Customer Relationship Management

Driving CRM Value

in Healthcare
Deploying intuitive CRM options can produce greater
RO! and enhanced patient and caregiver experience.
By R e b e c c a

Wettemann

or those that know customer relationship management (CRM]but not necessarily healthcare
CRM seems like the perfect solution to many of
the healthcare industry's key problems. Need
to improve efficiency and manage patient records? Track
patients' progress electronically. Need to improve patient
care? Use metrics and analytics to evaluate those records
and identify areas for improvement. Need to maximize
quality of care while minimizing cost? Adopt CRM to track
and manage patient satisfaction.
Unfortunately, the challenges many other CRM adopters
have struggled with in the past that thwarted success and
slowed the delivery of CRM value are arguably even more
present in healthcare:

explored investments in improving customer relationship

management have delivered ROI while visibly improving
patient care, both by learning from others' mistakes in key
CRM success areas and by looking beyond the old-school
definition of CRM technology. What follows are a number
of key strategies for success.

IT budget challenges: As healthcare organizations have

looked to cut costs and improve efficiencies, investing in
broad IT initiatives has not been a common practice.

Look Beyond the CRM Label

Many CRM vendors provide customized solutions for
the healthcare vertical market
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and many implementation part- For more information
ners provide vertical-specific on Nucleus Researoh,
expertise in making CRM ap- www.rsleads.com/709ht-206
plications work in healthcare. Despite this, it's important
to remember that a number of technologies and not just
those with the CRM moniker can deliver value as part of
a broader strategy to support CRM in healthcare. We've
analyzed a number of cases where content management
from various vendors enabled connpanies to improve patient
management and patient care by providing better access
to information for both staff and patients.
Another key technology area supporting CRM improvements in healthcare is data analysis. Business intelligence
or predictive analytics tools that fall more on data analysis
than "pure" CRM may present better short-term ROI opportunities than a broad investment in case management.
For example, some CRM tools are designed to provide
all employees with dashboards and reporting to monitor patient care metrics while others provide predictive
analytics, used to predict outcomes for better proactive
management.

Many CRM vendors have targeted healthcare as a key

opportunity area. However, given these challenges, it's
not surprising that most CRM vendors have won more
customers in pharmaceuticals, health testing, and other
related fields than at hospitals and other healthcare facilities. Despite this, healthcare organizations that have

Think Before You Move Data

No matter whether it is CRM, content management
or analytics, taking a close look at all three can help you
leverage data to improve patient management. But it's also
a good idea to look before you leap. We've found most
healthcare organizations have, at best, fragmented data

User adoption: If you think salespeople are difficult to train

and motivate to use new software, try doctors.
Multiple data sets in multiple systems: Particularly with
merger and acquisition activity in healthcare organizations, and departmentalized data warehousing efforts, few
healthcare organizations have a single integrated view of
all their data.
Customer data confidentiality concerns: Many other sectors
view this as a customer confidence issue, but in healthcare,
customer data security and confidentiality is not only important, it's criticaland regulated.

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September 2007

HEALTH MAMAGEMEIUT TECHNOLOGY

www, heo Ith mgTtech. com

Customer Relationship Management

stores, multiple record-keeping systems and inconsistent
data entry processes. Before you start paving over cow
paths, you should take a closer look at what you have.
As an example, a medical testing company that we
evaluated recently had deployed a CRM solution. During
the deployment, the testing company had imported information from its legacy billing system directly into the application. It found that incomplete data and lack ofa clear
understanding of the data structure required additional
changes to make the deployment successful.
Don't Ignore On-demand Options
On-demand CRM has been a disruptive and positive
force in the market. It is no longer just a strategy for tbe
midmarket or departmental CRM need, nor is it out of
the hands of IT. By building a developer community and
an on-demand development language, on-demand can support more complex requirements than it could just months
ago. It can also be an opportunity for internal developers to
build customized CRM solutions and then outsource the
ongoing support. Continued innovation and growth of new
marketing, sales and service applications in the on-demand
marketplace will force the on-premise players to continue
to innovate as well.
Some have been concerned about security and integrity
of data when deploying on-demand CRM for healthcare.
However, reviewing the data security measures tbat ondemand vendors employ to ensure tbe security of individual customers' data may reveal that it's more robust
than your internal measures.We should all be watching to
see if Google's recent acquisition of Postini, a messaging
security service, drives its expertise in security and compliance even further. Adopting on-demand can also help
you to accelerate CRM deployment. Ifyou wish, you can
then migrate some applications or user accounts back on
premise to reduce the burden on IT and capital risk while
delivering significant benefit.
Involve Users From Day One
The most successful CRM deployments utilize end-user
input in the decision, design, and development process for
greater buy-in and usability. For example, a number of employees of one hospital organization resisted having to find
the information themselves because they were accustomed
to requesting information from an internal team. In order
to counter this resistance and maximize adoption, the deployment team regularly held focus groups with employees
to belp them understand that tbe deployment would actually enable them to complete tbeir jobs. By sharing their
preferences and requirements with the deployment team
during these meetings, users became more invested in the
process, which reduced their resistance.
Web-sawy end users and greater usability are beginning
to replace training as tbe key to CRM adoption. Casual
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September 2007

CRM users in particular will benefit from making CRM

intuitive and linking it to the natural users' desktop. For
example, companies that provide Microsoft Office Outlook desktop integration, can ease adoption and increase
user productivity. Additionally, more and more vendors
will deliver vertically-customized solutions that already
reflect some business processes and best practices. Looking
to these solutions can help reduce deployment time and
eliminate the risk of being the first to test usability.
Phase Adoption and Training
Starting with an initial pilot that allows you to identify
and articulate benefits can help build momentum for your
project. Additionally, phasing adoption and training can
help you leverage initial experience to ease adoption with
each new department or area of functionality you add to
your CRM technology strategy.
An example would be a hospital tbat first deployed a
system to manage emergency room records and is now
expanding the system to support broader patient record
management across the hospital. This has given ER doctors tbe advantage of "getting their feet wet" and see the
benefits ofthe system while avoiding the initial capital and
political cost of pulling doctors away from patients to put
them tbrough extensive IT training.
Conclusion
CRM can deliver ROI to healthcare, and if you're
considering a CRM project today, you can take advantage
of the previous experience of both healthcare and nonhealthcare organizations to accelerate benefits and reduce
risk. Since healthcare is a key target market opportunity for
many CRM vendors you can leverage your position to your
advantage. Both your vendor and implementation partners
should compete to win your business by showing both their
experience in meeting similar needs and their willingness
to make an investment in ensuring your success.
Finally, to ensure success you'll want to make sure that
you have a clear business case that is based on solving the
key business problem you plan to solve; the benefits you
expect to achieve, as well as bow and when they will happen; and, milestones for the project to ensure you'll achieve
tbe projected ROI. This will help you to articulate and
validate tbe project with management, focus on the greatest
areas of benefit when you deploy, and manage any potential
scope-creep with a clear roadmap for CRM success.

HEALTH MANAGEMENT TECHNOLOGY

Rebecca Wettemann is vice president of research at Nucleus Research.

She can be contacted at rwettemann
@nucleusresearch. com.

HMT
www.healthmgttech.com