technical marvel, best in class or an innovative game-changer. That’s the price of admission. Let’s face it, the market is crowded and competitive. If you don’t come with you’re A-game, you might as well stay in bed. As it turns out, my Mustang is a shamefully amazing product. Period. However, this experience has taught me that great products, services and solutions are not enough. They can only hope to deliver half of the joy. You need people and process to deliver the rest.

Lesson #2 – People and Process are as Important as Product

My buying experience was a series of disconnected, fumbled handoffs between uninformed people and uncaring systems – an unchoreographed ballet of the absurd. Ford’s systems proclaimed one thing, the dealer said another and what actually happened was something different. I kept asking myself, “Who sells stuff like this?” and “Where am I in the process?” “How do I know for sure what is the truth about things like schedule and delivery?” For the most part I was left guessing. It was frustrating and stole my joy. I was left asking myself, “How good could the product be if their people, processes and systems are so disconnected?”

Ask yourself:  Do your front-line people have all the information and resources they need? Do processes and systems consistently engage and inform your customers? Does your customer understand the map their buying journey and where they are in it? Is this journey designed to be “Good Enough” or “BEST.EXPERIENCE.EVER”? What emotions am I intentionally or unintentionally creating in my customer during this process?

Lesson #3 – The Buying Journey is the Time to Build Joy

I know that I have used the word “Joy” a bunch in this post. It is intentional. What are we doing here? Are we actively seeking mediocrity? I want my customers to spend their journey excited and suspended in a state of delight when they buy from me. They should feel taken care of. They are now friends of the family and should feel like they are part of our team. They should feel like we designed the experience personally for them.

For my Mustang, I put a $500 deposit down on a vanilla Ford website that provided pretty pictures, great fonts and very little information. It left me feeling that I was just given the opportunity to pay and several hundred dollars to give up my personal information for the opportunity to buy something. A transaction, but no joy. I just bought a car! Shouldn’t there be a bit more to it? Some confetti, a marching band maybe even a celebratory email to build my excitement? No.

I put my deposit down in March. What an incredible opportunity for Ford to get me design, create and accelerate my excitement, curiosity and anticipation for the car. Perhaps there could have been a weekly email – “Hey Mike, you are gonna love this cool One-Pedal driving feature, here’s a quick video on it… or “Here’s what to expect, when you pick up the car at the dealership…”.  It was an amazing lost opportunity to build anticipation, loyalty and yes… joy.

What are you doing after a customer places an order? How are you building your brand while they are waiting for delivery? How are you using the journey to build anticipation, excitement and transparency along the way? Are you designing it at all?

Lesson #4 – Customer Experience is about Listening

During my buying journey, when I knew things were going badly, I thought I would reach out. Of course, I looked to LinkedIn and thought I would reach out to Elena Ford, the Chief Customer Experience Officer at Ford. I was sure that she would want to hear about my experience and opportunities to help future buyers benefit from my tough road. I jumped on LinkedIn’s Sale Navigator to send her a message and got this message:

“Sorry, you can’t send a reply because the recipient has disabled all communications”

Ouch! That hurt. However, it beautifully encapsulated my experience and another key lesson. If you care, you have to be listen. You must create multiple means for quick feedback loops.

How are you inviting customer feedback? How easy is it for customers to contact you? Do you really want to hear the complaints? Are you willing to listen with an ear to improve the next customer’s journey?

Unfortunately, there is much more in my Form Mustang Customer Experience journal. Perhaps more lessons are yet to unfold for future posts.

I welcome your feedback on your Customer Experience with BRYJ, our solutions or this post.  Please feel free to contact me via LinkedIn, Twitter or email.  Thanks for reading.

#CustomerExperience #Ford #MustangMache #ElectricVehicles #Joy

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Yes. Simply stated, computer software called Intelligent Capture can “read” a document and convert the handwritten words into data. In fact, many documents like correspondence, checks, applications, orders, faxes, letters and packages sent via postal mail are read every day by Intelligent Capture software. Interested? Read on…

The Challenge – Documents vs. data

We fill out forms virtually every day. They are mostly annoying, sometimes long, often confusing and worst of all, require us to fill them out with a pen or pencil. I just completed one at my doctor’s office last week. Interestingly, the problem of forms only starts with someone completing the form.

It’s also a challenge for millions of U.S. businesses that receive paper forms and correspondence each day. You may be thinking that most correspondence in 2021 is electronic, sent via email, phone apps or uploaded to a web site. It is true that the majority of correspondence between individuals and companies today is digital.  However, it remains very common for businesses to receive hundreds or thousands of pieces of postal mail, faxes and PDFs every day.

Ever wonder what happens to those forms, correspondence documents and faxes?  How do they turn into data on some computer screen or database? That’s the real challenge. Those documents are analog, not digital. Analog documents are unusable to most systems until they are digitized and converted into data.

Recognition – Images into Characters

Most paper forms are scanned/digitized and sent to software call Optical Character Recognition (OCR).  This software was pioneered in the 1930’s, revolutionized in the 1970’s by Ray Kurzweil and progressed at a modest pace through the 1980’s and 1990’s.

