Aspen Medical speeds healthcare staff deployments to key locations with Oracle

With 4,000 healthcare workers in the United Arab Emirates, the United States, Australia, and other countries, Aspen Medical is the only commercial organization in the world certified by the World Health Organization as an Emergency Medical Team for infectious disease outbreaks and trauma surgical operations. The organization bids on projects and contracts anywhere in the world—including in remote, challenging, and under-resourced environments.

For short-term surge workforce solutions, including areas hard-hit by COVID-19, the company frequently draws on a pool of experienced health workers who are willing to relocate under challenging circumstances.

Until recently, the organization managed its resources on non-integrated HR systems and dispersed repositories of information about talent and credentials. Furthermore, Aspen Medical’s systems lacked integration among human resources, finance, and project management. This impacted the ability to manage data consistently and make data-driven decisions rapidly.

In 2019, Aspen Medical began looking for a system that would provide central, standardized business processes across every subsidiary and entity.

Originally focused on a human capital management system to replace heavily customized solutions—including Sage, FastTrack, and TRIS—Aspen Medical widened the scope of its project to include enterprise resource planning.

The company went through the full request for proposal process and considered vendors such as Kronos, Workday, TechnologyOne, and CGOV. Ultimately, Aspen Medical selected Oracle for its integrated suite of cloud applications that could manage finance, manufacturing, supply chain, and human capital—all in one system.

In addition, Oracle offered a flexible and unique licensing proposition to include access to cloud applications and technology for all of Aspen Medical’s resources: full-time employees, part-time workers, and locums.

By standardizing HR practices, Aspen Medical eliminated previous disparate processes in subsidiaries, resulting in streamlined recruiting, smooth transfer requests, and higher employee satisfaction through self-service functions. Replacing multiple HR systems with Oracle Cloud HCM allowed the company to track and mobilize a fluid, multiskilled workforce from one location to another while centrally maintaining employee profiles and work histories.

The profiles stored in Oracle Talent Management—part of the Oracle Cloud HCM suite of applications—enabled the company to rapidly identify the right people for a project and speed up credentialing, the formal process of verifying qualifications, experience, and professional attributes. The result was swifter staff deployment to areas in need around the globe.

Oracle Recruiting standardized and centralized hiring to meet increasing demand from government, non-government organizations, global agencies, and the private sector. By integrating Oracle Cloud HCM with Oracle Project Management and Oracle Finance, managers gained visibility into resources across the world via a single console that displays headcount, staff locations, contracts, expenses, costs, and consolidated financials.

The consolidation of yearly results dropped from one month to 15 days and continues to improve as standardization across accounting ensures just one chart of accounts for cost optimization, cost capture, and revenue capture. The CFO gained stronger budgeting capabilities, thanks to the enhanced ability to measure profitability through enriched data.

Oracle Manufacturing, part of Oracle Cloud Supply Chain Management (SCM), allowed Aspen Medical to increase the manufacture and distribution of medical supplies during COVID-19. Oracle Cloud HCM, linked to Oracle Project Management, also improved cost capture for each contract, including billable and non-billable costs.

In addition, with Oracle Integration, Aspen Medical integrated Oracle Workforce Management and Oracle Project Management into a workflow that distributes payroll amounts as labor costs when billing clients. The company also uses OIC for integrating credit card expenses and bank transfers back to Oracle Finance.

Oracle Autonomous Database was an unexpected bonus for Aspen Medical. Looking to establish a data warehouse for historic information, the company found that Oracle APEX Application Development—a fully managed, low-code application development platform for building and deploying data-driven applications in Oracle Autonomous Database—provided a rich user interface for querying legacy data. It also helped in building other applications, including a health and safety auditing system.

Oracle Consulting guided Aspen Medical in re-engineering its HCM and ERP business processes, defining a new data architecture, standardizing procedures, and streamlining workflow and approval rules for consistency across various locations.

“It was important for us to work with an implementer that knew Oracle applications perfectly and would be able to hit the ground running. Oracle Consulting was attractive to us because of its profound healthcare expertise and the corresponding risk mitigation,” says Sanja Marais, general manager for technology and innovation.