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Exist Technology Innovations: Adapting Tomorrow’s Technology In Today’s Retail Business 2020 Webinar Highlights
Exist Technology Innovations: Adapting Tomorrow’s Technology In Today’s Retail Business 2020 Webinar Highlights 768 487 Exist Software Labs

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.” – Charles Darwin

According to Forbes and Microsoft, these are the main technologies in retail in 2020:

      • Chatbots
      • Mixed Commerce (e-commerce X in-store)
      • Loyalty on Mobile
      • Blockchain
      • Data-driven Business
      • Artificial Intelligence
      • Augmented Reality

Technology innovation is a key parameter for innovating your business right now. KPMG, a multinational audit firm, recently illustrated a graph of three (3) options to drive retail businesses.

Keeping the business-as-usual model means that you are a legacy type of business. You are comfortable with the tried and tested model that you have right now that has worked in the past but is uncertain to work in the future. It is like ignoring the changes that are happening around you and how the consumer behaves. Remaining in this grey area despite all the shifts that are happening in the industry will lead to becoming irrelevant over time.

However, if you are thinking of leveraging or being the platform for retail, you are responding to the changes, and to different consumer behaviors. That is leveraging technology to respond to new demands, and anticipate those that might occur in the future, making sure that you are still at the growth path.

One example is how Jollibee dealt with the changes engendered by the pandemic.

Jollibee has been opening a lot of stores locally and globally. They have been doing the same growth strategy for decades with less integration of technology on their operations compared to what they developed right now.

Jollibee built “cloud kitchens” to offset the losses that they had during this period. They have invested 7 billion pesos to set up these “cloud kitchens” to continue to bring their products to their customers without the need to build the usual dine-in, brick-and-mortar facilities. Instead, they built delivery outlets located in discreet, low rent sites that serve as hubs. Cloud kitchens are now available in the United States, the United Arab Emirates, and Singapore. This presented how important it is to be on the lookout for opportunities to innovate and adapt to the possibilities in the market using technology.

When you talk about innovation, you should not only talk about how you can provide your services online. Your business should be encompassing three (3) fronts and is able to empower these three. You have to be smart and have a data-driven strategy. Bringing your business online is just one part.

Customer

      • Seamless Online and In-Store experience (Web-mobile platform, In-store tech hub)
      • Data Source (I.e. CRM – Know your customer, Loyalty Engine – Reward your customer, A.I. – Understand your customer)

Employee

      • Empower your employees with the information. 
      • Seamless Online and In-Store experience both customer and business
      • (Mimic online experience in-store)
      • Data Source (I.e. Real-Time Inventory, Inventory Projections, Smart Suggestions, Special offers for targeted customers)

Partners

      • Engage and enable your partners
      • Data Source (I.e. Supply Chain Automation, Vendor Management System)

Technology innovation does not only cover how you can provide for your customers. It has to be perceived holistically.

So, How do you do it?

There are five (5) stages of an organization’s journey.

Business as Usual (No changes at all)

This is when you are not adopting any changes right now. You might be trying to get by with the tested business model. This puts your business into the risk of being forgotten, of failing, or of suffering drastic losses.

Experimentation (R&D)

You want to learn more and test something to see what fits your business.

Strategic Planning

It is when you are laying out a strategic plan that will fit your business from the data that you have gathered for the past months.

Organizational Roll Out

When you already have a strategic plan, you have to roll it throughout your organization to align every aspect of your digital strategy to every section of your organization.

Full Adaptation

Continuously innovating to see where else can you improve.

Five-step Iterative process

These are the processes to help you out with your journey of being part of the digital economy.

      1. Strategic Intent – you want to inject a digital strategy as part of your objective
      2. IT Feasibility Validation – checking if it is feasible to do in your organization in an IT perspective
      3. Business Unit Engagement – getting everyone on board
      4. Organization Injection – execution, making it part of your business culture
      5. Rapid Release of the Next Generation Business Services

It does not have to happen in one go. Even after releasing your first digital milestone, you may go back to the first step to see what else can be improved.

Case Studies and Insights

Walmart

(in an interview with then CTO, Jeremy King)

      • In 2018 Walmart and Microsoft announced a five-year partnership to drive digital transformation across Walmart, boost shopping speed, and empower retail associates.
      • Customer-facing technologies are in Microsoft’s Azure cloud
      • Machine learning as one of the most important technologies Walmart is using. 
      • Predictive Inventory accurately addresses one of the biggest consumer complaints, which is accurately providing the right availability of items that they have.

Starbucks

      • They incorporated Data Analytics into their Marketing and Sales efforts.
        • what kind of coffee their customers are ordering and adjust their offerings accordingly.
        • Personalize offers and marketing materials.
        • Increase sales and cut costs of ineffective ads and marketing
      • Starbucks Mobile app: Starbucks has been using reinforcement machine learning technology (ML) to provide a more personalized experience for customers who use the Starbucks mobile app
      • IoT – measure consumption of coffee beans in partnership with Microsoft
      • BlockChain – trace coffee beans from its source

Domino’s Pizza

In the mid-2000s, Domino’s was struggling with both brand image…they recognized the need for rock-solid digital strategy to improve customer engagement and overall brand image

      • Marketing and IT  aligned to communicate Domino’s digital transformation story to the users (consumers). This led to the social listening platform Think Oven, a social listening platform which allows Domino to get real-time feedback from their customers. This was launched in the mid-2000s, back when social media is starting to gain dominance.
      • After a successful rollout of their mobile app, they introduced Domino’s Anywhere: customers can order from a plethora of devices including Amazon Echo, Google Home, Siri, Smartwatches, Smart TV’s, Slack, Facebook Messenger, Twitter and more
      • Extensive use of Cloud technology via MS Azure’s PaaS, all of their core systems – digital ordering systems, ERP, back-office operations, and supply chain systems in the cloud.
      • Domino is planning to invest in conversational AI and cognitive technologies (NLP) to further enhance the user experience.
      • In 2017, Domino Pizza overtook Pizza Hut to become the largest pizza company in the world generating $12B in global revenue.