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software attempts to convert an image of a document, taken from phone, photo, scanner, email or fax, into data. At a high-level, OCR looks at the image of each character of each word on a page and uses algorithms to recognize or “read” the pixels contained in the image as a character in the alphabet. OCR traditionally works with typed, or machine printed characters, check boxes, bar codes, signatures and other types of data, but was typically much less graceful with handwritten information. In other words, most OCR software did a terrible job with most handwritten information. Fortunately, that changed some time ago, but it seems the word never got out.

The Advent of Handwriting Recognition

Sometimes referred to as Intelligence Character Recognition (ICR), handwriting recognition was developed about 25 years back to take on problems of high-volume handwriting recognition like checks, surveys and postal address recognition on envelopes.  The common misunderstanding is that handwriting recognition produces low quality results, but the truth is that handwriting recognition can work as well as OCR in most circumstances, especially when the right recognition engines are combined with Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.

The Quantum Leap – AI and Machine Learning spawn Intelligent Capture

About five years ago advances in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI) changed the game for OCR and handwriting recognition. AI added the ability for the OCR and handwriting engines to quickly train themselves and get smarter over time.  The combination of AI + OCR + handwriting recognition created a game-changing technology that is commonly referred to as “Intelligent Capture” or “intelligent Document Processing”, while some still refer to the category of technology as OCR.  Instead of expert technical resources writing complex, custom-built computer scripts to setup a recognition solution as in the past, now AI can do most of that work with software and CPUs. Also, in place of technicians constantly tweaking systems as forms change, AI can proactively recommend tweaks that can easily implemented to improve performance and results. Improved results can reduce costs, improve speed and quality by reducing data entry.

Conclusion – Intelligent Capture with AI and Handwriting Recognition can read most documents

My experience over the last several years is that Intelligent Capture with AI really has changed the recognition landscape. Especially in relation to handwriting, our customers are seeing real changes in their business processes. Intelligent Capture can be quickly deployed in weeks versus months. By quickly and efficiently turning documents into data businesses can transform their processes with sometimes dramatically reduce costs.

If you would like to learn a bit more about how Intelligent Capture and how BRYJ might help you with your handwriting or other recognition requirements, shoot me an email at mike@bryjinc.com. Thanks for reading and we welcome your comments.

The post Can Software “Read” (really) Handwritten Documents? appeared first on BRYJ.

Why might you need a consultant for OnBase?

Enterprise Content Management and workflow software products, like Hyland’s OnBase, are complex works of software created over decades. Hyland began working on OnBase over 25 years ago.  There are hundreds of modules and a seeming infinite number of module combinations that might be used for your enterprise solutions. It can be daunting. To make matters even more challenging, Enterprise Content Management (ECM) and workflow software must fit well into your organization’s  business processes, IT infrastructure and reporting systems. It can help to find a knowledgeable consultant to guide you on your journey.

Finding the right consultant can save time, money and aggravation when implementing OnBase. I have seen this time and time again while implementing OnBase, consulting with companies and even during my time as an employee of Hyland.  I thought I would share some of what I learned over the last 20 years of working with OnBase to help you consider what are some of the key characteristics and pitfalls in selecting the right consultant.  

The Seven Tips

1. Solution Experience Over Product Experience (It’s NOT about the tool): Many OnBase consultants tout their certifications, development credentials and the number of Hyland technical conferences they have attended. These are good things given the right circumstance. If I am looking to pound in a nail, I want a quality hammer. However, maybe a screw and a screw gun are a better solution. In other words, sometimes our expertise and biases can blind us.  That’s why I am a fan of consultants with more solution experience than product experience. Solution experience asks – Have we considered all the ways to solve this problem? What solutions provide the best fit for the business processes and people. I always recommend to our customers, think solution first, product second.
2. Independence Matters: How does the company the consultant works for make most of its money? This is a key factor in considering where their recommendations might lean. If they work for Hyland or a Hyland reseller, don’t be too surprised if the recommendations include buying more OnBase modules or high-priced implementation services. If the consultant is from a mid-sized or larger consulting firm, expect the solution to require a substantial investment from you in billable hours from their firm. I recommend that instead, you consider independent, boutique consulting firms that focus on ECM and workflow. These firms often offer a nice balance of expertise, product knowledge and business process understanding, without a reliance on the need to sell software or sell billable hours to make quarterly sales numbers.
3. Workflow over ECM: ECM systems manage unstructured data. As such, it is a critical part of most organizations’ data infrastructure. Although many ECM/OnBase customers leverage the imaging store and retrieve ECM functions, a surprising number do not take advantage of workflow capabilities.  With this in mind, finding the right consultant is about finding someone with expertise and experience with ECM, workflow and process transformation.  Remember that workflow solution expertise trumps product expertise. Workflow consultants should have solid business process transformation credentials. After all, ECM and workflow products are not implemented in a vacuum. They are implemented in business processes that typically require a mix of people, process and technology to achieve success.
4. Industry Expertise: At BRYJ, we work with customers in healthcare, insurance and financial services. While there are some common business problems and processes, even these three industries are very different. We focus on these three industries because, while different, there are common business problems and processes that they all face with ECM and workflow. Your consultant should have a similar focus on your industry. We don’t typically work in manufacturing or higher education because our experience is less relevant.  You should demand consultants that have been in your type of business and department before.
5. In this order! People, Process, Technology: Your consultant should understand that technology supports processes that support people that support happy customers. It’s not the other way around. I continue to read that a surprising percentage of IT projects fail. My bet is that many of these projects fail because the people and process were viewed as something that needed to change so that the technology can work well.  My favorite business guru, Tom Peters is absolutely spot on when he screams “It’s about the people first!”. He’s right and your OnBase consultant should know that any ECM or workflow software must support the users who support their customers.  If not, the ECM or project will fail.
6. It’s all about communication! Your OnBase consultant should be more worried about your success than getting fired. In other words, they need to be comfortable telling you the truth, even when it is a bit uncomfortable.  Unfortunately, most OnBase consultants are not wired this way. The best consultants are advisors first. They are trusted confidants. With this in mind, spend extra time calling references to check on how your OnBase consultant is viewed by previous customers, with special attention to this question – “Did they ever challenge something you took for granted about your business, process, technology…”  You get the idea. Did they talk about any 10,000 pound elephant in the room? If so, you have a winner.
7. The final tip: If you have read this far, let’s chat. What’s been your experience? I’d welcome your feedback on the topic.  Reach out to me at mike@bryjinc.com and let’s schedule a 30 minute session to discuss OnBase, answer your questions and see if we might be able to help.

