Health Catalyst Improves Business Processes and Increases Consistency in Project Delivery with Kantata
INDUSTRY
CLIENT
SIZE
WHAT KANTATA REPLACED
The Challenge - Reaching the Limits in Project Management
As a successful, continually growing business, Health Catalyst needed a strong project management solution for its needs. The team had been using Excel for managing resource allocations, with every client and team member listed in spreadsheets and then matched depending on team member allocation and assignments to projects over three to four months. However, the process was clunky and not scalable. In addition, Health Catalyst was using Intacct for time keeping, contract storage and invoicing.
However, these systems caused limitations in project management and challenges that Health Catalyst needed to solve, including:
Lack of Data Insights
The Health Catalyst team needed data regarding the consumption of resources across clients to understand if they are being used more or less than they are contractually obligated to provide. Resource managers needed more information about resource requests coming from the field and about team members’ skills and demographics to make more intentional assignments. In addition, the business needed visibility on an individual team member basis regarding burn rate, goals, utilization, and if team members were in danger of burnout.
Lack of Clarity in Project Management
Health Catalyst needed greater control over its project management discipline by gaining the ability to show up on the first day of client engagement with a checklist of milestones, timelines, and measurable outcomes. The company needed the ability to better track progress against project plans, as Health Catalyst did not have a consistent tool to use for this data analysis.
“We were stretching Excel’s capabilities and it wasn’t a scalable solution. It was pretty clunky,” said Dan LeSueur, Senior Vice President/General Manager, Outsourced Services at Health Catalyst.
Health Catalyst is a leading provider of data and analytics technology and services to healthcare organizations, committed to being the catalyst for massive, measurable, data-informed healthcare improvement.
“We wanted a tool that was going to help our client teams become more organized and successful in the field. We knew that if they viewed the tool as truly helpful to them, they would more readily adopt it, and as a result, we would derive a rich set of data that could be used in our business.”
Senior Vice President/General Manager, Outsourced Services, Health Catalyst
Improving Healthcare Through Comprehensive Data
Health Catalyst is dedicated to enabling health care organizations to fundamentally improve care by building the most comprehensive and fully integrated suite of healthcare data warehousing and process improvement solutions available.
Health Catalyst helps clinicians and technicians in more than 250 hospitals; 3,000 clinics care for more than 70m Americans every year, with clients ranging from large academic medical centers to small community hospitals and physician clinics.
“All the staff and sales team at Kantata, the solution consulting team, and the training team were a really good fit from a cultural perspective.”
Senior Vice President/General Manager, Outsourced Services, Health Catalyst
The Switch to Kantata - Support for Successful Resource Management
The resource management challenges faced by Health Catalyst continued while the company experienced continued growth and success. This led to a search for a new dedicated resource management solution, with the Health Catalyst team considering FinancialForce, Netsuite, and Workday before deciding on Kantata for the company’s unique needs.
Among the reasons why Health Catalyst chose Kantata and the critical deciding factors included:
Strong Resource Management
Health Catalyst found a resource management solution in Kantata that could provide managers with crucial control over business processes while also being easily adoptable by all team members. It was as intuitive and accessible as the Excel solutions in place, but the additional functionality built on a modern platform provided the needed scalability for a growing business. The result was a system that supported the organization’s need for strong resource and project control.
Time Tracking
Time tracking and resource management needed to be 100% adopted across the organization to provide Health Catalyst with the insights it needed to improve utilization and project success.
A Focus on Customer Service
The Health Catalyst team found a kindred spirit in Kantata due to a shared focus on project outcomes and customer service, helping to align the project management solution with the company’s approach to business.
Benefits
- Consistency in Successful Project Delivery
- Improved Interdepartmental Communication
- Deeper Resource Data Insights
- Stronger Resource Forecasting
Consistency in Successful Project Delivery
Deeper Resource Data Insights
“Kantata resource management was key and the best across all solutions we looked at. The barrier of entry was so low, we were confident that we could get quick adoption from in-the-field resources. It was a natural fit in the day-to-day workflow of our team members.”
Senior Vice President/General Manager, Outsourced Services, Health Catalyst
The Results - Deeper Insights, Higher Success
Rigorous Project Management
Health Catalyst’s project management discipline has become much more rigorous than before through the ability to prepare a Gantt chart, understand resource allocation, and have consistent project data as opposed to the sporadic and challenging nature of previous processes. Kantata has helped Health Catalyst achieve consistency of delivery and project management through a templated, replicable approach to project creation.
Strengthened Departmental Bonds
Kantata is now being used as the central hub for all professional services activities that ties together services delivery teams, customers, and project management departments. The result is strengthened, data-driven communications that improve the company’s delivery process as sales team members sell clients on services that can be provided as promised. In addition, project plans can be created with room for customization that doesn’t require complete reinvention for every new client.
Deeper, Faster Insights
Kantata Resource Center is now being used daily by Health Catalyst for resource management while the Kantata time audit report is used to track resource consumption. These reports and other dashboards have helped the organization immediately see how its resource planning could potentially affect projects to better understand the path to success.
Understanding and Guiding Resources
Through time tracking and reporting, resource managers are now able to consistently and correctly categorize how team members spend their time and use data to provide better guidance into how each resource can better hit their targets on billable time, PTO, training, and more valuable day-to-day activities. The result is stronger teams from top to bottom built on reliable, consistent data insights.
“Kantata has been a critical component in tying together our sales department with the delivery aspect of the components being sold. Kantata is the focal point of our delivery aspirations and became the hub where sales and delivery come together.”
Senior Vice President/General Manager, Outsourced Services, Health Catalyst