Managing Data Growth Within Contract Management Systems with Archiving Strategies

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1 Managing Data Growth Within Contract Management Systems with Archiving Strategies consulting group

2 1 The most common and increasing prevalent concern of owners of contract management applications is the growing size of the database. Many systems are approaching the threshold of requiring increased attention because of several years of use. At the same time, industry needs are dramatically increasing the rate of growth moving forward. There are a number of obvious reasons that these systems are now requiring more attention. The first is that many manufacturers have had their applications deployed for several years, and the transactional volume that has slowly been accumulating is starting have a notable affect. The second, and more pressing reason, is that many applications have incurred changes to support changing regulations and requirements, such as those handed down from DRA and SOX. At a minimum, manufacturers have had to deal with increasing data volumes and processing times associated with calculating monthly AMP and incorporating 12-month smoothing. Individual interpretations of SOX needs vary, but often include additional storage of auditable data components. SOX also usually drives the need for multiple instances of full copies of databases to be used in additional test and development environments. And finally, an increasing focus on downstream reporting and analytical tools has led to the need for copies of subsets of primary data in data warehouses and reporting environments. There are a number of issues and costs that arise as data volume growth increases: Capital costs this one is obvious and usually the first measurable cost. Organizations often first respond to increasing information volume by acquiring more storage capacity. Capital costs are not restricted to storage, as when capacity increases, so does the need for other components, such as networking devices and disaster recovery hardware and software. Management costs IT must manage all the underlying infrastructure as well as optimize and backup systems. Application performance Daily users of the application see their productivity drop as performance deteriorates. Availability A very real risk is a loss of availability in the event of a hardware failure. A large-volume client recently incurred a hardware failure that took them offline for four days this was the time it took to restore their massive database. Consider the effect of this type of an event when your organization is a few days away from a government pricing submission. A number of paths should be considered when searching for solution options. If an application is off-the-shelf, first inquire alternatives from the vendor. The next path might be to leverage database optimization strategies, such as partitioning. Another option might be to revamp processes so that they more efficiently store data while maintaining application and audit integrity.

3 2 A viable solution to the issues of increasing data volume is the deployment of an archiving tool that is compatible with your applications. As you analyze your needs and any possible solution, consider the following: Performance Will the solution increase user productivity? Cost Consider hardware, software and maintenance costs and gains. Scalability The solution should be able to handle increasing loads as well as upgraded versions of the target applications. Opportunity Does a solution free IT and business users to add value elsewhere? Risk How does the solution affect your overall risk profile, considering system availability, data integrity and auditing ability? Cumberland Life Sciences offers a flexible turnkey option in the form of an archival utility package that would be appropriate for most Oracle-based packaged software applications. The tool consists of an archiving engine that is support by various configurable components. Some features include: Table Driven Architecture Configuration tables store the following information: Archive table list Materialized view list Purge table list Foreign Key Constraints (tells the tool the path to use to archive data) General settings (DBs location and name, running mode) GUI Front End GUI front end is web-based and provides the following capabilities: Maintain Configuration tables Perform regular maintenance Initiate or schedule job View last run info Views last errors info Upgrade/migration The tool is designed for upgrades and migration to NG platform in the future Upgrades should be configuration changes instead of code changes

4 3 Process Archive Data Remove historical data from production database. Store in a separate archive schema/database on a separate server. Recommended data archiving areas: Transaction Data Settlements / Adjudications / Submissions / Notification / Reconciliation We do not recommend archiving Domain Data: Contracts / Business Units / Membership / Products Clean up data in production and create views of domain tables in the archive database. Access to Data for Reporting Purposes Archive data, production data and a combination of both No modifications required to any external reports Data Reversal Process Ability to bring archived data back into the production database In conclusion, industry trends and increasing transactional history are creating a need for a proactive data growth management strategy. One must understand the true costs of excessive data volumes and properly evaluate available options in order to successfully manage the challenges that are presented by this increasing growth.

5 About Cumberland Consulting Group Cumberland Consulting Group is a national technology implementation and project management firm serving ambulatory, acute and post-acute healthcare providers. Through the implementation of new technologies, we help the nation s largest health systems advance the quality of patient care they deliver and improve overall business performance. Our approach to IT planning is based on years of experience gained in dozens of successful implementations. We believe that proven methods combined with disciplined, rigorous but pragmatic project management delivers successful projects. We get it right the first time. consulting group 720 Cool Springs Blvd. Suite 550 Franklin, TN Results. Delivered.