IKEA

Cultural Transformation (Interview with Chief Data Officer, Barbara Martin Coppola)

This is how they achieved a digital mindset:

      • “In order to be successful, digital needs to be embedded in every aspect of IKEA. Digital is a way of working, making decisions, and managing the company.”
      • “At IKEA we’ve divided our digital transformation into four main areas:
        • Meeting the customer
        • Empowering co-workers
        • Digital Foundation
        • Digital DNA”
      • “When speaking of digital transformations, it is imperative to think of it as a strategic paradigm shift, and culture can either enable that transformation or it can severely hinder it.”

Technologies per Business Size

Companies or people before put up a small store, and they were only using cash register machines and accepting cash as payment. Now, this CRM is now being replaced by POS. Along with this, people are also changing and tend to use tools like GCash or PayMaya. 

On another part, people who are not able to put up a physical store make use of e-commerce platforms, like Lazada and Shopee, to make it available to the public.

During the pandemic period, people had to adapt and be more creative. They are utilizing Facebook as their channel. People who are doing transactions here usually start with a COD payment method until they have established their customers’ trust, but definitely switch to utilizing mobile wallets.

With all these models of small enterprises, inventory is done manually.

Physical stores become more scattered within the city, across the city, or all over the country. With the utilization of POS, companies are able to control these brick and mortar stores and to communicate with applications in the headquarter. 

Some companies start as e-commerce. But eventually, these retailers would want physical presence and put up physical stores, putting up brick and mortar, and e-commerce to form their mixed channel of selling.

For databases, the structured data will require the use of SQL technologies, while document databases are used for non-structured or semi-structured data.

Examples:

      • SQL Technologies (PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle, MS SQL Server)
      • Document Database (MongoDB, CouchDB, CouchBase)

The large enterprise model is similar to medium, but it presents more potential for the company to do more, and utilize more technologies. There will come a point in time that the company will need to use corporate applications/ERP. It handles all of the operations of the business.

In 2019, more brick and mortar stores adopted the use of kiosks to perform other functions.

Large enterprises also have plenty of vendors and need to have applications to manage their operations.

It is expected for such a size of businesses to have an executive information system in place, basically like business intelligence already. When a variety and volume of data come in, Big Data also does because it already has so much data to consider.

There are three (3) types of data analytics:

        • Descriptive (under business intelligence)
        • Predictive (statistical models; used for forecasting)
        • Prescriptive (artificial intelligence; machine learning; draws up specific recommendations)

Greenplum fits best if you want all of these. It is a data hub, a repository for all your data. It has AI and machine learning libraries.

If your system is future-proof, it is capable of putting all of these technologies together.

DevOps should be in place if you are undergoing a digital transformation for a more seamless deployment.

Current to Tomorrow’s Technologies:

Artificial intelligence (AI)

Allows visual recognition or customized image recognition to fit the business needs, It detects and identifies people, emotions in images. In Amazon Go, a person can pick up an item from the store and immediately leave with it. The payment is automatically deducted from the person’s bank account. The same concept is also a running idea for hotels.

Retail use cases:

      • Amazon Go
      • Cardless Membership

Internet of Things (IoT)

A system of interrelated, non-traditional computing devices with unique identifiers, usually IP addresses. It also has the ability to transfer data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction.

Retail use cases:

      • Amazon Go’s IoT sensors
      • AWM Smart Grocery
      • Smart Shelves/Shelf Tags
      • Thermostat Control
      • Flonomics’ counting system and retail analytics technology help retailers determine optimal staffing levels for different dates and times, improve marketing strategies, gauge traffic flow, enhance customer service, and more.

Chatbot

A software application used to conduct online conversations, like Alexa, Siri, and more. It provides live contact with a human. An example of this is Globe’s Dude, a chatbot to monitor employees’ health launched during the enhanced community quarantine.

Retail use cases:

      • Tommy Hilfiger Chatbot
        • recommends client based on the information provided
      • Support use
        • Answering queries – FAQs
        • Respond to customer concerns and informing the support team
      • Globe’s DUDE – monitor employee health

Augmented Reality

An interactive experience of a real-world environment where the objects that reside in the real world are enhanced by computer-generated perceptual information.

Retail use cases:

      • IKEA Place
      • Fitting Rooms App

Blockchain

Is a growing list of records, called blocks, that are linked using cryptography. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, a timestamp, and transaction data (generally represented as a Merkle tree).

      • Retail use cases
      • tracking shipments, 
      • centralizing databases
      • stopping fraud and counterfeits
      • and increasing transparency

Key Takeaways:

      • Business strategy must include the ability to adapt/embrace change
      • Technology adoption is a major contributor to long term success
      • Digital Transformation will help define and execute the digital strategy road map
      • Choose the technology that best fits your strategy

Get to know ANAHAW, our retail solution specially built to adapt to modern retail business requirements, and to specifically work on providing you an edge over the rest.

