BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina increases efficiency with Oracle’s Primavera Unifier

BlueCross BlueShield (BCBS) of South Carolina has rapidly grown over the past few years, with no stop in sight.

The organization recognized the need for change once the facilities management team’s responsibilities grew to 143 facilities—spanning 21 states—including critical data centers.

BCBS of South Carolina hired a new facilities director, Anne Bell, to address the cost, risk, and internal customer service issues, as well as transform the organization overall. No small feat.  

Bell worked with her team to define their needs. This included finding a standardized, cloud-based system, which could be accessed from anywhere, to help manage the full breadth of processes across: Building Services, Facilities Management, Security, and Moves.

Bell cites six keys to their success in finding a solution. She states her team is closing out internal work orders in half the time it previously took.

Six keys to successful digital transformation

1. Take a holistic view

In a typical digital journey, many organizations migrate from manual, paper-based processes to spreadsheets and email, onwards to point solutions, before finally adopting an enterprise solution.

Bell’s team shortcut this process and moved directly to an enterprise solution. They took a holistic view – looking across not only their scope but also adjacent functions, such as purchasing and invoicing, before adopting Oracle’s Primavera Unifier.

BCBS of South Carolina facilities maximized the value of their investment across their extensive scope of maintenance, upgrades, safety, security, and move management by selecting a robust, customizable solution to meet these diverse needs.

Bell’s team also provided value to adjacent organizations, such as purchasing, by bringing a beneficial solution to other internal departments, improving standardization, and minimizing training and wasted time spent learning multiple systems.   

2. Involve the team in the definition and selection process

Including the appropriate people throughout the process is key to arriving at the best solution and gaining adoption. This was essential to BCBS of South Carolina’s success.

Involving Bell’s team in the software selection process was a positive disruption to the status quo.

The successful implementation of Primavera Unifier is a true testament to Bell and her leadership team, considering some team members had been with the organization for up to 40 years and were very comfortable with their manual processes. The first line managers were involved throughout the process and other individuals were brought in as needed.

3. Appropriately use existing forms/processes to support adoption by other teams

Organizations can maximize the value of technology by considering interdependencies with other departments beyond one’s own team. The BCBS of South Carolina facilities team gained support from adjacent organizations by recreating existing familiar forms and processes within Primavera Unifier. Using familiar forms helped lessen adjacent groups’ resistance to adopting the new system.

4. Don’t strive for nirvana. Keep to-schedule and use a phased approach

Striving toward perfection is enticing, but it’s important to put a scope and schedule in place—and to keep to that schedule—particularly when implementing powerful systems like Primavera Unifier.

For example, BCBS of South Carolina realized the value of implementing their preventative maintenance plan as soon as they could without waiting to implement all the processes in their scope.

5. Select a system that can meet your broad and specific needs

Identifying a few key pain points and quickly implementing individual solutions would’ve been easy for Bell. However, her team transformed their processes across the board by taking a holistic view. Their processes are integrated, and they’re managing their facilities across 21 states, consistently using one source of truth.

6. Provide training customized to the user type

Another key to successful adoption: ensuring a solution benefits the individual users. Oracle's Primavera Unifier makes people’s jobs easier, not harder. Users don’t resist change if technology is easy enough for them to get up-to-speed.

Trainings should be tailored to the user type. People should be taught what they need to know to do their jobs more efficiently. Only a few people need to be overall system experts.

Internal customers, the organization at large, and even the greater network of provider and patients, benefit from the efficiencies Bell and her team have achieved.

 BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina's impressive accomplishments include:

• Over $500,000 annual cost savings potential from preventative maintenance plan across HVAC alone.
• Finding a $1 million replacement under warranty using Oracle’s Primavera Unifier.
• 50% faster closeout on internal work orders.
• Decreasing corporate audit preparation from 80 hours to just minutes.
• 100% on-time payments to contractors, increasing the pool of contractors and eliminating time wasted expediting payments.
• Zero failures on audit reports.
• Developing budgets in minutes instead of close to a month. Budgets are approved more quickly, and more often, thanks to improved credibility.

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