Andrew Rickli, Business Intelligence Analyst for Valley Health System in Winchester, VA, discusses the value that the organization receives from the Axiom Healthcare suite. Highlights include:

  • Streamlining the capital planning and tracking process
  • Speeding the creation of financial statements
  • Using the platform’s flexibility to respond to changing dynamics
  • Relying on the relationship with the Axiom client success team to succeed

Learn more about how the Axiom suite of Strategic Financial Planning solutions help you model the future and analyze results.

"If it wasn't for the client success team and the support team,
we wouldn't be where we are right now. And that's another one of the reasons we went with Kaufman Hall. When looking at all the surveys, the client success team and the support team here at Kaufman Hall,
I think, outranked everyone in the industry.”

Andrew Rickli, Business Intelligence Analyst
Valley Health System
 

Learn More About Strategic Financial Planning


Transcription

I work for Valley Health System. We have about seven hospitals and a physician group. We have both Capital Planning and Capital Tracking, and we have Budgeting, Performance Reporting, Financial Planning, and Productivity. And we've actually earmarked funds to purchase Strategy Management this year, so that's going to be the next thing I think we jump into.

We use a lot of different systems, but Axiom has very quickly become our go-to system. Our managers are in there doing their budgets. They're doing their capital purchasing. Soon, they're going to be doing productivity. We're going to be doing all of our long-range financial planning in there. And then we're looking to get strategy management and decision support. So in the end, our vision is that it's going to be a one-stop shop for our management team to just go into Axiom, and you can do everything that you need to do. Instead of jumping to five different systems, a one-stop shop for them.

We've completely automated all of the capital process. We were formerly on a paper-based system. And we've been able to put that electronically into Axiom and really figure out where an approval is at in the process. As opposed to a couple of years ago, a piece of paper would get lost on someone's desk and no one knows where it's at. And now all of a sudden we can say, "Oh, hey, it's in so-and-so's desk," or in his or her approval, and it's been there for X amount of days, and I'm going to pick up the phone and ask him or her why they haven't acted on it yet.

We kind of say it all the time, we've kind of gotten thrown into the capital arena, even though we're not capital experts. We quickly became capital experts … We were able to load our entire capital policy into Axiom. So like I said, before it was a paper-based process. It went through multiple approvals, and now all of that lives in the Axiom process management. So we're able to send approvals to our executives based on dollar limits and that type of thing. So on a day-to-day basis, we're working with purchasing a lot, we're working with end-users to figure out where their capital projects are in the approval process because, like I said before, they couldn't see that. Now we have Axiom reports that can say, "This report has been in Andrew's step for the past three days. He hasn't touched it yet. Let's go ahead and send him an email every single day now, to let him know that someone's waiting on him to complete the project."

Our old financial statement production process took us about two hours to complete one set of financial statements. … but we've been able to transform that process from a two-hour window to produce a set of statements down to about 15 minutes. And that's kind of been amazing for us, because in our prior system, in the homegrown system that we had, accounting would have to wait for us. Our executive team would have to wait for us to produce our statements. And, like I said, it was a two-hour process. Now, it's about 15 minutes. And if it wasn't for that Access load on the statistics, we'd be looking at - I mean, just the Axiom functionality, we'd probably be looking at a five-minute production time to produce our financial statements.

The good thing about Axiom that I tell everyone is that it's a flexible platform. So you're not stuck in one way of looking at something. If something changes in the outside environment, we're able to alter whatever it is that we're working on in Axiom to kind of pick up the difference that another software might not allow you to do.

If it wasn't for the client success team and the support team, we wouldn't be where we are right now. And that's another one of the reasons we went with Kaufman Hall. When looking at all the surveys, the client success team and the support team here at Kaufman Hall, I think, outranked everyone in the industry. We're able to send an email to the support team and get an email back within the same day. I've been able to connect with some of those colleagues personally. We've remained in contact throughout the last two years. And so if they've helped me out with an issue in the past, I can bounce an idea off of them and say, "Hey, you kind of helped me out with this. What do you think about me doing it this way or that way?" And they're very open. We've had no issues getting in touch with them, and we're glad that they always acknowledge us.

We really value the relationship we have with you guys. And we wouldn't continue to invest and be interested in the products that you guys offer if the relationship wasn't there, if the support wasn't there for us to succeed. Kaufman Hall makes it easy for their clients to succeed in that way. I don't want to say you guys hold everyone's hand every step of the way because, at some point, you kind of got to push them and let them go. But if we fall down, you guys are right there pick us back up and get us back on track to where we need to go.

The software in itself is an amazing software with tons of functionality and flexibility. I think when you couple that with the people that you get to deal with on a daily basis at the Axiom software level, the Kaufman Hall employees, I think it's just been a great experience for us. And like I said, it's one that we want to continue to build and grow upon.