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Healthcare Solutions. Healthcare. Data. Digital. Java. Java Philippines.
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Exist Healthcare Solutions: How Reducing Variations is Key to Improving Patient Outcomes (and Defeating COVID 19) Webinar Highlights
Exist Healthcare Solutions: How Reducing Variations is Key to Improving Patient Outcomes (and Defeating COVID 19) Webinar Highlights 768 487 Exist Software Labs

Speaker 1: Mr. Willex Perez | Exist Vice President for Sales & Marketing; Director of Healthcare Solutions

Our current situation right now is like the rug pulled under our feet. We were forced to transform, and ultimately, change how we will be doing things moving forward.

This can be related to two buzz words we may have been hearing for about 3-5 years already.

The term “Digital Transformation” is felt (more pronounced this time as the use of digital platforms has become ubiquitous. We have heard about this term, but what does it really mean for the organizations that we belong to, and what are the challenges that they encounter? 

Digital is not just a computer and a network connection. While it is true that computers enable us to adjust to this situation, “digital” really means:

      • The ability to take physical work by a person at a place, and be able to take it to a virtually
      • Automating the work to be done by anyone or anything (machine) anywhere. These services are given to the clients to address their needs while providing better convenience and customer experience

Transformation, on the other hand, is predominantly used in Economics and Sociology as this is people-driven. It touches the very infrastructure and the people surrounding it from each socio-economic class. Transformation or change involves people, businesses, and organizations as well as the workforce and the customers, bringing change into new ways of how we conduct our work into our lives using digital platforms.

The biggest challenge for organizations in implementing a digital strategy is providing leadership—a leadership team that understands and is ready to face the challenge. While a lot of resources are being poured towards this transformation, many are failing. A winning team needs to keep its eye on where the ball will be and not where it has been. The question that you may ask is: Are you investing in the future or are you still working on what you currently need? But Technology is only as an enabler. To wield its great potential, great leadership is needed to get the most out of new opportunities it brings, and avoid the dangers that come along with it.

Here are some examples of adoptions of digital solutions that we may, or may not, be aware of, either by force or by choice:

Like mobile Banking, for example, which we take for granted.

Our banking experience is way different compared with that of the previous generation. To transact nowadays, we need not go to a physical bank. Banks will do well to target clients, not just by managing their physical branch but improving their online services which impact how they maintain their presence as well as managing their operational expenses.

Entertainment is enjoying the greatest hit of all industries at the moment with leading providers distributing their multimedia content globally online through streaming platforms such as Netflix.

With the threat of infection, education is now forced to shift online, too. 

Our days begin and end consuming news and information online from our preferred digital platforms. But with the prevalence of fake news nowadays, we are careful about our sources of information and realize how important it is to do fact-checking.

Doctors like yourselves face the same dilemma. As you may observe, doctors (especially clinicians) need a reliable resource to help them as they are always pressed for time to diagnose and treat patients.

Why is your source — for the latest evidence-based medical information to update your medical knowledge and answer your clinical questions important?

The importance of getting reliable information affects the high occurrence of medical errors. This ability to get hold of evidence-based information helps in assisting the doctors at the point of care. When a clinician experiences fatigue and information overload in making a clinical decision.

 

 

This study highlights that medical error is the 3rd biggest killer in the United States.

Yet in 2019, medical errors are about as prevalent as in 1999. “To Err Is Human” was an uneasy read; so is a September 2019 report on patient safety from the World Health Organization.

Among WHO’s findings:

      • Globally, hospital-acquired infections afflict about 10% of hospitalized patients.
      • Medical errors harm some 40% of patients in primary and outpatient care. 
      • Diagnostic and medication errors hurt millions and cost billions of dollars every year.

– TIME BY KATHLEEN SUTCLIFFE NOVEMBER 5, 2019

Things haven’t changed much. Medical errors harm 40% of patients in primary and outpatient care.

The good news is this handling this error are:

      • It is preventable
      • There are tools and digital platforms available, such as UpToDate, wherein information is
            • Evidence-based 
            • Updated regularly by a team of over 6,000 doctors
            • Comes with Graded recommendations
      • Affordable to countries in Asia, especially in the Philippines wherein UpToDate is already being used by numerous clients

UpToDate is the best online resource being used by over 34,000 medical institutions and hospitals with over 1.3 Million doctors across the world. Evidence shows that UpToDate is proven to result in better hospital performance and improve patient outcomes.

Speaker 2: Ms. Amanda Tay | Partner Business Lead, ASEAN Region at Wolters Kluwer Clinical Effectiveness

How we can help and support your institution in delivering the best clinical decisions support resources to enable you to improve patient outcomes as well as improve patients’ safety?

There are studies that support the idea that patients only receive about half of the recommended processes involved in care. This is due to imperfect information flow, different skill sets across the organization, patients who are able to determine what type of treatments they would like to go after as well, and of course inefficiencies and inconsistencies in the approaches that they take, which is apparent in the current day context.

But this also translates into prescribing errors according to this issue of BMJ Quality & Safety. This study shows that 43 million adverse drug events related to medication errors, drug screening misses, or else occur each year around the globe. It’s very appalling to think about what’s the impact on patient outcomes then.

