Vendor Selection: Know Your Options

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: There is no perfect PACS vendor. However, there will be a “perfect” or “best-fit” vendor for you and your facility. To find this perfect-for-you vendor, your PACS-project selection and implementation committee must begin by looking at available vendors. “But,” you ask, “how many do I start with, and how do I formulate such a list?”

This month, I am providing you with some ideas on how to begin. You can start your investigation using several categories of vendors. Here, I will lay out the pros and cons of the following groups: your existing vendors, market-share leaders, top vendors in surveys, and vendors on the move.

Typically, you’ll want to start at home with your facility. Look at all of your existing vendors. This list can be derived from the vendors of your clinical systems, imaging systems, RIS, teleradiology, and film/laser printers. As a starting point, keep in mind that it really does not matter what a vendor’s sales representative can tell you. Rely on the history you have with the vendor and what you know of its products, installation and implementation processes, and ongoing support abilities and capabilities.

Additionally, you should have exposure to how the vendor’s other product(s) measure against what your representative told you it would do prior to that sale and, most importantly, how the vendor acted after falling short. If any issues have been raised, how were they handled? Was the focus on making it right, or was the feeling, “It is what it is”? Or, did the vendor focus on each word in your final contract?

For each of the identified vendors, you have a “good news, bad news” situation. You probably don’t just know these vendors; you probably really, really know them. You will know what they do very well, but you also will have been exposed to some opportunities for improvement. In many cases, you know their product(s) as well as they do?and maybe better?so you are aware of all of their shortcomings. You also have seen how each vendor has reacted to working with you to provide an acceptable resolution to problems. Drawing from your personal experience, how responsive and competent was each vendor’s service support, applications support, and/or product updates/upgrades?

Along with that experience has been the accountability experience as to how fairly everything has been provided. I use the analogy of marriage: I can guarantee you that my wife is keenly aware of my shortcomings, but I also believe that my positives outweigh those shortcomings?as proven by our 17-plus years of marriage. If your facility has been plagued by unexpected charges or constant fees for any help provided, this can be an irritant that can weaken your business relationship. Of course, you also are intimately aware of (or have had exposure to) all of the vendor’s positives. Equally important, the vendor should know you, your facility, your challenges, your workflow, and your clinical and physician community better than any outside vendor. A partnership is two-sided, and it should have an inside track.

“So, Mike,” you ask, “are you saying that we should just ‘willy, nilly’ pick one of our existing vendors for our new/replacement project?” No. What I am saying is not to underestimate what you already know about a vendor’s past performance in partnership with you. They earned your business before?and, hopefully, it was for good reason.

A vendor becomes and, more importantly, maintains a market-leader position for several reasons. In general, you cannot sustain a market-leader position without a strong product, strong support infrastructure, and people who genuinely care about your business. Without these, that market position would or should have withered.

Vendors that are rated high on surveys deserve some discussion about where they are performing well and the fact that they have maintained those scores for so long. Post-honeymoon scores need to weigh more heavily than infatuated newcomers’ scores. I firmly believe that ratings are only one data point?one that should be discussed, but should not be used purely as the basis for a purchase decision.

When I mention vendors on the move, I mean those that are moving upward. These could be newer vendors, strong regional vendors that are growing their national presence, or dedicated PACS vendors. These also could be vendors that have persistent sales personnel who have been visiting your facility on a regular basis. It seems that a few vendors out there are always making market splashes and strides. Of course, as we have seen many times over the years, as these vendors grow and become successful, they sometimes mismanage that growth and trip themselves up (lose the “eye of the tiger,” so to speak). More likely, another company acquires the vendor to supplement its own market offerings and become an even stronger player. I applaud these vendors’ aggressiveness, entrepreneurial motivation, and hard work in making their move in a very competitive marketplace without an abundance of risk-takers.

In summary, several vendors can or do fit into each of these categories. These range from dedicated PACS vendors to the large OEMs. Taking a strong look at a diverse field of possible solutions, I believe that the decision-making process will be of a higher quality when you begin to evaluate and understand just what differentiates one vendor from another. When you make your list, attempt to limit it to no more than six to eight vendors; otherwise, it is too long. If you have more than that number, you will be wasting not only their time but, more importantly, your own.

Michael Mack is VP of business development at the Thomas Group Ltd (Anaheim, Calif). Having more than 20 years of experience in the medical imaging industry, Mack now specializes in PACS planning and implementation.