As I discussed in a previous post, we have been learning from our experiences as SaaS customers and applying this to our approach as we work with our clients and our Healthcare Relationship Management solution.
Lesson #3: Dive in - start using the solution and see value right away
Planning is important, and by all means, you want to think through a plan for your configurations and user set up (and how it fits your workflow). But, it's also important to get in there right away and start using it! When selecting a solution for collaboratively managing our activation projects, we had clear criteria in mind. It would need to be intuitive to use (zero learning curve or barriers to adoption), and would be an integral tool to help us improve our efficiency instead of creating additional overhead (project set up time, managing dependencies, etc.).
Within a couple of days of selecting the solution, we created an initial project template and launched the new solution with our clients. Getting our feet wet by using it really helped us explore the functionality and enabled some experimentation from different team members from which we are creating best practices to use in future activation projects. We got tremendous value, as did our clients, from having the solution in place vs. waiting for perfection. Our clients love that they can now see action items getting checked off the to-do list, and having all their project documentation in one place, including important project e-mails and discussions. It has radically changed the flow of our projects and underlined our goal of being valuable partners.
Our approach: The biggest reason clients cite for waiting to get users into the system is that they want the experience to be close to perfect (from the get go) in order to drive adoption. We have encouraged our clients to set up groups of super users, which are the first to go in and try the solution so that any configuration tweaks can be made prior to a larger rollout. This creates internal advocates who will help sell the "new way" to the rest of the users because they've had a say in how the system is configured.
Additionally, we activate the tenant environment for our clients within 24 hours of signing a contract, facilitating nearly immediate access to our lab CRM or Business Intelligence solution and encouraging this hands-on approach.
Next time, I'll explore two more lessons from our experience of being a SaaS customers, so stay tuned!
See how this hc1.com client used lesson #3 and instantly saw results in this Lab Success Story.