With all these inconsistencies and unwanted variability in care, up to 30% of global healthcare spend is wasted on unnecessary costs on healthcare annually and that’s about $1,700 per person each year. 

With all of these evolving things that are happening around the world, are we in the right position to tackle such unwanted challenges?

Wolters Kluwer’s healthcare team has already started working with their editorial team, making sure that our support allows our frontline healthcare community to be well equipped to handle and tackle challenges like this pandemic.

In January, Wolters Kluwer already released their first COVID19 topic. From then on, there have been countless contributions to the creation of new topics as the pandemic develops.

As they deem this very important, they provided free UpToDate access for two (2) months in March to support the frontline users and non-users, allowing them to access to clinical decision support resources during this sensitive time.

Since January, all the way to July, they consistently contributing evidence-based clinical contents, making sure that it’s credible and well supported. These contents are immediately available to users which is important in providing assistance to healthcare providers in tackling their uncertainties during their in-depth journey. As of now, there are over 500 updates regarding COVID19 topics alone.

UpToDate became the predominant resource when it comes to COVID19, with millions of views of their topics that have been recorded since the spike of cases.

To tackle unwanted variability in care, the improvement in patient outcomes is determined by the quality of care team decisions, and how it aligns across teams. It is also dependent on the care team behavior, and care team alignment.

When you look at care team behavior, you’ll think of doctors with varying experiences, and different team members with different temperaments and personalities. Would they use software to support their clinical decision making? This also determines how efficient they make decisions, and how accurate it is, and they pass it on to their care team in the pharmacy department to proceed with the drug orders, to the patient ward, and others. It is not a one-man effort. It is across various departments.

How do you put everything together to ensure that you are leaning on a consistent, evidence-based resource? At every step at every point in a patient’s journey, you have to make a decision. That is why it is very important to have evidence-based content that is very credible. It is important to think about what other resources can you consider to ensure that you are well supported with an integrated playbook.

Imagine having that across every step of the journey, with different types of tools and resources that play different parts in supporting your care team.

UpToDate is a global leader for evidence-based clinical decision support. It is now upgraded to support physicians by having interactive pathways that can help them in the decision-making process. Laboratory interpretations feature were also added to help the physicians assessing the software to understand the types of scenarios that might occur.

Lexicomp, on the other hand, is a drug referential resource, with a huge drug database that is accessible for the users, which can certainly reduce medication errors as well using the tools available in it. Thousands of hospitals and retail pharmacies lean on Lexicomp as the key drug resource.

What could UpToDate and Lexicomp offer?

 

UpToDate and Lexicomp provide the ability to go into complex cases and go into recommendations. It is graded, thus signifies that it is supported with evidence-based, and unbiased and neutral clinical studies. These two build up a network of thousands of clinician experts, pharmacists, specialists, and more all actively contributing to the contents of these two applications. They are the ones who will help you scour through all journals and clinical studies to provide the synthesized and summarized content so that you don’t need to read every single resource which will save you some time, especially at the point of care.

UpToDate and Lexicomp provide harmonized care decisions throughout a patient’s journey. Information is easily accessible to users at each department. It ties everything together. The whole clinical healthcare team across all the departments are able to lean on a synthesized and integrated playbook, a single source of truth that can support all departments. They get consistent information and have a good discussion with each other through these two.

Japan did a retrospective study across hundreds of diagnostic reports prepared by doctors against a group that did not use UpToDate versus a group that uses UpToDate. What they found was extraordinary in that for those using UpToDate, the diagnostic error was 2%, as compared to a 24% diagnostic error for those who were not. Imagine the impact on the patients who could have benefitted if the doctors referred to UpToDate, ensuring that not many medication errors occur.

In a recent Hospital Insights Asia interview with Asian Hospital’s Dr. Ana Maria Jimenez, she stated that by using UpToDate for two (2) years, there has been a decreasing trend in their ICU mortality ratio.

Meanwhile, The Medical City’s Dr. Rafael S. Claudio said that UpToDate is comprehensive and authoritative with an extensive list of clinical topics available that is easy to use for its simple interface. This supported his physician team on their journey to treat patients.

Also, Wolters Kluwer’s Clinical Information Drug Surveys show that the impact of Lexicomp is definitely broad and overwhelmingly positive.

Another consideration that you might have is if it is recognized/accredited.

 

See full list of accreditations.

It is understandable that training and education is one of the key areas that healthcare institutions focus on. How do you make sure that everyone is well-equipped, and is continuously upskilled? That is why you should consider what other resources are available to support you on this journey. With our efforts to get UpToDate recognized in PRC, we offer continued professional development support.

In summary, these solutions that we offer provide:

      • A harmonized approach to help you support and improve your quality of care.
      • Reduce diagnostic and medication errors to help you treat your patients fast 
      • Quicker and more efficient flow to shorten their length of stay so that you can help more patients
      • Improve patient education and engagement

Check out our healthcare product, MEDCURIAL, and see how it helped some of the biggest hospitals in the country provide better patient outcomes.

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Digital Banking. Digital. Java. Java Philippines.
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What Sparked the Emergence of Digital Banking
What Sparked the Emergence of Digital Banking 768 487 Exist Software Labs

As we live in the computer age, the existence of online banking appears ordinary to us. Every major bank tailors a system that is capable of online access. The absence of such is almost unimaginable, especially these days.

