Helping Develop Business Webs

What are business webs?

Traditionally, organizations have competed and succeeded by becoming vertically integrated. Within a soupmaker's boundaries, for instance, would be housed - among other things - can-making plants, a delivery company, and a technology support company. Such integration was primarily a result of a comparatively higher cost of conducting open market transactions and partnering. The rise of the Internet has shifted the paradigm extensively. New business models are emerging, fueled by IT and networks and the ensuing porus organizational boundaries. Highly integrated organizations are uncoupling into business webs.

A key consideration in these new business models is how to sift between what is a core competency that drives value to one's business and what is "context". Any business activity that is a supporting service for an organization, or the "context", is a prime target for possible delegation to another company within its web. In the same vein, the concept of attaining competitive advantage by hiring innovative and bright minds in-house is no longer true. Seeking talent externally on an ad-hoc basis may yield the same results at significantly lower costs.

These provocative ideas are a new organizational framework that relies on a network of people and resources to conduct business. On-demand partnerships that will deliver increased leverage, competitiveness, capacity, and innovation and allow people to be better aligned with their skill-sets and deliver greater value.

Lance Technologies' Work in Helping Build Healthcare Business Webs

Lance Technologies has engaged in a variety of projects in the healthcare industry that have allowed our clients to optimize inter-organizational collaboration or use technology to help outsource non-core, albeit key, business functions. For instance, web-based software from Lance Technologies is currently helping an over-twenty-provider long-term care group store patient encounter information securely online. External businesses in its web also have access to this information repository. Transcriptionists can create patient notes and upload them into the repository, saving the medical group from the administrative hassle of doing so themselves. In addition, over thirteen key long term care facilities serviced by the medical group also have access to select patient information for their records.

Another key client is working with Lance Technologies to develop a technology solution that will allow them to outsource their in-house transcription services, thereby delivering significant cost-savings. Lance Technologies' solution revolves around the creation of an XML-based interactive voice response system that will allow doctors to record radiology readings and have their recordings accessible to transcriptionists securely via the web. These transcriptionists can then transcribe directly online and deliver the typed reports to the client. In the event an interpreting doctor does not have access to a phone, he can record online using a web-delivered voice recorder.

Technology solutions such as these are a key component of Lance Technologies' philosophy of partnering with clients to deliver operational efficiency via connecting a business' information systems with those in its immediate business web.