Eduardo Del Piano is Corporate Manager for Systems at the Swiss Medical Group, where he has been for 20 years.
Speaking to E-Health Reporter Latin America during CAIS 2013, he explains the search process for an adequate supplier for the Hospital Management project implemented by the Systems team.
How did you manage to optimize the high costs for new health IT projects?
The important thing is to show the shareholder at the investment level what is going to be done and the economic benefits of doing it. If it is a win-win relationship with the supplier, one or the other will lose out in the long term. Every shareholder wants a return on every investment they make, so that’s where intelligence and skill at showing the objective indicators of the benefits for shareholders are important in making this kind of investment.
Two companies have been pre-selected for Swiss Medical’s next Hospital Management project. How do they stand out?
Although economically speaking both suppliers are very similar, there was one we saw as being more accessible in terms of the processes that Swiss Medical has. We didn’t think that it was quite as robust as the other may have been, but it will be easier to implement within the group.
Given that they’re both foreign companies, how should local ones compete with their international rivals?
Today local suppliers focus on administrative issues while the international ones are more patient focused, i.e. the software applications you see from the outside are focused on the patient.
What are the mistakes a company should avoid when selecting a supplier?
The mistakes are often made during the strategies used by the pre-sales staff, the staff creates greater affinity with one over another and this can sometimes distract from the evaluation that is being made. The pre-sales area is fundamental, if the pre-sales portion isn’t effective the product might be very good but still fall out of the running. And it might be that the solution isn’t that solid but the pre-sales team was very good and convincing.
The evaluation included user surveys. How did you select the survey subjects?
We work a lot with users, we know who the opinion makers and those really involved with the group who are aware of what the day to day issues are, so we sought out people with many years of experience in Swiss Medical.