The evolution of digital technology presented an invaluable advantage to banks as it attempts to address the limitations that the old brick-and-mortar set up brought to sight.

These limitations sparked the emergence of digital banking.

1. Building cost.

Before the rise of digital banking, the banking sector depends on expanding its branches to reach out to a broader market. But the hefty price of building a bank branch is one of the major turning points of gradually moving online. 

More than just the amount the land and construction of the building per se, establishing a physical branch takes into account the landscape/exterior, interior design, technologies, and devices to be used, as well as the security measures to be implemented. Banking businesses, therefore, target building a facility in commercial areas. This scenario creates a boundary between the banks and the possible market from far-flung places.

2. THUS, limiting the bank’s presence in many areas.

The first limitation springs another one. Banking was less accessible to most people outside business districts. Additionally, a physical branch can only attend to as many clients as the store, and its personnel can accommodate.

As banking became more present in the digital ecosystem, the market also had more inclusion. It also fostered a better synergy. Banks can swiftly respond to concerns as fast as users can address their concerns.

3. More customers require more bank employees.

Even before the rampancy of digital banking platforms, banked individuals have always kept increasing, the implementation of digital technology in this industry only accelerated this increase significantly. A corresponding increase in bank staff always comes after the constant growth, or forecasted growth, in the number of banked individuals. The same goes for adding more physical stores.

Digitization allowed processes to speed up as most of it is being automated. This induced changes in the traditional workforce requirements of banks. With the decrease in the need for human supervision in many operations, banks can now concentrate their forces on their core competencies.

4. Incoherent customer journey.

The improvements in the customer journey that digitization presented were also promising. The customer journey begins with awareness. But where does it end? The simple answer is it never does. Continually nurturing the clients even after you have acquired them is one of the most critical steps, if not the most, in rendering a fulfilling journey.

Think of having to do every step of this journey physically. Tedious, right?

Digital banking broke this stigma. The targeting, marketing, acquiring, and now even responding to the market became a lot easier, delivering a more personalized and customer-centric experience.

5. Consumers are online, so should banks be.

The evolution of digital banking expands from the creation of ATMs to going online. Why not? The market is rapidly becoming more inclined to the internet, and they want to accomplish things faster than ever before. The screens became the window to what the world has to offer, either convenience or luxury.

One of the fundamentals of running a business is placing it to where your target segment is situated. The rationale is pretty simple: you should be where your prospects are – keep within the sight. Banks get to be where their market is, a superpower that brick-and-mortar cannot grant – OMNIPRESENCE.

Digital banking was able to hit these pain points and is anticipated to keep driving notable changes in this age, especially as the global health crisis accelerates the demand for more digital services. The current condition advanced the call for virtual collaboration, thus the innovation of the virtual platforms. It is inevitable. It is only a matter of who is going to be the pacesetter – the one at the front of the transformation race.

Exist Software Labs, Inc. is committed to extending our assistance to several banks with their Digital Onboarding requirements. We have been in the business for 18 years, and the mission to enable corporations to go on digital and have a competitive advantage in this fast-changing world is at our core.

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COVID Puts Spotlight on Healthcare IT in 2020
COVID Puts Spotlight on Healthcare IT in 2020 768 487 Exist Software Labs

Immune to IT’s charms, digital healthcare gets an unwelcome boost.

Every crisis is a challenge as well as an opportunity.  It has always been the case for healthcare. Right now, the case for hospitals and care centers to go digital has never been stronger. 

In the IT industry, it only takes weeks to months to jump and move into action when there’s a glimpse of technology that could potentially disrupt the way things work. Small, incremental improvements are often enough to elicit a quick decision to adopt a particular app or system into an existing process. Winning the business battle in today’s economy often begins in the front-ends and back-ends but like the rest of the other verticals, healthcare executives still suffer from cold-feet about this.

Until COVID 19 happened.

Within a month, care providers and institutions have realized that fighting the pandemic requires equipping the workforce with digital cover. At Geisinger, these digital efforts were organized in three areas:

      1. Communicating information to prevent future infections;
      2. Leveraging technology to advance clinical protocols; and
      3. Shifting the majority of the workforce to telecommuting.

Information about the COVID 19 virus was unfolding by the day requiring that communication platforms and channels were kept running smoothly to provide timely and updated guidance into managing the disease as an institution.  

Corollary to this is the rise of contact-tracing apps aimed at preventing the spread of infection. Hospitals can rely on this app to protect both staff and family visitors who need to be with the patients. Aside from being an effective monitoring tool for persons that were at a given location, these digital apps limit the need for in-person touchpoints which reduce the risk of contagion.

Information resources about COVID 19 are just as essential when news about treatment reaches both the medical community and the public at roughly the same time. Note however that in the practice of medicine, the job of separating facts from fiction passes through stringent medical research which is most likely under the greatest pressure it has ever been.  

Simply combing through research papers about COVID 19 wouldn’t work in this hectic scenario. Ensuring that doctors, nurses, and the entire hospital team operate using updated and guided protocols at the point of care requires implementing and integrating decision support resources into hospital systems to reduce the variability of care.

The use of virtual teams and telemedicine has never been so important to keep a semblance of a patient-doctor relationship amidst social distancing. Infrastructure teams perform important work in keeping networks running and secure at all times. Software teams are scrambling to improve apps that allow full patient experience done virtually from home including appointments, video consultation, payment, and remote monitoring which benefits the doctors and hospitals as well.