Let’s Connect

I hope this was helpful in considering how to select the right OnBase consultant. Please comment, share or challenge something I have written that you might not agree with.  I welcome the conversation.

The post Seven Tips on How to Find the Right OnBase Consultant appeared first on BRYJ.

The doctor walked into the Operating Room with a new tool and said, “I never have tried this in surgery before, but the salesperson assured me that it would make my surgeries much, much better.”

The Shelfware Solution Cycle

Ok. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen. But something similar happens with software countless times each day in Corporate America.

It goes something like this:

• A department has an ongoing challenge, finds a possible solution and reaches out to their IT department for ideas on the solution.
• IT finds some competitors for the solution, sets up a series of 60-minute demonstrations and gets some ballpark pricing.
• A combined group of business and IT personnel prefer one product’s demo over another and the pricing seems to fit their budget. They purchase the software.
• It turns out the salesperson and demo were indeed awesome and the deployment goes OK, but the software doesn’t work very well for the business users and what they need to do to get their jobs done. Use of the software is eventually abandoned. It becomes shelfware.
• Three or four years later, the process repeats with new salespeople, new shiny software and, of course, an amazing demo. The shelfware long forgotten, new software is purchased in an attempt to really solve the problem.

Einstein said “Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.” So why do we continue to buy software the same way and hope for better outcomes?

Breaking the Cycle Requires New Thinking

Having worked with and for software companies for over 25 years, I have seen this cycle play out time and time again. But it really does not have to be this way. There is an opportunity for a better approach that almost universally delivers better outcomes. It does not reward the well-rehearsed salesperson nor the flashy software demonstration. It does not need carefully curated references nor nicely crafted use cases with similar businesses. This opportunity to break the Shelfware Solution Cycle leverages the Proof-of-Concept Project (POC). But as Henry Ford said, “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work”.

It’s true. While POCs create an opportunity for better outcomes, they require work from both the buyer and the seller. In my experience many buyers and sellers do not use POCs because they perceive it will take more time and resources and they are unsure of how to use them effectively or efficiently. It may take some work upfront, but POCs pay huge dividends downstream and virtually eliminate shelfware.

Demos Sell Futures, POCs Deliver Data

The Proof-of-Concept approach is built around gathering data about potential solutions and making decisions based on the data. It stands in stark contrast to the software demo which attempts to show a masterfully painted picture of a Utopian future, if only their software was purchased. POCs use the scientific method to test the hypothesis that a solution might work and provide comparative data for scrutiny. 

How do well considered POCs work? It’s actually pretty simple.

1. Determine how to measure solution success: Is it speed or process improvements? Is it cost or error reduction? Or maybe it is simply improving customer experience. All these can be measured and baked into the POC.
2. Create the POC Model:  How best can the hypothesis be tested? What sample data is required as an input?  What output data can be normalized for comparison? How will multiple products be compared fairly? How long will the POC run?

There’s a bit more to it, but that’s the gist.

The Joy of a Well-Constructed POC

At BRYJ, our business model is built on helping customers execute proof of concept projects as a part of their solution purchase. We believe that customers should be armed with the data they need to make a well-informed decision and use that data to be confident in fully implementing their solution. We hate shelfware. You should too. We all have the opportunity to break the Shelfware Solution Cycle, but it takes deliberate planning, execution and perhaps the guidance of a trusted partner like BRYJ.

Talk to us about your Solution Needs

Our team at BRYJ has decades of experience helping organizations solve process problems with process transformation software. Our POC-First model leverages data to assure measurable success.  If you would like to discuss your process challenges and how our team might help, please reach out to mike@bryjinc.com or join our email list on our connect page.

The post The Death of Shelfware appeared first on BRYJ.

