To complete this Shared Activity:
• Read the analysis below.
• Answer the question at the bottom of the page highlighted in yellow.
• Be sure to support your postings with evidence. Consult the Harvard Referencing Style Guide for proper citation and referencing information.
Analysing axiUm's World
The organization I have chosen is a company with a near-monopoly (88% market share) in North America for Academic Dental Clinic Software. Basically it is an Electronic Health Record (EHR) which tracks dental patient information, treatment information, billing information, and all for an Academic or Enterprise environment which often calls for tracking students and grading information as well as tracking multiple clinics within the same database.
The lack of any serious competition within its niche market makes analyzing the ecosystem difficult, so with this analysis will try to broaden the scope beyond direct competition, starting with the common PESTLE framework which is often used to identify issues and implications for an enterprise (Pitt & Koufopoulos, 2012). Once PESTLE data has been collected, Managers can analyze it and consider the implications of how external factors affect the company from their different perspectives (Kaplan & Norton, 2008).
PESTLE for Academic Dental Clinic Software
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Key Driver
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Factors
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Details
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Political
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- Certifications, such as CMS EHR and ONC Health IT
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Some certifications simply show that the software is of high quality, while others such as Meaningful Use can actually earn clients more money than the initial cost of the software.
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Economic
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Oracle is currently going from axiUm client to axiUm client dealing out heavy penalties and asking back payments of large amounts costing clients millions of dollars at a time when many clients were already looking at lowering their data hosting costs. Additionally, most schools are already using Thin Clients to make supporting their large user bases easier.
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Social
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- Some Healthcare based Universities are trying to unify their software base
- There is a "Keeping up with the Joneses" push to use the latest technologies
- Customer support must be maintained
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Dental programs are often much smaller than other Health programs, putting axiUm at risk when Universities decide to use the same EHR across both programs. The more outdated the technology used in the Dental programs, the more likely it is to be replaced by Healthcare software.
Many user bases are banding together and forming Consortiums on specific topics or to ask for certain features, which is a way for the users to utilize their buying power to get the changes they need while those same users individually demand quick turnaround from customer support.
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Technological
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- Cloud, some clients want to offload management of their databases
- Interoperability with Third Party Systems, such as imaging software, prescription software or even medical EHR software to share patient data
- Wearables, such as Google Glass
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Cloud, in this case, means hosting the databases online where they do not have to be managed by the client. This moves a lot of liability into the hosting company's hands, as they are now responsible for the security of that data.
Interoperability is a fancy way of saying that software should talk to each other, like when you take a radiograph with imaging software that software should talk to your EHR to both share the image, and the number of X-Ray exposures which has health implications.
Wearable technology is where many advances will be seen in upcoming years, such as wristbands that track your heartrate or blood pressure, and google glass which could take vocal commands while showing small confirmations on a tiny wearable screen.
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Legal
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- Regulations, such as HIPPA and FERPA
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There are guidelines that must be met from a legal perspective, such as protecting patient and student data.
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Environmental
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- Utilizing existing equipment
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One goal of most business-based software is to reduce the amount of paper needed to run a business, though even now many software solutions do the opposite by giving people fancy reports to print out. Other than the reports though, often paper is used to transfer information from one system to another (which is where Interoperability can help) or even within a system (such as forms to print out) where workflows can be improved.
Beyond paper, implementing a software solution often requires a large amount of hardware to be purchased or replaced as well. Businesses are often less inclined to upgrade hardware for financial reasons, but frequent hardware upgrades or replacements can also generate a lot of e-waste that could be avoided by optimizing software and maintaining backwards compatibility.
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While rivalry among existing competitors within the niche market is not really a current issue for Exan, the analysis reveals that the bargaining power of the clients (consortiums), threat of new entrants (someone using new technology first) and threat of substitute products or services (healthcare EHRs) and the bargaining power of suppliers (oracle asking for money for using their database systems) are all very competitive areas which Exan needs to account for (Porter, 2008). There are also environmental complexity issues which take some juggling, such as maintaining both the levels of customization of the software and client responsiveness (Andrews & Johansen, 2012).
Exan is doing a variety of things to address many of these issues, such as actively participating in client consortiums, working with third parties to develop cloud and google glass solutions, and researching database system alternatives. Some decisions are more controversial, such as their decision to reduce their support of database customizations which may have serious implications for upgrades. More abstract are the threats of other companies entering Exan's blue ocean, because there is no telling what form that competition would take. It could be a new company offering a cloud based solution before Exan's is ready, or it could be a Healthcare EHR powerhouse like Epic making a dental module that integrates into their existing software. Each of those examples actually threaten to appeal to a different type of customer, depending on if cheaper data hosting is a more important factor or giving into pressures from the larger institution for a unification of their software.
o Be sure to explain what the strategic implications of your analysis are and how the set of implications limits or shapes your strategic recommendations.
o Be sure to identify specific future strategy actions and recommendations based on your evaluation of options and to provide a basic defense of why your recommended actions are the most appropriate.