We’re seeing a lot of interest in using Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software to market to, communicate with, and to track provider interests and relationships in HIE’s and REC’s. If you haven’t thought about using CRM for this purpose yet, here is why you might want to…
1. You need to identify and keep track of your customers. Which providers are in your community? What affiliations/relationships do they have? Where do they refer? What systems do they currently use?
2. Your “sales” team needs to track their communication with these providers and their practices. You need to track who has been contacted, what their needs are, what are your opportunities to assist them…
3. You need a central system that your team can interface with to get a complete picture. Your marketing team & sales team, implementation team, support team…
4. Your leadership team needs to be able to track progress and issues. Who has been implemented?, who has been contacted?, who declined our services?, what are our primary support issues?, what major trends are we seeing?…
Also keep in mind that CRM is modular. You don’t need to put off this decision due to worry about conflicts with your other priorities. Many of these systems require minimal installation and setup. An initial roll out can be as simple as importing a provider list and asking the sales team to utilize this as their tracking tool. As you ramp up implementations you can roll out support modules and administrative reports to expand.
Best of luck to all the busy HIE’s and REC’s out there. Let us know if you have any questions as we’d be happy to share more.
