Business intelligence tools help hospitals improve efficiency
Better use of data brings strong ROI
Healthcare Finance News

Ease of use is a major selling point for Axiom Software, a leading provider of unified performance management software. Axiom embeds modeling and planning capabilities in the familiar Microsoft Excel format, allowing users to manage data without the need to learn a new application.

Axiom brings together the processes needed to define, articulate and execute strategic plans, offering capabilities in multi-year financial forecasting, initiative planning and tracking, KPI monitoring and scorecards and flexible reporting.

“Flexibility is the best thing about Axiom,” said Jeff Blankenship, chief financial officer at West Tennessee Healthcare, a 5,000-employee, seven-hospital system serving half million people between Memphis and Nashville. West Tennessee has annual net revenue of about $500 million. “We can add new data sources as we need. Much of that we were able to do without calling in tech support.”

Blankenship said he turned to Axiom as a tool to help improve accountability for financial results and transparency for the management team. In February and March, West Tennessee intended to roll out Axiom as the system’s information management portal. “On the continuum of what we’re trying to do, it was a pretty big step forward for us.”

Axiom’s use of Excel for presenting reports differentiates it from more IT-centric solutions, said Jay Spence, director of product and industry solutions at Axiom.

“The Excel tie-in was huge for us on the finance end,” Blankenship said. “It was easy to use, and we wanted the flexibility to grow it, expand it and implement our own variance accountability process.”