The most expensive part of an Enterprise Content Management system (ECM) is not the software. It’s not the implementation, training or project management. Not the servers, scanners, integrations or web services either. No, not even the support, maintenance or upgrades.  After 25 years working with companies on ECM, workflow and Intelligent Capture (OCR) I have come to realize that the most expensive part of these systems is something rarely discussed. The real cost for most ECM and workflow systems is fingers of gold on keyboards.

Gold Fingers

Gold Fingers? Yes. Fingers touching keyboards to data enter indexes and keywords are one of the most expensive, yet rarely discussed, elements of ECM and workflow systems. Most ECM and Workflow vendors, consultants and customers rarely consider data entry in their cost benefit analysis, but the numbers are compelling. In fact, even a small staff of three to index documents typically costs over $150,000 when salaries, benefits and other costs are factored in. But that’s only part of the cost, data entry slows down mission critical processes and can introduce keying errors that can wreak havoc on downstream processes. Slowing processes and introducing errors most certainly impacts impact customer experience negatively.

1 in 67 Characters are Keyed in Error

One in sixty-seven characters is keyed in error. That does not seem too bad until you consider the “1-10-100 rule”. This rule states that if it takes 1 unit of work to complete a task on an item in the mailroom, it will take 10 units to correct that error mid-process.  If the item makes it all the way through the process to the end and fails, the rule goes on to state that it will take 100 times the effort to correct it. Thinking about this in terms of dollars, keying errors early in the process can cost 10X or 100X the errors that make it into an ECM or any other system.  Those fingers on keyboards really are gold. So why are these costs not figured into most systems?

The Shiny New Object

My experience is that our obsession with technology fuels a “tools first” approach to problem solving. Let’s face it, since the caveman sharpened his first axe, we have been fascinated by tools. Some are mesmerizing.  I recall going to a local Chicago Nabisco factory on a school trip and watching Oreos being made by the thousands by machines that were hypnotizing (#bestfieldtripever). Tools are shiny and new. They hold out the hope of a “silver bullet” – that ONE thing that might finally solve the problem. But the truth is that most tools need much more.  They need people and processes surrounding them to be effective and efficient. Many ECM and workflow buyers, bedazzled by the possibilities of these new tools, fail to consider implications of keying, quality errors or downstream costs. Most vendors and consultants are complicit in facilitating tools to be purchased and implemented without the hard work of a real (bean-counter approved) cost benefit analysis. Every self-respecting accountant knows that people costs and process changes must be factored into a return on investment calculation to understand a tool’s true value.

The Missing Link in Most ECM and Workflow Systems

The good news is that an approach that gained popularity in the 1990’s has, within the last five years, been cleverly combined with artificial intelligence and machine learning to address this problem. It offers the realistic possibility to reduce data entry by over 90% while trapping expensive errors early in the process. The combined technologies are called Intelligent Capture and represent taking the best of Optical Character Recognition (OCR), Handwriting Recognition (ICR) and partnering them up with AI to create a truly intelligent component missing in most ECM and workflow systems. The combination is remarkable and can radically reduce the cost and complexity of ECM and workflow processes. For example, we just completed a project that recognized handwritten enrollment forms with over 87% accuracy. After some tuning and machine learning, this solution will likely reduce data entry by well over 90% with higher quality than the previous process.

Reducing The Gold Content in Data Entry

I commonly hear the “It Ain’t Broke” story.  You may have heard it too. It goes something like this: “Why should I spend time on Intelligent Capture? My ECM and workflow seems to be working fine. Nobody is screaming at me. Plus, change is tough. Intelligent Capture sounds like change to me, plus we’re in a pandemic. It ain’t broke. We ain’t fixing it.”

Sorry to relay here that most systems are indeed broke. Additionally, the toughest change to deal with is the change that is unexpectedly thrust upon you by a competitor or market conditions. You need not look further than the recent unprecedented frigid weather in Texas as an example of an unanticipated event causing unexpected danger. Now apply that kind of event to your organization and you might find your ECM and workflow systems unprepared. Approaches like Intelligent Capture provide process agility for times when change stresses your company. They also can dramatically reduce entry costs and the 10-100X increase in downstream process costs that can be caused by errors.

Take the Golden Fingers out of your ECM and Workflow with BRYJ

Interested in learning more? Reduce the costs of entry and errors in your ECM and workflow systems. Give us a call. We offer assessments of existing Capture, ECM and Workflow systems to identify the opportunities to reduce costs with Intelligent Capture and can help you implement changes if they’re needed.  If you are interested in discussing, or if you simply have a comment, reach out to Mike Hurley at mike@bryjinc.com.

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The Healthcare Data Desert

You may have heard about “data lakes”, the vast pools of data that many organizations are building to store, manage and analyze their ever-growing repositories of structured and unstructured data. While I applaud these efforts, it begs the question – What do you call the opposite? How do we name the situations where data is difficult or impossible to access?  I call these data deserts. Today, I want to discuss the healthcare data desert that we all live in and how we can escape.  

