McKesson Information Solutions Chose an Automated Migration Solution from CipherSoft
by Jennifer McNeill
Published March 8, 2004

McKesson Information Solutions is part of McKesson Corporation, a Fortune 20 healthcare services and information technology company. McKesson is dedicated to helping its customers deliver high-quality healthcare by reducing costs, streamlining processes and improving the quality and safety of patient care. Over the course of its 170- year history, McKesson has grown to provide pharmaceutical and medical-surgical supply management across the spectrum of care: healthcare information technology for hospitals, homecare and payors; hospital and retail pharmacy automation; and services for manufacturers and payors designed to improve outcomes for patients. For more information, visit http://www.mckesson.com/homeflash.html

Challenge

McKesson’s Horizon Clinicals development team found it difficult to operate on their existing system given their increasing business demands. They wanted to modernize and migrate the user interface of their primary application environment, developed with Oracle Forms version 3.0. Oracle Forms 3.0 was out of date, not user friendly and limited their ability to integrate with other Oracle products. After researching several different migration service providers, they found that many were not able to deliver an appropriate solution. McKesson recognized that the suitable solution would provide them with:

• A quick and automated conversion process
• A solution that provided easily achieved delivery dates
• Best practices utilized in the project planning stages and throughout the project
• Clean converted code that could easily be maintained after the conversion had been performed
• A proven solution that had been utilized by other clients previously
• A solution that provided them immediate capabilities within the Oracle database environment
• A portable solution to assist McKesson as they also wanted to deploy on the Linux platform
• A solution that allowed them to take advantage of the Web immediately
• A solution that would provide them with a more open environment.

McKesson had several options of conversion alternatives. The first was to do the conversion manually with their internal staff. While this might have been cost-effective, it would also drain resources. A major challenge with a manual conversion is that it can be extremely time-consuming, as the architecture must be designed from scratch, causing human errors and escalating project costs. Manual conversion can sometimes become along-term project that is never ending. These reasons were part of the decision to utilize an automated solution. In addition, while doing the manual conversion, there was concern about maintenance or modifications to the application that must occur. This can potentially cause problems during the conversion process – as application development must be frozen for a specific period of time.

The second alternative was to rewrite the application in Oracle’s 6i or 9i environment. While this solution was a viable alternative, the automated migration still was considered to be a more cost-efficient solution. As well, there were again issues around the availability of internal resources and the ability to achieve the desired solution in an efficient manner. Costs for the solution chosen were still substantially less than utilizing internal resources, which were required on other ongoing projects. Furthermore, rewriting code is much more risky as migrated code has been continually used and tested while bugs have been found and fixed.  The third alternative was to replace the application. Both the high expense of this alternative, along with the learning curve for their users was prohibitive of this solution. Finding a viable solution that was not cost prohibitive was a challenge for the organization.

The Chosen Solution – The Exodus Product

McKesson chose an automated solution from CipherSoft. This solution provided a quick and cost efficient way to achieve the end result required. In addition, CipherSoft has a reputation of providing successful conversion projects for more than 20 years. This experience was important to McKesson because they required a proven alternative with very little risk to their application. CipherSoft also provided a warranty on the converted software, offering to assist McKesson with any problems that occurred after the conversion project for up to 120 days. Another important offering from CipherSoft was a designated quality assurance person who was directly responsible for McKesson’s successful project. This person’s mandate was to liaison between the client and CipherSoft’s technical team throughout the project, ensuring that milestones were being met and the project was progressing effectively and on time. This also kept communication open between the client and the project team and which assisted with a successful conversion.

Project Results

McKesson decided to reinvest with Oracle, using CipherSoft’s Exodus migration software to convert 250 of their Oracle Forms applications written in 3.0 to Forms 6i, a GUI-based forms solution.

“We used their migration services to convert 250 of our Oracle Forms in four months, which with staffing at the time would have taken three years to convert manually,” said Eddie Hurt, senior application advisor at McKesson. 

CipherSoft’s migration service included changes to the character-based forms to produce a GUI application and Web capabilities.  McKesson has recognized many benefits from this conversion project including an increased ease of use for the end user, increased efficiency of operations and flexibility of the converted application across various platforms. The migration project was completed on time and within budget.