It’s in the how that a company grows from Start Up to Business.
The first process-consulting project CRC had was for a start-up’s newly hired Director of Sales. She came to us because she couldn’t sell what her company was doing. She confessed they didn’t know what they were doing.
She needed us to help her decipher the How.
Through process definition, we helped her answer some important questions.
What was the problem she was trying to solve for her customers?
What were the resources she had available to solve it?
How did she plan to engage those resources to put the solution in place?
The company was going to help healthcare organizations build remote health monitoring into their post-surgical care regimen. When patients left the hospital, they would be able to log their vital signs, weight, and general health through remote devices issued to them by the healthcare organization. Our client had a software program that could interpret the remote devices’ data. The software even had reporting that would provide healthcare customers and providers with analytics. Their software product was one-of-a-kind.
The trouble came when the Director of Sales tried to sell the software. Potential customers wanted to know “How does a remote health monitoring program work?” The software, our client’s primary product, wasn’t enough to make the program actually work.
This client wasn’t ready for sales; they needed Operations.
Operations is the team that determines how the resources will be put to use in order to meet the customer’s needs. We helped the Director of Sales become the Director of Operations.
To serve their customers, the client needed processes:
For deploying the hardware: How will they send the devices to patients, get the devices connected, and teach the patients to use them?
For setting up the providers’ program: Would the organization need to purchase new devices or did they already have them? Who would monitor the data? How would those nurses be trained? What action would be taken given certain results? How would they bill for the services? Who would pay?
For managing the data: What data was collected, what fields did those values populate, and how was that data secured?
For ending device service: How would they get the hardware shut down, packed up, sent back to the owner? What about cleaned, cleared, calibrated, and ready for re-deployment?
Our client’s Director of Operations had the advantage of a proprietary IT system to operate all of these electronic transactions – from patient selection to device assignment to data capture, transfer, and security. We discovered the software plus the program design were her company’s What.
Remote health monitoring is a complex business. The possibilities of wearables, 24-hour consultations, and electronic medical records are constantly being explored. In the end, it’s about access to better health care. That’s her company’s Why.
Processes are the How.
Start Ups spend a lot of time on the what and why. Which makes perfect sense. The What is your product or service and the Why is your motivation. People buy the What and the Why. They don’t buy the How.
So, Start Ups don’t often think about their how. But How is the bridge from your solution to your customer’s satisfaction. How is your business. Your property. Our client’s Director of Operations needed processes to organize her business so she could go back to being Director of Sales.
At CRC, we are experts at How. We are your interim Director of Operations, discovering and defining your processes. From our first client in the health care industry to our most recent client in the industrial machinery space, we help businesses own their How.
We also help businesses that have outgrown their How – it worked when there were three people executing, but as the business has grown, it’s gotten harrier. Bring in the process definition experts and ensure every team member is on the same page providing consistency and continuity as the company grows.
Make better use of your resources – digital, physical, and mental. Let CRC re-engineer your How so you can work smarter, not harder. Call 803-569-8200 today.