4 Reasons the Cerner Consultant Job Market is Hot
Cerner consultants and other health IT contractors understand their marketability is strongly linked to the relative popularity of the vendor software that they’re trained on.
Epic consultants have seen their stock rise over the past five years, in parallel with Epic market share, while consultants skilled in other EMRs, like McKesson, have seen opportunities shrink.
The Cerner consultant market, steady in recent years, is showing signs of heating up. In 2016, our firm is seeing much higher demand for analysts, project managers and trainers with skills in Cerner’s core EHR, Millennium, and its associated specialty modules.
Why now? Below are some of the major market drivers that we see creating new opportunities for Cerner talent. If you are a Cerner consultant, or a Cerner-skilled FTE thinking about consulting, now is a good time to polish up your resume.
Find Cerner Consulting Jobs here.
New deals
The year 2015 was a banner one for Cerner, not only in terms of revenue—a record $4.43 billion—but also in terms of new license sales. New Cerner clients mean more hiring needs. This recent tweet from HIMSS16 tells the story:
Reason #1 to visit our #HIMSS16 booth (#2032). pic.twitter.com/uqvEfnnUPV
— Cerner (@Cerner) March 1, 2016
Big deals
Cerner wasn’t just closing new deals last year, it was closing bigger deals. The year 2015 was the best year for new business in Cerner’s history, and the company signed 102 contracts that were $10 million or larger. In its recent earnings call, Cerner management hinted at two very large deals that are now expected to close in mid-2016, and of course, there is the Department of Defense…
Military health
Cerner, as everyone knows, was the winner in the sweepstakes to overhaul the Department of Defense’s electronic medical records system. It’s a massive deal that is already pulling a lot of the available Cerner consultant pool into long-term contracts. That simply tightens the rest of the domestic market for Cerner talent and means more demand for consultants who don’t go to work on the DoD project.
Market churn
Cerner’s 2015 acquisition of Siemens was concerning to long-time Soarian Clinical customers, many of whom plan to replace the system with a new EHR. Cerner won’t keep all of the Soarian clients it acquired (some will move to Epic), but a KLAS report suggests many Siemens hospitals will switch to Cerner Millenium.
In general, consolidation in the EHR and hospital markets leads to replacement or integration decisions. Product churn is generally good for consultants, and we at Healthcare IT Leaders believe Cerner consultants will benefit from consolidation trends.
