Trends as a Healthcare Service Provider

Rahul Varshneya, Co-founder and CEO, Arkenea LLC

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Rahul Varshneya, Co founder and CEO, Arkenea LLC, Rahul Varshneya is the co-founder and CEO of Arkenea, a mobile app consultancy with a large footprint in the healthcare and fitness industri... More >>

A 360 degree view of customer

Achieving a 360 degree view of the customer, as rightly pointed out, isn’t an easy thing to do. In fact, most consider it as unattainable for simply the reasons that the touch points with which a customer interacts with an enterprise have increased multifold with the proliferation of mobile devices, video customer support, online communities, social media, etc.

"In the current digital landscape, power has shifted from sellers and brand efforts to buyers who use social media to influence each other"

And due to the increase in these customer touch points, enterprises are leveraging various tools to develop this 360 degree view. Tools such as social media listening, predictive analysis, customer relationship management and marketing automation software are in vogue.

What becomes a key here is the role of data analytics to have a view that draws up on the integration of these tools and customer touch points. It demands a holistic approach that combines data exploration, data governance, data access, data integration and analytics in a solution that harnesses the volume, velocity and variety.

But the key question that one should be addressing is on the amount of information needed to create this 360 degree view what is too little information? Where you still don’t know enough about your customer to provide an engaging experience? This is the line that each company needs to define for themselves and their customers.

It should be about personalization so that businesses can offer the right service at the right time, the customer shouldn’t have to repeat their information to 5 different people when calling their support line, visibility into their purchases across locations to anticipate the evolving needs and make smart recommendations for effective cross-sell and up-sell.

Key Insights on Technology used

In the overall technology play for an enterprise, technology leveraged for infrastructure, compliance, security and disaster recovery are the minimum requirements to stay in the game. Competitive advantage occurs when a company acquires or develops an attribute that allows it to outperform its competitors.

Companies can leverage technology for competitive edge across different category of activities within the company, such as in business productivity and communication, physical creation of the product or its marketing and delivery to buyers and its support and servicing or line of business applications that tend to be ‘mission-critical’.

Having said that the customer-driven IT is one area that can give companies that much required competitive edge. By treating customers with kindness, compassion and offering a highly personalized service and experience, a company can trump efforts by competitors to acquire them.

And in the current digital landscape, the power has shifted from sellers and brand efforts to buyers who use social media to influence each other. This is where contextual technologies such as mobile, Internet of Things, big data and location allow businesses to treat customers to positive experiences.

These technologies have to be integrated well in to the linked and interdependent activities or categories within an organization’s value chain.

Pain-points as a technology providerto healthcare businesses

In my opinion, there can’t be a day where we can ever say, all is fine. Customer demands are ever changing and evolving, adapting to the technological innovation in the last couple of decades. The technology is simplifying business processes at one end helping companies deliver better experiences for the consumer.

As a technology provider to healthcare businesses, we feel that there can be a better platform for communication and flow of patient record between doctors, nurses and staff in a hospital environment to drive cost savings and improve the quality of care delivered. At the same time, there needs to be innovation in the communication between the doctor and the patient to engage patients in their healthcare. We’re now starting to build several solutions in this space where organizations are adopting these efficiencies.

Trends in Healthcare businesses as atechnology service provider

As a technology service provider to the broad category of healthcare businesses, I would say there are two things that I feel will have a significant impact. Firstly,the wearable technology while it’s still in its infancy, it has already started to have widespread influence across many industries. As wearable technology continues to improve to better, its use will impact both the experience of patients and practitioners to better receive and administer care. In fact, wearables can have a significant impact on telemedicine, where many don’t survive a medical condition or emergency each year because the right patient needs to be at the right place at the right time and this isn’t often the case. The second is cloud-based provider relationship management software that integrates with mobile devices. From referrals, progress updates and insurance authorizations these types of communications result in huge amounts of money and time being wasted and a liability to every healthcare provider.

.NET Integration in healthcaredomain

We’ve created a solutions integration platform for our enterprise customers in the healthcare domain that help businesses go mobile seamlessly, saving cost and time during integration with their ERP or CRM. While the platform was originally created in Java, we’ve also built on ASP.NET with Web API for enterprises that use .NET technologies leveraging our dedicated .NET teams. The end points of this integration platform, is easily consumable by the mobile devices (phones, tablets) as well as wearable devices.