In the healthcare data desert, information is as plentiful as grains of sand, but useful insight is absent. Consider this the next time you visit your doctor and they hand you a folder filled with paper for your next doctor’s appointment. Another excellent example of life in the data desert is a faxed medical record or annual health assessment.  A deep, rich and immensely useful treasure trove of data exists in these documents, but the data is virtually unusable in its analog form. If those documents were digital data, they could be scoured by sophisticated algorithms to provide insight into our health. Today, most of that data slips through the cracks in the system like grains of desert sand. Why? Because data locked in documents is considered too expensive to be extracted from scanned paper, faxes and PDFs.

Who cares? We all should. It affects our health and our wallets. In order to improve both we need to break free of the analog world. Said another way, healthcare organizations need to live in a world of data and automated digital processes, but instead are left to meander aimlessly in a data-parched desert landscape filled with postal mail, faxes and PDFs. 

Data, Data Everywhere, and not a drop to drink?

In “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge a thirsty sailor on a ship is surrounded by salt water that he cannot drink. He proclaims, “Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink.” Health business executives share a similar experience and could similarly shout “Data, data everywhere, but mostly in a form that stinks.” Data is indeed everywhere, but because it is in the wrong form, it remains in the data desert. We need data, but we get documents. 

Three Lessons on Escaping in a Healthcare Data Desert

What lessons have I learned in my 25 years focused on the problem documents and data in healthcare?  Here are some thoughts to ruminate on:

1. Solutions over software. I have had the opportunity to interact with software companies now for over 30 years.  I have learned that most are trying to solve their quarterly revenue problems, not your data or process problems. For too many, it is okay to round the corners of the truth, tell part of the story and simply give a good demo (See my previous post “A Demo and A Prayer”). I have learned that software is not THE solution. It is a single technology component that can only solve problems when combined with subject matter experts (people) and a deep understanding of process transformation (Process and Change Management). At BRYJ we work with several software products that turn documents into data and transform healthcare processes. They can be an excellent part of a complete solution, but only when you have a clear understanding of what role they play in the overall solution. 
2. Truth is about complete and accurate data. Your GPS only gets you where you want to go because it has verified, accurate and complete data about streets and addresses. Your software only gets you where you want to go when the underlying data is equally complete and accurate. Unfortunately, healthcare data is often incomplete and imperfect. Like the examples mentioned above, data on forms, in medical records and sent via fax is often not turned into data.  This data is critical to complete data. We need the whole truth, not just part of it.  Getting to truth data often requires technologies like Optical Character Recognition (OCR), Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR – for handwritten documents) and Machine Learning/AI to that can capture all the data making it available for analysis and insight. But these technologies are only part of the solution. A guide is crucial.
3. You need a trusted guide. It is hard to make it out of the data desert without a guide. As mentioned above, for a successful solution you need people, process and technology. A key part of the “people” component is your guide. A guide is trustworthy, experienced and a deep subject matter expert on the topic of transitioning from analog to digital processes and in turning documents into data. Guides can help connect the dots between business, financial and technical goals. Guides can also help organizations extract maximum leverage from solutions to increase process velocity, improve customer delight and reduce costs. At BRYJ, we are often asked to be guides for our clients as they look to transform analog processes, turn documents into data and break free of the analog data desert.

Come out of the Desert!

What do you think? Is healthcare stuck in the sand due to analog processes and documents? If you feel like you have been living in the data desert for far too long and are looking for a guide that can help you select the right path to a data oasis, or if you simply have a comment, reach out to Mike Hurley at mike@bryjinc.com.

The post Lost in the Data Desert appeared first on BRYJ.

A NASA Scientist walks into…

A scientist from NASA walks into a local office supply store looking to purchase a 3D printer to print intricate 3D titanium parts vital for the international space station. A friendly clerk says that they don’t have 3D printers at the store, but they do have some ink jet printers that are “representative”.  The clerk demonstrates the inkjet and the scientist loves it. He is convinced that since the ink jet printer works, the 3D titanium printer must work as well. His problem is solved. He purchases four and then goes next door to Taco Bell for lunch.

A Demo and a Prayer

Surprisingly, people do go to Taco Bell for lunch and businesspeople also purchase mission critical business software with little more than a promise from a salesperson and a strategy based on hope.  They hope that the salesperson was telling the (whole) truth and also hope that even though they did not demonstrate the actual software doing what they needed it to do, they did promise it would work after the prospect gave them a purchase order.

It seems unfathomable that we still buy software this way. In talking with a colleague just yesterday I asked him why businesses don’t demand more proof from software vendors that their products will work as claimed.  He was spot on when he said that it is both a supply-side and demand-side problem. “Most software vendors aren’t set up to properly execute a Proof of Concept (POC) and most buyers neither demand them nor are equipped to execute them.”  I could not agree more, but it is a problem we all need to fix.

Billions at Stake

Corporations spend billions on software each year. It powers our tech and service-based economies. Vast corporate buying teams are formed to evaluate products. Stone-faced procurement agents and lawyers scrutinize detailed proposals and thick contracts. Complex spreadsheets are created to analyze the net present values of future cash flows. In the end however, it typically is left to the users to connect the dots and determine the equivalent of the question above; Can this ink jet printer print 3D titanium parts for a space station? Mostly relying on what they observed in an incomprehensible software demonstration. It is what we call “faith-based purchasing” and it happens in thousands of conference rooms every day.

