White Paper

Cleveland Clinic
White Paper
Global Business Transformation
 Table of Contents

The Hospital Network That Leads 3

Supply Chain Transformation 5

What does Winning Look Like? 8

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Section 1:
Leading
 The Hospital Network That Leads…

Cleveland Clinic, a non-profit academic medical center, provides clinical and hospital care and is a
leader in research, education and health information. Cleveland Clinic has been named the number two
hospital in America and the number one hospital for heartcare by U.S. News & World Report. Cleveland
Clinic is a north star in the global healthcare industry. As such, innovation is paramount not only in how
care is provided but how care is supported.

As an innovator, Cleveland Clinic has a specific vision of the future of healthcare. Built on the principle
of providing care “Today”, Cleveland Clinic foresees not only continued medical facility acquisition, but
also serving patients across many channels, in hundreds of locations across a vast physical and digital
healthcare network.

This is a massive departure from the traditional model of local urgent care facilities, large hospitals and
many brands of care providing a choice to the patient. The healthcare demands of the world continue
to escalate and Cleveland Clinic is on the forefront, innovating not only patient care but also the
backend processes required to support and deliver world class care.

As a result, the Global Business Transformation (GBT) Initiative was formed. A key aspect of this
operational transformation is the enhancement and transformation of people, process and technology
within the global supply chain. GBT delivers a highly integrated, seamless, cloud centric and on-
demand system of processes, supported by technology, enabling care givers to focus on patient care.

GBT was tasked to deliver on six very specific outcomes to enable this vision and serve Cleveland
Clinic’s 28,000 suppliers as well as manage their 135,000 contracts:

1. Agility. The ability to find information quickly and pivot to demands easily.
2. Integration. Support a global network, ensuring all users are working with the same information.
3. Insights. Understand the story told by the data and leverage this data to guide decision making.
4. Digitization. The world simply demands it. Mobile. Cloud. Accessible.
5. Affordability. Imagine a limitless capability. The solutions need to consider scale and innovation.
6. User story. Enable the caregivers. Do not hinder them with more tasks.

The program spans all administrative areas of Cleveland Clinic. Nitor has and is, supporting Cleveland
Clinic in the achievement of transformation within the Supply Chain and Finance areas.

Nitor is so proud to be a part of this vision. As a Cleveland-based company, we have the unique honor
of being both a patient and now a strategic partner to Cleveland Clinic.

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Section 2:
Supply Chain
Transformation
 Making World-Class, More World-Class!

Within the Healthcare vertical and beyond – Cleveland Clinic’s Supply Chain Group, led by Simrit
Sandhu, is globally recognized as the leader in managing every aspect of the healthcare supply chain.

Under Simrit’s leadership, the GBT Program asked the questions; How can we evolve? How can we be
better? This was a principled decision that led the program. A World Class Supply Chain organization
that is willing to ‘start over’ for the greater good of Cleveland Clinic, the primary caregivers and
ultimately the patients.

Getting Started
At the onset of the program, Nitor was asked to help envision what was possible across people, process
and technology. We deployed a series of visioning sessions to arrive at a framework that complimented
the GBT objectives. Our collective vision boards stated:

1. We will innovate in perpetuity; this is a way of life, not a project.

2. We will give way to the collective good; even if that makes our job more challenging.
3. We will deliver value quickly and incrementally.

Using these guiding principles, practicality became top priority in this very ambitious program.

Cleveland Clinic is a global health network comprised of 11 regional hospitals, 19 family health centers
in Ohio. Also, operations in UAE, Canada, UK as well as recent acquisitions in Florida and Nevada.
From a sheer size and transaction, Cleveland Clinic has over eight million patients visits annually, with
upward of 150,000 admissions. There are 60,000 employees that includes over 12,000 nurses, 4,000
doctors and scientists in 140 specialties. This does not include joint-ventures, fellow programs,
research grants and publication of the Cleveland Clinic Journal of Medicine.

How do you eat an elephant?

