Investing in numerous customizations would have directly impacted the implementation cycle of Phase I, so Children's is planning to add new functionality and improved navigation in Phase II--or ERP2, as it's called internally.
Many of these improvements can't come soon enough for users. "Not intuitive" and "difficult to navigate" are two phrases we heard repeatedly from Tanya Johnson, Ogawa's administrative associate. Johnson uses the new applications every day but says she has yet to see increased productivity. Moreover, Johnson says she saw many problems coming when she attended training before the launch, but Children's lacked a formal feedback mechanism. "I look forward to change," she says diplomatically.
Help is indeed on the way. Children's has formed a PeopleSoft Advisory Group to help prioritize user feedback and requests. The group comprises senior-level managers, one level below senior executives. (The reason for this cutoff, says CIO Dan Nigrin, is that senior executives lack insight into users' day-to-day needs.)
"You need to drill down to the folks who have more interaction with the system," Nigrin says. In fact, under Nigrin's direction the Children's technology group is soliciting the opinions and advice of both senior- and junior-level businesspeople in determining how to meet the needs of the hospital as a whole.
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