Enterprise resource planning offers greater visibility and insights

WA Primary Health Alliance (WAPHA) has implemented a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, following a well-executed, rapid six-month implementation.

The organisation’s rapid growth, driven by an increased mandate from the Australian Government to support general practice, particularly given the COVID-19 pandemic, and to fund an increasing volume of community-based health care services, were catalysts to improving its internal systems.

WAPHA CEO Learne Durrington said implementing the ERP cloud platform would give the organisation a consolidated, real-time view of key activities and improve operational efficiencies, forecasting and decision-making.

“WAPHA’s evolution has been rapid in recent years, yet our systems lagged; they lacked integration and had become increasingly arduous to run and, expensive to operate,” Ms Durrington said.

“This implementation is part of our growth strategy of which investment in digital innovation and transformation is a key pillar.

“The ERP – named by one of our staff as Aspire to reflect a strong desire to achieve or become – gives us greater visibility and insights across core business operations.

“We can then use this data to inform forecasting and decision-making; strengthen governance and compliance; and improve the way we engage with the health service providers we fund.”

WAPHA engaged Deloitte in February 2022 to co-design and build an ERP using Oracle’s Fusion Cloud platform. It unites its finance, people and culture (including payroll, recruitment, onboarding, learning and development) and contract management systems into a single contemporary, agile system.

“We understand this was a fast implementation. It was an enormous amount of work for the team however the rapid timeline meant we could achieve our goals without too much disruption,” Ms Durrington said.

“By investing in our business processes and our people, we are building operational capacity, and, in the long run, this allows us to do our jobs better so we can focus on delivering on our commitment to improving health outcomes of the WA community.”