One bite at a time. Nitor worked side by side with Cleveland Clinic to consider the many technology and
process deployment options. At our disposal were several variables:

• Time zones
• Geography
• Hospitals
• Administrative campuses
• Practice areas
• Acquisitions

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Ultimately, we determined such a broad and deep transformation needed to be prioritized by risk
management.
Risk management and healthcare go together quite nicely! We determined a location and function-
based deployment would best support program objectives. Further, the priority would be to first deploy
to the administrative areas of Cleveland Clinic. This was designed to ensure the people, process and
technology transformation was not only fully tested and vetted but was maximized prior to impacting
caregivers and ultimately the patient experience.
The high-level challenges the team faced when embarking on this project were well defined. Balancing
the management of healthcare in the past., the reality of healthcare today(short term), and the future
vision of healthcare (the next 10 years).

Statistics on GBT
The following is just a sample of the massive GBT transformation:
• Replacement of legacy ERP with Cloud ERP, for all functions.
• Implementation of global reporting/data platform connected to all applications.
• Integration and digitization of the entire supply chain to payment process.
• Migration of all appropriate history into new tools and processes.
• Retraining of the entire organization of 56,000 users on how to do their business.
• Introduction of countless new business practices and processes.
• Development of 100+ interfaces connecting the source-to-contract and procure-to-pay technology
solutions to each other and various other systems involved in the GBT infrastructure
• Onboarding of 28,000 suppliers
• Management of 135,000 contracts

The Supply Chain Result

Nitor and Cleveland Clinic are completely reimagining the supply chain. Together we are:
1. Implementing a cloud-based source-to-pay application allowing users to seamlessly, from anywhere
and on any device, do the business of acquiring goods and services needed to ensure a world-class
patient experience.
2. Reimagining every process and task. As a team, we question the value of each step to simplify and
create a self-service centric environment.
3. Scaling for innovation and carefully documenting perpetual steps, methods and needs to ensure
Cleveland Clinic can build and adjust to new demands and capabilities as markets mature.

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Section 3:
What does
Winning Look
Like?
 Success Is Not a Straight Road
The sheer scope, intent and vision of GBT is being realized. Any program of this magnitude does not
have linear success. So, what is being accomplished? How is the program winning?

The Journey – Enablers of Success

The saying, “it is about the journey” is true in many ways with this program, The program team itself has
gone through a few transformations as we navigate the challenges and walk on the path of being
‘successful’.

• Cleveland Clinic leadership: Always definitive, vision-based and partner-centric. Decisive, never
wavering leadership drives programs like GBT. This is true with this program.
• Nitor and other Partners: Together, we learn, adapt and integrate ourselves into the Cleveland Clinic
culture. It is not always easy to learn how to best work with other firms. Admitting it, collectively
working on it, and finding common ground has become the catalyst to getting the work done
effectively and efficiently.
• Healthy Friction! Healthy debate on what is best practice and how it would best work at Cleveland
Clinic is necessary to make informed decisions. Additionally, workshops to share ideas and discuss
the pros and cons help us move forward as one team.
• Commitment to Cleveland Clinic caregivers is the underpinning of this project. Nitor’s pride in
partnering with Cleveland Clinic cements our commitment to delivering on the vision of GBT.

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Going back to project outcomes – How is Nitor supporting GBT success?
• Supply chain, procurement, and AP expertise related to people, process and technology.
• Global systems and process training including strategy, content, and delivery.
• Strategic partner leadership. At the most difficult cross-roads, Nitor takes the lead role in
determining viable options, pros, cons, and recommendations on best practice solutions.
• Innovative technology and process solution design. When the cloud software could not support the
business requirements, Nitor comes to the table with actionable solutions.

“ Nitor is an extraordinary partner–

they provide us with the flexibility
we knew would be required from a
Partner and ultimately with our
team - they deliver for Cleveland
Clinic.

Simrit Sandu, SVP, Supply Chain –

Cleveland Clinic

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 T h a n k Yo u

“ This program is large and

complicated. It involves many
partners and associates from
Cleveland Clinic. Nitor handles this
complexity with ease. They want
accountability and throughout had
the best interests of the program
and Cleveland Clinic at the forefront
of all they do. Nitor is a great
partner.”

John McCullough, Assistant CIO -

Cleveland Clinic

nitorpartners.com