We have a customer that is growing very fast in the Healthcare space. Two years ago their Member database was around 200,000 members. After 2020 Annual Enrollment Period settled, they are now over 5 million members. This growth is a very good problem to have.

One of the features of Vy Healthcare ERP is something called "IntelliSearch." This feature enables a quick and easy ability to find members when names are not always the same or when it is not obvious which MCO they are with (something that can be more difficult than you'd think - but this is a topic for another day).

The problem with IntelliSearch is that while it makes it very user friendly for Call Center agents, it is way more taxing on the server, especially as that database grows.

Another feature of Vy Healthcare ERP is that we process discharge/authorization files as soon as they come in from the MCO. This is of course great for the MCO, our customer, and ultimately the member getting served, but it is also pretty taxing to be processing through thousands of discharges and comparing it to millions of Members in the middle of the day.

So when average page load times went from 1.2 seconds to 7 seconds in January, something needed to be done and needed to be done fast.

It was initially proposed that we need to remove IntelliSearch and that file processing should be moved to an overnight job because that is where the problem lies.

The problem with this is that it would severely impact usability and also provide worse customer service.

And therein lies the problem. For those outside of technology (looking at you CEOs and CFOs), all "tech people" seem the same. But there are a lot of different types of technology people. In a perfect world you have:

• Developers
• Database Administrators
• Server Admins
• Network Admins
• Security Specialists
• Project Managers
• And of course, an Executive over all of them that understands all of this

If you have an appetite for all that, Vy Technology may not be for you (that's at least a $1 million in payroll right there). Even if you can afford it though, finding and retaining is a whole other issue. So what most small and medium sized businesses do is they hire a single Network/Server Admin type, put them in an IT Director position, and turn to them to make big picture decisions. If you found that diamond in the rough that can wear all those hats and you can keep them happy, great! But if you don't have that, you can't leave operational business decisions up to the wrong type of technology person.

In the end, we went with a replicated database solution that processed the searching in one database, the discharge files in another database, and left the master database free to do everything else (at no additional cost, no operational impact, little work for the internal IT department, and in a matter of two days).

This absolutely was more work. Did it "ruin a weekend," yes. Was it the easy way out, no. But there is no doubt this was the right move to make for the business. And putting the business over the IT department is what good businesses (and IT departments) do.