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What Does It Mean for Hospitals?

The desk phone continues to be a core part of many organizations. However, the demise of certain older PBX companies (Nortel), and the financial state of some current players, like Avaya, has brought the long-term viability of these systems into question. While some companies have decided to keep an unsupported platform for their telephone system and use either internal or external solutions to keep it running, for others this is not an option.

In hospitals, communications systems are a life or death concern

In the healthcare sphere, communications are more than just the phones; it is a critical part of delivering the care that facilities and organizations are chartered to do. In fact, communications failures are a large contributor to adverse clinical events and outcomes. In a retrospective review of 14,000 in-hospital deaths, communications errors were found to be the leading cause, twice as frequent as errors due to inadequate clinical skill.  Communications systems are critical for healthcare operations and are one of the factors that are tracked in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), part of the US Health and Human Services (HHS). For example, in the Medicare Contractor Beneficiary and Provider Communications Manual, systems are to be available 24/7 and not to return “soft busies”.

A communications failure can lead to decertification

In fact, a communications failure and the impact on a facility can be part of a CMS audit. If the system is not in current support, it can result in action leading to decertification. For healthcare facilities, CMS decertification can be disastrous whether it’s the cost of bringing the communications system back up to code and recertifying, the loss in business continuity, the impact on reputation or the sheer cost of losing revenue from CMS-based programs.
For healthcare facilities with systems from vendors that have either ceased to function or are in financial difficulties, this presents a significant issue. For example, Avaya has announced that support for its CS1000 PBX may be terminating in 2017. While this may be limited to the CS1000M models, the current Avaya bankruptcy and the uncertainty about the ongoing business are clear indicators that healthcare facilities with these systems need to begin thinking about their long-term future.

Learn about healthcare communications solutions >

How to replace the CS1000 platform

One readily available alternative to the CS1000 is the wide variety of Mitel communications platforms designed for healthcare facilities of all sizes. With Mitel’s ability to integrate easily with established systems, healthcare institutions can migrate with minimal impact and reasonable cost. HealthEast Care System, a healthcare organization with four hospitals, 14 clinics, homecare services and a medical transportation center, recently decided that its older Avaya system and service was no longer meeting its needs. After an exhaustive search, HealthEast narrowed down its options to continuing with Avaya or choosing a new communications system from Cisco or Mitel. In the end, Mitel’s total cost of ownership was less than half of Avaya’s or Cisco’s. Mitel’s offering presented a simpler architecture and the ability to integrate with HealthEast’s electronic healthcare record system, Epic. With the time and money it will save through ease of migration, HealthEast chose Mitel’s platform as the best path forward.

Whatever you do, do it soon

Clearly, time is running out on these older systems, and both for the good of the patient population and the ongoing business of the facilities themselves, considering alternatives is important. Mitel is an option that should be considered in the overall migration planning exercise.

In this post, we’ll take a high‐level look at different factors driving the digital imperative in modern business and how it’s changing the nature of competition and market dynamics.

Recognizing digital business drivers

Digital business is the application of technology to build new operating models, processes, software and systems by leveraging the convergence of people, business and things.

These advances are creating new product and service opportunities as well as transforming business operations, helping companies generate more revenue, gaining greater competitive advantage and achieving higher efficiency.

Competitive advantage in this era of business is based on capturing new opportunities by rapidly adapting to changes in an organization’s market or industry. Those that can achieve this level of agility will leap-frog the competition, while those that can’t will struggle to survive. Thus, digitization – the process of becoming a digital business – needs to be at the top of every business and IT leader’s priority list.

Companies can no longer simply differentiate their products and services along a single dimension such as price, features, quality or support.

Maintaining and increasing competitive advantage in today’s dynamic, global economy is a major challenge for businesses in every industry. Companies can no longer simply differentiate their products and services along a single dimension such as price, features, quality, or support. Except for commodity goods and services, the lowest price doesn’t guarantee a sale, poor quality is never acceptable, and customer service requires far more than a friendly smile.

Instead, perceived value, functional match to requirements, exceptional quality, and total customer experience across all touch points are all important aspects of the new competitive norm.

Additionally, businesses must find innovative and creative new ways to engage, attract and retain their customers.

While it’s well understood that attracting a new customer costs dramatically more than keeping an existing one – as much as ten times more – it’s never been easier for customers to find, research, and move their business to your competitors.

And customers want to deal with businesses that not only provide the highest quality goods and services they need, when they need it, and at a price they’re willing to pay, but also that are socially responsible—with their employees, their partners and suppliers, their communities, and their environment.

In a time when costs are constantly being
evaluated, inefficiency equals waste.

Inefficient business processes and toxic corporate cultures inevitably affect the bottom line (profits), but increasingly impact the top line (sales) as well. In a time when costs are constantly being evaluated, inefficiency equals waste—which no one wants to see or hear about. Everything you do as a business must stand up to public scrutiny. Customers don’t necessarily want to know how the sausage is made, but they also can’t look away from a train wreck.

