SaaS-Delivered Policy Management Overtaking Hard Copies

“If it ain’t broke, why fix it?”

The venerable and trusty VHS tape. After winning the Betamax battle in the early ’80s, VHS reigned as the go-to medium for bringing you or your kid’s favorite movies into the living room. The collection on your shelves invariably grew, and viewing that classic Disney film had never been easier. The VCR, used to play VHS tapes, had become a mainstay in American homes.

Does this stack of DVDs remind you of your binder-based policy system?
Photo by paul_irish via PhotoRee

The format war from decades past seemingly had been reignited with the introduction of the DVD format. However, the “VHS faithful” had little interest in this upstart DVD. Their homes’ libraries of movies were already on VHS, they had a VCR to play them, and they were happy with the setup. If it ain’t broke, why fix it?

As time would tell, DVD won. Since 2005, no major film has released with a VHS option. Consumers began noticing the benefits of a DVD, such as no rewinding, better picture quality, smaller package, more content per disc, easy navigating/searching, etc., and they soon realized adopting the DVD would be more beneficial for them.

The VHS movie experience wasn’t broken, but the DVD certainly improved and added to the experience. In hindsight, the resistance to embrace the new technology was unwarranted. Fear or stubbornness to change can hinder positive change, ultimately hurting productivity and growth. Sometimes a new technology meets all the previous needs while providing significant improvements and new benefits. What aspects of your personal or professional life would you say “it aint broke” but could still use some fixing?

“Ok, I bought a DVD player. Now what?”

In the healthcare industry, we often find “ain’t broke” areas that need fixing. A spreadsheet- or binder-based system to handle policies and procedures might work alright, sometimes with minimal problems. However, if a new technology meets all the previous needs while providing significant improvements and new benefits, what’s stopping you from switching? Among other advantages, policy and procedure software makes searching seamless, archiving a breeze, and email notifications an automated wonder. Looking at the outdated system and the countless hours spent on these tasks reveals a high associated cost. That “free” system is actually quite expensive as compared to a SaaS-delivered policy and procedure software.

“But I still have all these VHS tapes!”

What about all those policies in the outdated format? PolicyStat has an implementation team to change the format for facilities which can’t afford to spend the time updating. We all wanted our VHS library turned into DVDs without doing the work ourselves. For policy format updating, PolicyStat understands this desire and thus takes on that task at no additional fee to our customers.

Policy and procedure software is more cost effective, more powerful, easier to use, easier to maintain, and the format change is done for you! So why are you still faithful to the old format?