During a recent conversation involving a vendor-client relationship, where the client is considering consolidation of image archives into an enterprise solution, the vendor raised a very interesting point. In considering the total cost of ownership, how often is the impact of service maintenance agreements overlooked?
In this instance, the vendor pointed out that the client is under service contracts with several vendors for image archival devices. Besides the obvious factor of the cost of multiple contracts, there is the administrative cost of managing those multiple contracts.
With the consolidation to an enterprise solution, there are economies of scale from the consolidation of image archives. The result may very well be a reduction in the cost of a service maintenance agreement, from having only a single vendor, and potentially less hardware and software to have under an agreement.
As healthcare comes under increasing pressure to improve the quality of care and utilize technology to reduce cost, considering service maintenance agreements may be a means of cost reduction.
A penny here, and a penny there, and pretty soon you are talking real dollars and cents!
Anyone care to chime in? I am sure there are some good case studies out there and I know the community would like to hear about them.