Today, digitization has three primary drivers (sources from ZK Research).

Go digital or go home

Market leadership is no longer about having the best product, the lowest price, or even the best people. Becoming a market leader in any industry is now based on being able to capture new opportunities in a rapidly changing market.

This has always been true, but changes in market leadership used to take decades to occur. For example, in the 1980s, big box retailers completely redefined how retail organizations managed inventory. However, it took nearly two decades for their impact ­– not only to the retail industry but also the entire value chain – to be fully realized.

Becoming a market leader in any industry is now based on being able to capture new opportunities in a rapidly changing market.

Today, natively digital organizations are having a similar impact in fewer than five years. Figure 1‐2 shows that in 1960, businesses remained on the S&P 500 Index, on average, for 50 to 60 years; by the early 1980s, the average was less than 30 years. As this trend is likely to continue, by 2025, businesses can expect to remain on the index for an average of only 15 years, as new market leaders continually emerge.

Your Business Phone Vendor MATTERS!

When assessing vendors for any major IT purchase, you’re making a big commitment in time, energy and budget. You’re putting trust in your vendor to deliver certain benefits and functionality. If your business phone vendor doesn’t deliver, you and your company could suffer because of it.

For business phone system and collaboration vendors, you have to take into account things like value for cost, features and benefits, integrations and interoperability, deployment models and more.

Lately, one seemingly innocuous factor has become increasingly important—vendor stability.

The reason vendor stability has become so important in business communications today is twofold.

1. First, the speed of change and quick rise of new technologies are changing the communications landscape at a blistering pace, shaking up the traditional order of things. Old vendors may be displaced, but fast-rising vendors may fall just as quickly as they ascended.
2. Second, vendor stability actually affects a huge number of other factors that affect the relative success or failure of your IT decisions, which we cover in this post.

With so much at stake, it’s important to understand exactly how your communications vendor’s stability can affect you and your company so you can make a truly informed decision.

Jump to a section:
Ability to strategize
Guiding philosophy
Solvency
Relationships and continuity
Squeezing resources
Changing pricing and cost structures
Updates and new features
Integrations and interoperability
Tech support
Timing of IT initiatives
Personal credibility

Ability to strategize

Technology decisions are no longer single points in time. Technology (including business communications and collaboration technology) is changing at such a rapid rate that the decisions you make today will affect your entire IT strategy roadmap down the line.

Your decision becomes less of an isolated event and more of the crest on a wave. You have to make decisions anticipating what changes will come. It’s no easy feat. And it gets even harder with an unstable business phone system vendor.

Uncertainty puts a big kink in your ability to come up with a reliable long-term strategy if you don’t have high confidence in your phone system vendor’s longevity and direction.

Without the confidence that your vendor will still be around long term and the understanding of where they’re headed with their technology, you’ve built unnecessary uncertainty into your own plan.

It’s hard enough to navigate a solid communications and collaboration IT strategy in optimal conditions. There’s no reason to add additional uncertainty to your strategy.

Guiding philosophy

While most IT pros don’t think about a communications vendor’s vision or philosophy as something that directly affects their daily lives, the indirect results of those philosophies certainly can.

If a vendor creates all of their offerings with simplicity and user-friendliness in mind, your company probably comes to rely on those qualities. Likewise, if a different vendor ensures everything they offer can be customized to the hilt. There are endless examples.

Your communications vendor’s approach may even be part of why you selected that vendor in the first place. So, if your vendor’s stability comes into question, will leadership continue to operate under the same philosophy? Will the same leadership even be in place?

Will the user-friendly company start releasing tech that’s harder to use? Will the low-price leader raise their prices? Will the customizable vendor start locking down your choices? You can’t say for sure. But an unpredictable change in philosophy could send your IT strategy for a spin.

Solvency

When you make a major technology purchase, you and your vendor make several commitments to each other. Your commitment is typically a financial one. Their commitment is typically to deliver technology (and possibly services) that meet certain requirements.

If your vendor gets into financial trouble, will they still be able to deliver on their commitments?

If you purchased ongoing support services, will they continue to offer them—or could they drop the contract in bankruptcy? If your contract included future upgrades, could those evaporate in restructuring? If you’re midway through a phased deployment, could they leave your project half done?

Regardless of the specifics, you don’t want to get left high and dry if your business phone system vendor gets into financial trouble.

Find out what industry experts have to say about the stability of specific vendors today >

Relationships and continuity

IT involves a lot of technology, but most people don’t realize how much it relies on relationships. IT pros often get into a rhythm with their day-to-day contacts from certain vendors.

People and teams that know you and your systems can become a huge asset.

Just think of how much time it takes to get a new person up to speed when your vendor changes one of your contacts. Months, sometimes months or years of hard-earned familiarity can be lost. Something your previous contact would have understood without saying now requires 45 minutes of background and half a dozen emails with network diagrams and configuration details.

When a business phone system vendor starts to get unstable, you can expect plenty of personnel changes. Your contacts could get reassigned or let go tomorrow. And there’s no telling how long your new contacts could last.