Of course, the corporations are not just betting the cost of the purchase. Software can have profound impacts on vital processes like customer service and operations. If the software doesn’t work properly, the implications can affect customers, employees and other stakeholders, sometimes harshly. The real cost of software that does not work can inflict wounds that take years to heal.

A Better Way

There is a better way. Become a Missourian! Missouri is the Show Me State. It really is that simple. Demand that software vendors show you the software working in your environment with your documents, processes and data in a Proof of Concept project (POC). After having completed many POCs over my career, I have come to believe that a well designed and executed POC is an insurance policy for the software buyer (and for the software vendor too).

For those unfamiliar with POCs, they involve a project to prove the proposed value of software where one or more software vendors proving their software in a limited, but representative, real-world solution. Practical and realistic scenarios are created by buyers for the vendors to clearly show how they can meet the business, technical, process and cost needs of the buyer. The concept is simple, but can be challenging to execute We have some learned some best practices along the way and thought we would share.

How to POC

As corporate buyers look to buy software, the real question should not be “Will this work for us?”, but instead, “How can we provide evidence on the benefits of this solution?”.  At BRYJ, almost all of our new-customer projects start with a POC. It protects both the buyer and the vendor by ensuring that expectations are set correctly and then met, for all involved. Here are some high-level recommendations for your POC:

1. Avoid Free POCs: Free POCs are a challenge for both vendor and customer engagement. My experience is that customers pay little attention because they have little “skin in the game” and vendors look at POCs as money losing affairs that should be dispensed with quickly and with as few vendor resources as possible. The truth about free POCs is that you typically get what you pay for.  You need commitment from everyone involved to get at the truth. Recommendation: Avoid free POCs. Create a paid project with a project plan, milestones, deliverables… and hold the vendor accountable for providing useful data and results.
2. Decide What are you Proving: Most POCs (especially free POCs) are a lot of work with little actual data that proves anything.  POCs should start by establishing what it is you want to prove. It sounds simple, but it is definitely not.  Are you testing technical ability of a product to do X? Or perhaps, you are looking to ensure that Y costs are reduced without a reduction in quality? Perhaps it is about speed or customer experience. Recommendation: Establish clear, written expectations on what you are trying to prove with the POC and gain approval of all involved.
3. Determine How and What to Measure: It is equally critical that you determine how the POC will measure success or failure.  For our POCs we typically focus on technical, process and cost measures, but these will vary based on your goals. Of course, the technical aspects need to be objectively measured. But this can be difficult since most vendors are challenged by POCs. Be specific. For process measures, make sure that your business users can test and measure the implications for process speed and quality, at a minimum. Get your bean-counters in the room for the cost measures.  Make sure that the business case is built from actual data output from the POC. Recommendation: Design measurement into the POC. Be rigorous with your vendor in providing complete and clear data. Evaluate results carefully.
4. Get Help: Proof of Concept projects are not a walk in the park. With this in mind, consider engaging a company like BRYJ that has experience with POCs. At BRYJ, we have a checklist-based approach to POCs. We believe and have seen how a well-designed and executed POC can mean the difference between great success and utter failure.

We are proud of our work to end faith-based purchasing. We believe that customers should demand more from vendors and solutions. Vendors should be held to a high standard that ensures the promised benefits that the buyer needs to justify the purchase. We should all demand more than a demo and a prayer.

Let’s Talk POCs

If you would like to learn more about the BRYJ and our approach to POCs, please reach out to me at mike@bryjinc.com. Thanks for reading. Please consider sharing with your network.

Mike Hurley is co-founder and President of BRYJ, Inc. BRYJ, Inc. is a consulting and systems integration firm on a mission to help organizations with intelligent capture and digital transformation. Our team has been helping companies digitize their processes since 1997. You can follow Mike on Twitter @BryjMike or connect with him on LinkedIn here.

The post A Demo and a Prayer appeared first on BRYJ.

Webinar

Just a quick note – Be sure to register for our webinar Using AI to Automate Prior Authorization Processing next Wednesday, October 28 @ noon CST – Register HERE.  We will be discussing and demonstrating how AI, Intelligent Capture and workflow software can transform healthcare payer processes.

No, please not another demo…

Let’s face it, most software demos are boring, horrible wastes of time. I was reminded of this as we were completing our 2020 market review of intelligent capture products over the last several days. We do these reviews every 12-18 months to determine what the market and technology trends are, status of products and who is doing interesting things with the intelligent capture technology. This requires us to sit through a number of vendor demos.

During this recent round of meetings with product developers I was struck by how the software demo as a method of communicating real insight into products is failing. I am starting to think that the whole model for demos has careened off the rails and now, in most circumstances, fails to achieve the basic objective of helping the audience understand what is unique and valuable about a product.

Instead of simply complaining about the problem, I have compiled my list for how software and solution vendors can make software demos more engaging and valuable for their audiences.

Demo 101

There are some basic rules that are table stakes for demos, that, surprisingly, don’t always find their way into software demos.