By reducing the need to meet personally, the need for doctors and hospital staff to be onsite is also minimized and this keeps them safe as well. For hospital IT teams, the use of web-based frameworks allows them to monitor, update, and perform fixes for hospital systems offsite which reduce crowding the premises as well. 

We are nowhere near the end of the pandemic as all businesses, including healthcare have been greatly affected by COVID 19. Whether hospitals will continue with a ‘patch and resolve’, segmented, and siloed IT approach or incorporate all this into a comprehensive and cohesive strategy remains to be seen. Regardless, the benefits of adopting a digital approach will continue to reveal itself. Let’s just hope it doesn’t take another global pandemic to enforce this realization.

Join us as Wolters Kluwer and Exist host a learning session on “How Reducing Variations is Key to Improving Patient Outcomes (and Defeating Covid 19)” and take a deeper look into proven approaches for improving your hospital organization’s care quality and clinical effectiveness!

Register Now

Check out our healthcare product, MEDCURIAL, and see how it helped some of the biggest hospitals in the country provide better patient outcomes.

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PhilHealth. Java. Java Philippines.
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PhilHealth: Promoting Quality Care For Filipino Patients
PhilHealth: Promoting Quality Care For Filipino Patients 768 487 Exist Software Labs

As the country’s largest health insurance provider and primary source of hospital funds, PhilHealth can single-handedly affect healthcare policy changes unlike any other.  Even as the Department of Health(DOH)  struggles with handling the COVID 19 pandemic – the accuracy of reporting, recruiting, and empowering medical personnel not to mention managing its public persona, PhilHealth has continued to stealthily move powerful care institutions to do its bidding with less fanfare.

This is not to say that resistance is non-existent.  On the contrary, PhilHealth is among the most difficult to please, for being quite unpredictable and dynamic as it responds to situations with its advisories via its circulars.  One must understand that it is responsible for a huge amount of money. Leaving hospitals huffing and puffing with sudden policy changes and updates to ensure proper disbursements, claims and billing departments can only breathe a sigh of relief if their counterpart team of doctors, nurses, and other care providers are as flexible as their IT personnel.

Beginning in 2018, PhilHealth has made and remade its eClaims system not just as the primary payment system for medical services but a valuable cross-checking clinical tool.  It wouldn’t be surprising that as time passes, the eClaims will be requiring more and more supporting data in the form of clinical information that will be good enough to paint a picture of patient health statuses and clinical protocols for every medical condition.  

What may initially be just diagnoses, the data in eClaims submitted by hospitals for their patients include procedures, medications, and other forms of treatment received. By being digital, cross-referencing the case rates with allowable treatment is now possible. One could surmise that the eClaims will not just offer proof but more importantly, ensure that globally-accepted, evidence-based clinical protocols were followed to approve the reimbursements.

In this scenario, hospital information systems will play a vital role in streamlining the process of eClaims processing.  While doctors and care teams ensure that correct and minimally varied treatment protocol is followed in treating patients, they would also be looking to match these with case rates and requirements as well. With digital systems in place that store clinical data such as EMR, the eClaims reimbursement forms would then require minimal manual encoding and prevent literally, ‘costly’ errors.

If payment reimbursements are not enough reason to adopt better hospital IT systems and use of medical records instead of paper, then they will need to find other sources of revenue and prepare to suffer business consequences.  

Once all things fall into place, patients would also get to benefit the most.  With the requirements outlined in the eClaims, they get to receive the right treatment their condition requires and hopefully, the improved patient outcomes that healthcare institutions are primarily in existence for.

Check out our healthcare product, MEDCURIAL, and see how it helped some of the biggest hospitals in the country provide better patient outcomes.

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POS. Java. Java Philippines.
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Why a Future-proof POS System is what You Need Right Now
Why a Future-proof POS System is what You Need Right Now 768 487 Exist Software Labs

The sudden outbreak of the pandemic placed the global economy on a tough path. This crisis is unlike any other economic challenges that the world had to deal with in the past decade. Its effects befell from small to large businesses.

The retail industry is among the most affected strands by this pressure. Retailing, especially medium and large, has to transcend from its conventional approaches, influenced by several factors that will most probably be normalized even after the health crisis. 

New customer preferences are one of the principal motives why medium and large retail businesses have to transform their enterprises. In the retail industry, customer satisfaction is what you should always aim to achieve. The present circumstances will most likely engrave habits and preferences to your customer as they now normalize caution in every interaction.

“Safe retailing” is and will be the new normal. Hence, a retail solution that is flexible and ready to succeed, even post-pandemic, is a must-have. 

To cater to the possible changes, upgrading your POS System per se can bring an optimal improvement. Although it is undeniable that the outpour of technologies in the past years brings a shipload of viable additions to your current system, you will only enjoy it if you have a solid base.

You need to have a future-proof POS system.

The fast-evolving nature of technology simply sends the message that there would never be a one-size-fits-all solution to retail businesses. Thus, having a scalable and extensible system is gravely important.

What does that mean?

A scalable solution defies the memory, user, location, and other limits. Therefore, it will allow you to increase the system’s capacity and use it across different branches.

Whereas, extensibility allows the system to expand its features and functionalities without major downtime, making the system conveniently customizable.