In fact, you don’t even know if your communications vendor will maintain the same approach to contact with their customers. Historically, if you had a problem, you’d call Jeff, the amazing tech who would stay on the phone until your issue was solved. With instability, trying to call Jeff might get you an automated message that tells you to check out their online FAQs.

Squeezing resources

Every business has a finite amount of resources. When a company’s stability comes into question, the company typically devotes a lot of time and resources to trying to right the ship.

People that may have previously been dedicated to functions that mattered to your success may have big chunks of their time sucked up in efforts to restructure the company or dramatically change the product portfolio or figure out a blitz of special promotions.

The list of activities is long, but the result is the same. All of the activities a communications vendor undertakes to try to re-stabilize the company inevitably takes major resources away from the company’s core activities. That means you get a little less of everything they previously offered.

Changing pricing and cost structures

Business communications vendor instability isn’t always an apocalyptic scenario. But even the adjustments a company can make to try to stay viable when they’re unstable can have a big impact on your business. Take pricing and cost structures.

Your vendor might try to raise margins on certain products to make up revenue, squeezing your IT budget. They could attempt to change one-time purchases to a recurring cost model. They could package up features that were once available a-la-carte. The list goes on.

The point is that your ability to budget for your business communications and collaboration expenses can get very shaky when your vendor is unstable. If you don’t have cushy cash reserves and a very understanding boss (and finance department), you may want to steer clear.

Click here to check out exclusive offers for Avaya customers and prospects >

Updates and new features

Even if a communications vendor doesn’t dissolve completely, instability can still spur less obvious disadvantages. Unstable vendors may stop delivering the same kind of innovation – or even just regular updates and new features – that you expect. Their stable competitors aren’t waiting around for them to catch up, either.

That cool new integration your competitor’s phone system vendor just added? You’re not getting that for eight months. That feature that’s all the buzz at this year’s IT conference? It’s not even on your vendor’s radar.

If you go with an unstable communications vendor, be prepared to answer a lot of questions about, “Why don’t we have that, yet?”

Integrations and interoperability

No business communications and collaboration system lives in a vacuum. It has to plug into CRMs and ERPs and database after database. So ask yourself this question—will all the vendors of products that integrate with your communications system continue to support those integrations if your vendor starts looking shaky?

Companies (like CRM providers) that integrate with many other companies’ offerings have limited time and budget for product development just like everyone else.

If your business phone system vendor begins to falter, your other vendors may begin pulling back support for integrations with those systems.

You may get compatibility for new features later than companies on communications systems from more stable vendors. They may elect to suspend updates until your communications system vendor’s situation has become more concrete. If you’re in a highly competitive industry, even these less catastrophic setbacks can chip away at your competitive edge.

Tech Support

Let’s say you get your phone system set up just the way you want it. It should run perfectly from then on, right?

Wrong.

Anyone in IT knows that’s not the case. Sooner or later, something will stop working the way you want it to.

Maybe a firmware update clashes with custom coding. Maybe your call controller decides it doesn’t feel like talking with your endpoints. Maybe provisioning a new user mysteriously breaks your CRM integration.

There’s not always a rhyme or reason to what goes awry, but even the best system will eventually give you something to figure out. And when it does, you need to know—will your vendor and relevant partners be around to continue offering support for their technology?

If your vendor has a history of stability, you can rest easy knowing that there will be someone there that can bail you out five, 10 even 15+ years down the road.

If your vendor is a little unstable, or just new enough you don’t know how long they’ll be around—they could be out of business before your product licenses expire.

Nobody has time for that. You don’t want to leave yourself vulnerable to running unsupported technology.

Timing of IT initiatives

Completing a major IT purchase can be a huge commitment involving lots of complexity. So why burden yourself with the added complexity of an unstable vendor?

If the communications vendor you’re focused on isn’t on solid footing, what are the chances your IT project will go ahead on schedule? People who have to approve your purchase may want to delay it just to see how your vendor’s situation works out. Can you afford that delay?

Even if you do get your purchase approved, organizational and personnel changes due to your vendor restructuring and downsizing could add their own unforeseen delays.

Whatever you thought your timetable looked like for your communications purchase and deployment before, you better start planning for big delays if you have an unstable vendor at the center of your project.

Personal credibility

Let’s face it, when you have to make decisions about technology for your company, those decisions reflect on your professional reputation. If a vendor you choose becomes unstable or even files for bankruptcy, how do you think it will affect people’s perception of you?

Will they have the same confidence level? Will you get greater scrutiny on the next IT purchase you have to make? Will your company reassign the responsibility for purchase decisions to someone else? Will questioning your judgement about your communications vendor turn into questioning your judgment about other matters?

IT already gets too much blame for circumstances beyond your control. Is it really worth risking your reputation on something that’s within your control?

What’s next

When your investment affects your business, you want to make sure you get the right combination of rock-solid stability and innovation to succeed.

It’s impossible to see the future, but there’s a lot of diligence you can do to give yourself confidence in your decision and protect yourself from undue risk.