• Get a watch: Don’t be on time, be 5 minutes early. 
• Be ready: Be prepared start on time. Establish expectations with the audience about how much time is available.
• Finish early: Leave time for questions. Don’t finish at minute 59 of a 60-minute meeting.
• Confirm Audio and Video: Can people hear and see you and your screen? How about checking in with your audience?

Provide Some Context

Most audience members have likely not seen your product before. Can you help them understand what it is you are going to show? How about a map of the “demo journey” you are going to take them on? Finally, how about living by this rule: Throughout the demo, tell us:

1. What are you going to show us?
2. What are you showing us right now?
3. What did you just show us?

Using this model reinforces the concepts you are looking for the them to take away from the demo and provides an opportunity for the audience to ask questions along the way.

Show Some Empathy

Empathy in software demos means to understand your audience and what they are looking to get from the demo.  A simple way to do this is to ask before the demo.  If that can’t be done, start the demo with a simple question: “What can I do to make this demo valuable for you?” One of the worst things I have experienced is to have an unprepared vendor demonstrate a trucking company bill of lading solution for a health plan looking for claims automation. Huh? If the audience can’t connect your solution to their problem, you might as well not have taken their time.

It’s not (ONLY) about the technology

I get it.  You are in love with your software and can’t wait to show us how amazing it is.  Hold on, we need a little bit more than your undying love.  How about some real stories about how customers are using your solution today?  What have you learned about our problem that we don’t know?  What are the typical benefits? How much will this save us? The technology is important, but it is only part of the story.  We need to understand the product’s implications for our company, people, processes and technology.

Stop the “One more thing”

Feature, feature, feature… ad nauseum. Features are great, benefits are what audiences care about. I have seen countless demos that show feature after feature for 45-50 minutes, only for the software engineer to say, “Oh wait, there’s one more thing I would like to show you.”  Of course, this is yet one more feature… UGH! Vendors need to connect features with benefits for demos to be valuable and engaging.

What Can you Do?

Demand Better! Even though many are hesitant to use it, audiences have real power. Time is more than money, it is the real currency of our lives.  Don’t waste a moment letting a bad demo meander incoherently for an hour.  Raise your voice and demand better. Require an agenda that conforms with what you need. Don’t let vendors go down rabbit holes. Most of all, watch the clock and if you are not getting what you need out of a vendor demo, call a time out and get reset.

At BRYJ we periodically give Intelligent Capture demos to prospects and customers.  We strive to make each moment valuable and useful for the audience. Hopefully you experience our preparation, empathy and professionalism if you ever participate in a BRYJ webinar or demonstration.

Schedule a BRYJ Demo?

If you would like to learn more about the BRYJ and our solutions for healthcare and insurance companies or maybe see a demo, please reach out to me at mike@bryjinc.com. Thanks.

Mike Hurley is co-founder and President of BRYJ, Inc. BRYJ, Inc. is a consulting and systems integration firm on a mission to help organizations with intelligent capture and digital transformation. Our team has been helping companies digitize their processes since 1997. You can follow Mike on Twitter @BryjMike or connect with him on LinkedIn here.

The post Why Most Software Demos are Awful appeared first on BRYJ.

Today while preparing for our webinar Using AI to Automate Prior Authorization Processing (October 28 @ noon CST – Register HERE) I re-read the CAQH 2019 Index. CAQH does a great job with their yearly index and deserve a shout out here. Several quotes from the report jumped out at me:

Prior Authorization Friction

“prior authorization is the costliest and most time-consuming transaction to conduct manually”

“Electronic prior authorization adoption remained low relative to other administrative transactions”

“Prior authorization continues to be a growing challenge for 9 out of 10 physicians”

“The medical industry could save… $454 million annually” through automation.

Prior Authorization is costly, time-consuming and challenging. The Prior authorization clearly creates process friction for all involved; patients, members, employees, providers, plans, specialists and many others.  

Quantifying PA Friction

I started my career in accounting so I am always interested in the numbers and other data that can help quantify the process friction with prior authorizations.  CAQH also has some revealing quotes:

“Potential Average Time Savings for Medical Industry (per transaction): 17 Minutes”

“Number of 2019 PA transactions (Manual or Partially Electronic): 159 million”

“$454 million annual savings opportunity for payers and providers”

Clearly the data points to impressive savings if prior authorizations are automated.

A Vision for a Frictionless Process

In my previous post Can Software read Prior Authorizations, I argued that it shouldn’t require an act of Congress to get electronic prior authorizations, but it actually will require just that. Considering how dysfunctional our Congress is these days, changing the law is unlikely.  Given that, what should our vision be today?  Here is what I propose:

Let’s make Prior Authorizations as easy as possible for providers.  Let’s not require them to invest in new technologies while their budgets are strained and IT resources are scarce. The fax is not great, but it is the closest thing to interoperability we have right now.  Let providers keep their fax workflows as they are.  Let’s use existing Intelligent Capture, Artificial Intelligence and Workflow technologies to automate the process as best we can to reduce friction, costs and provider unhappiness, TODAY!