With these two as the foundation of your POS system, you readily available for omnichannel retailing. This will let you break the barriers of conventional retail solutions. It will increase the resiliency to provide what your market wants as you can easily integrate it into different systems and devices, and centrally manage your facilities and POS terminals.

These make the solution ready to adapt to any technological changes as needed by your business. It also opens new opportunities for future augmentations to better tailor it to your business strategy, a retail solution that can adapt as fast as your customers’ demands.

Get to know ANAHAW, our retail solution specially built to adapt to modern retail business requirements, and to specifically work on providing you an edge over the rest.

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Healthcare. Java. Java Philippines.
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A Playbook to Improve Clinical Effectiveness and Reduce Variability in Care
A Playbook to Improve Clinical Effectiveness and Reduce Variability in Care 768 487 Exist Software Labs

Rules and payment models keep changing, revenues falling while demand for care quality is at an unprecedented scrutiny. To thrive, hospitals need to address clinical variability.

For years, our team at Exist has made it a priority to build technology capabilities that tear down the barriers of siloed systems particularly in healthcare.

From our clinic system which connects both users and clinics to our hospital system that integrates every available important service within the institution around the patient data and the care that they received, we believed that achieving significant and quality care outcomes required connecting dots via promoting effective care coordination.  After all, a superhero doctor approach – which traditionally has been the case, is unsustainable, if not constrictive.

While ‘interoperability in healthcare’ presents a tremendous gain, it is still not the end goal. What connecting through data unlocks is access to information that could lead to evidence-based care protocols and if taken to heart, reduce care variabilities.  

It is apparent that hospitals globally are under tremendous challenge, not only from containing diseases but operationally with slow revenue growth that results in a sustainability challenge.

This sustainability gap for healthcare providers is a result of multiple factors, not limited to:

    • Rules keep changing midgame
    • Shifting payment models
    • Regulatory changes
    • Rise of non-traditional competitors with tech advantages such as Google, Apple, and Amazon.

It is quite a challenge!  

Many hospitals will try to tighten their revenue cycle management — contain costs by streamlining operations and reducing staff and adding technology — but it would only be a short-term measure because it won’t be able to close this gap unless variability – source of inefficiencies, adverse events, increased lengths of stay, and higher mortality rates is addressed until consistency of care becomes the norm.

At the root, two critical factors emerge that need to be addressed: the decisions clinicians are making every day and the engagement and preferences of your patients. 

For institutions, however, addressing variability is an itch better left unscratched since it involves challenging traditional approaches and behavioral change for an overburdened care workforce, it can get pretty tricky.

Unless doctors and clinicians come across a common care playbook that could make the transition easier and by which they could all align with.

Healthcare is under siege and new approaches are needed. Learn more about evidence-based playbook to reduce clinical variability and address the sustainability gap.  Download the eBook Reducing Variability in Care: Drive Behavioral Changes That Improve Clinical Effectiveness to take a deeper look into proven approaches for improving your organization’s clinical effectiveness.  (Registration required).

Check out our healthcare product, MEDCURIAL, and see how it helped some of the biggest hospitals in the country provide better patient outcomes.

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Health. Java. Java Philippines.
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Our Share in this COVID Warfare
Our Share in this COVID Warfare 768 487 Exist Software Labs

The year shocked us with a change we have all not foreseen. For the first time in years, perhaps, decades, we had to turn our backs from the living condition that has grown on us. The world has taken a hiatus from almost all of its activities. The population succumbed to the walls of their homes in fear of acquiring the virus.

At the forefront of this global health crisis are fighters equipped with medical weapons and gowns, the first line of defense in this war. While we remain in the comfort of our homes, hospitals keep striving. It has served as heroes’ quarters even in retrospect, saving lives at the best of their guts. But a pandemic can take anyone by surprise.

Throughout history, viruses, bacterias, and parasites have been killing more than wars and natural calamities. We have heard of similar diseases like SARS and MERS before. But even with hundreds of health cases related to this, the COVID-19 is a whole new deal. Medical experts are still seeking answers. The world is still yet to discover the cure for it.

As the crisis magnifies each day, humanity and empathy for those in the frontline also amplify. Assistance comes in many forms from different people and institutions.

As technology innovators, we hope that our technology is serving health workers from our partner hospitals well. Compared to the risks that they are taking, it might be little. But it draws us more to continuously work in advancing our healthcare technologies, knowing that it is serving a great purpose in these troubled times and might even be useful in the future.

Having a system that can effectively manage medical records digitally can save some of their time. It also contributes to reducing errors that could affect patient outcomes.

There might still be millions of unknown diseases comparable to COVID-19 that the world may encounter again. Thus, an effective documenting system to gather information about the patients can help in medical research, developing vaccines, and improving medical practices.

This phenomenon hit us with the reality that a multitude of possibilities is still unknown in the field of medicine. Takeaways from this event will likely propel a much intensive organizational development and the adoption of modern solutions for modern problems. 

We hope that once the brighter days are upon us once again, we will have more chances to work hand in hand with those in the health sector, improving their operations while enhancing our healthcare products. So that when another biological threat comes in our way, our medical practitioners are better geared, having better access to medical knowledge. We can be more ready than afraid.

Check out our healthcare product, MEDCURIAL, and see how it helped some of the biggest hospitals in the country provide better patient outcomes.