Reducing Risk with a Proof of Concept Project

One “technology” we have at our disposal today is the Proof of Concept (POC) Project. Let’s use it to prove that we can automate faxes at health plans to make prior authorizations faster, cheaper and easier for all involved. Virtually every project we take on at BRYJ involves a POC. We created the PA Innovation Proof of Concept project (IPOC) to prove that PA automation is a reality today.  The IPOC is a 30-day project to test your PA documents with Intelligent Capture software. We offer the IPOC in a short timeframe and at a low cost to show you what is possible in just 30 days.  The technology works, the PA Innovation POC simply proves it to you, with your documents, before you invest in a complete system.

Schedule a Call

If you would like to learn more about the BRYJ Innovation POC for Prior Authorizations, please reach out to me at mike@bryjinc.com. Thanks.

Mike Hurley is co-founder and President of BRYJ, Inc. BRYJ, Inc. is a consulting and systems integration firm on a mission to help organizations with intelligent capture and digital transformation. Our team has been helping companies digitize their processes since 1997. You can follow Mike on Twitter @BryjMike or connect with him on LinkedIn here.

The post The Frictionless Prior Authorization appeared first on BRYJ.

The Case for the Electronic Prior Authorization

WEBINAR: Interested in automating Prior Authorizations? Be sure to register for our upcoming webinar Using AI to Automate Prior Authorization Processing (October 28 @ noon CST – Register HERE).

The American Medical Association (AMA) is working aggressively to make electronic prior authorizations a national requirement. There’s good reason. An AMA survey of 1,000 practicing physicians in December 2019 found that:

• 91% of physicians reported that Prior Authorization (PA) delays access to necessary care.
• 24% of physicians indicate that PA has led to a serious adverse event for a patient in their care.
• Practices report completing 33 PAs per week.
• The workload takes almost two business days’ worth of physician and staff time.

It’s hard not to agree with the AMA. However, electronic PAs will require both houses of Congress to agree and pass legislation mandating electronic PAs. In the midst of a global pandemic, economic collapse, multiple natural disasters and election year kerfuffle, Congress is unlikely to pass anything soon.

What we need is a solution that will help patients, providers and health plans now, while Congress focuses on trying to find its belly button.

What would an Ideal Solution look like?

So what can we do, now? Well, an ideal solution might look like this:

1. Providers would keep doing what they are doing today, helping patients and faxing PAs to health plans. This requires no new technology to be purchased for cash-strapped physicians and no change in their current processes or technologies. They can focus on healing people.
2. Health plans would have software that automatically “reads” the faxed PAs. The software would also separate faxes for different patients that were faxed together from the same provider (a big problem today).
3. The software would then identify what type of documents are included in the fax.  These typically include faxed cover pages, prescriptions, lab results, medical history and other clinical documents. Software, with the help of Artificial Intelligence (AI) would do the identification.
4. The software would then extract key information from each fax page. Data such as patient name, date of birth, dates of service, procedure codes, diagnosis codes and other important information could be “read” from the faxed images and turned into data as if it had been typed into a keyboard.  Even handwritten data could be read.
5. Finally, the PA data would then be automatically shared with multiple systems and immediately routed via automated workflow to the right person (a nurse or doctor) at the health plan who can review the case and complete the approval.

The Ideal, Realized

As it turns out, this software exists today.  It is called Intelligent Capture software.  In fact, many of the components of Intelligent Capture have been around for 20+ years. You have probably heard of Optical Character Recognition (OCR), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Enterprise Workflow (Workflow) software.

• OCR software has been extracting data from documents for over 30 years.  Even handwriting recognition has a long history of success.
• Artificial Intelligence algorithms, including machine learning, power much of the software on the internet, especially applications like social media.
• Workflow software has routed data and digital images around our offices for many years as well.

Combining OCR and AI is what makes Intelligent Capture so powerful. Very capable of automating the reading of a complex PA.  Combine Intelligent Capture with Workflow and you can automate much of the pain of the current PA process today

Let’s face it, the AMA is right. Electronic Prior Authorizations are the best long term strategy.  However, we can solve the problem with existing technology at a fraction of the cost and without requiring physicians to spend money they don’t have, change their processes or buy new technologies. We can also don’t have to wait for an act of Congress.

Prior Authorization Innovation Proof of Concept

It is reasonable to be skeptical that Intelligent Capture and workflow software can automate PAs at a fraction of the cost of current technologies.  That’s why we created the PA Innovation Proof of Concept project (IPOC).  The IPOC is a 30-day project to test your PA documents with Intelligent Capture software. We offer the IPOC in a short timeframe and at a low cost to show you what is possible in just 30 days.  The technology works, the PA Innovation POC simply proves it to you, with your documents, before you invest in a complete system.

Schedule a Call

If you would like to learn more about the BRYJ Innovation POC for Prior Authorizations, please reach out to me at mike@bryjinc.com. Thanks.

Mike Hurley is co-founder and President of BRYJ, Inc. BRYJ, Inc. is a consulting and systems integration firm on a mission to help organizations with intelligent capture and digital transformation. Our team has been helping companies digitize their processes since 1997. You can follow Mike on Twitter @BryjMike. Or connect with him on LinkedIn here.

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