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Healthcare. Java. Java Philippines.
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Healthcare Crisis Demands Use of the Cloud (2020)
Healthcare Crisis Demands Use of the Cloud (2020) 768 487 Exist Software Labs

The pandemic has placed institutions around the world under a heavy burden.  Except for national governments, no other institution or organization has taken the full force of the effect of the COVID virus than the healthcare industry. The immensity of the response needed, saving lives in addition to those that are infected while protecting their own care teams is unprecedented possibly since the post World War.

But we are, by no means still in the industrial age.

Technology has advanced to the point that people can stay in touch with families and workmates while physically apart across continents.  What this also means is that systems can be serviced and operated remotely while interfacing with other systems in order to provide valuable data and/or service that workers need to perform their jobs.  At its core, most if not all businesses, institutions including hospitals, require software systems in order to run their operations and coordinate the disparate but dependent functional parts.

We have at our disposal the use of magnificent machines that we’d never thought would be smart enough to turn on and off and operate by themselves. Inside the modern hospital, we’re used to seeing nurses carry tablets instead of paper charts, programmable infusion pumps instead of IV drips, and patients viewing lab results from the mobile phone instead of reading them on paper.

Yet all this may not be enough and the situation right now and post-crisis demand that healthcare upgrade and become more digital.

It has been said that the web is the future and along with it, is the use of cloud computing.  But this isn’t true at all because the future is upon us already!

The window for getting by with anything manual or use of outdated software applications that require complicated installations and effort-intensive management has just about closed.  The current crisis just illustrated how fragile are the systems that are highly dependent on onsite physical support. Unless, you’re a care provider – a doctor or nurse or medical team member, any function that can be performed remotely can mean lives being saved and less burden on medical services.

To believe that this is temporary and that things will return to normal soon is to remain in denial.  The world has changed and expectedly, so will the tools.  

One can bet that this crisis will spur innovation that will bring about better technology for hospitals, businesses and other industries than what we have right now.  The kind that allows people to focus and invest on work that is truly valuable like bedside care and directly saving lives.

But until that time comes, it is best to perform an honest audit of what keeps your business up and running. Heaven forbid that IT systems experience downtime and can’t help hospitals stay afloat.  Because every medical personnel’s fervent wish is for people to stay home, expecting the hospital systems and processes running efficiently (from admissions, discharge, orders, billing and cashiering among others) while they do their jobs is probably high on their wish list, too.

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Digital Banking. Java. Java Philippines.
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Digital Banking: Bridging the Social Distance
Digital Banking: Bridging the Social Distance 768 487 Exist Software Labs

The social distancing measures imposed to contain the spread of the global pandemic COVID19 pushed people to limit themselves from physical exchanges. The current scenario also puts restrictions on accessing necessities in which finances remain the lifeblood. Even so, the gradual shift into digital banking allows many banks and their clients to keep financial matters going.

The crisis and the quarantine measures implemented painted a clearer picture of how banking systems should step up their game, for instance, not limiting it to on-premise processing of transactions. We can say that such development will not be in vain even after this global concern clears up.

Digital Banking is an idea that pushes forward the minimization of physical transactions while maximizing operations and achievement of business goals.

Major Benefits of Digital Banking

No need to visit an actual branch; faster and easier registration and onboarding process; do bank transactions anytime, anywhere

  • Traditional banking requires a client’s presence in a physical branch. The process, account application, for example, mandates them to allocate enough time to finish the initial processing. It puts going to a store, falling in line, filling out documents by hand, and submitting the documents into view. Such a scenario will take much of the applicant’s time, needless to say, effort. Through digital onboarding, a person will only need access to a device and sufficient internet connection. Case in point, Exist’s partner PBCOM in the Philippines enables its market to apply for an account online by just providing the necessary information through an application specifically designed for the said process. An application can also operate 24/7, allowing the person to apply anytime he/she feels to do so, no cut-offs, no closing time, and we have fewer people exhausted by the end of the day.

Offer the longed-for banking application; attract more unbanked individuals to register

  • Onboarding is the first opportunity to build a relationship with a client. Therefore, it should offer ease to him/her at first glance. As stated above, traditional onboarding can be tedious for most people, however. In addition to that, a single branch can only cater to applicants within the covered area. Such limitation leaves banks with less market as well. Imagine what a mobile banking application that does the job like account opening on behalf of the bank staff can do. The method will require less human supervision and is accomplished via a mobile phone, thus, leaving the one-at-a-time system behind, enabling the bank to have more applicants at once. By expanding availability through the application, banks will also keep their clients within reach, creating a more interactive platform for both parties.

Gather valid customer data through the eKYC onboarding process; upsell/cross-sell to existing clients faster

  • Paper-heavy transactions have been the long-accepted method. But with the rise of digitization, the world has been moving steadily into paperless ones. Digitally gathering the clients’ information lessens the effort of both the bank and the clients. It also creates a leeway into having a single source of truth about the client, which lowers mistakes caused by tediously transferring the data from paper to computer wherein human error can also transpire.

Easier, faster, and smarter banking: the call for leveling up the banking system is nothing new. It has been a running topic for quite some time now. The enhanced community quarantine only underlined the idea that going digital can bridge the gap between banks and their market even better. It is a race towards digital transformation, and stalling behind is not a sound choice.

Exist Software Labs, Inc. is committed to extending our assistance to several banks with their Digital Onboarding requirements. We have been in the business for over 20 years, and the mission to enable corporations to go on digital and have a competitive advantage in this fast-changing world is at our core.

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