I recently connected with one of our colleagues in Latin America (LatAm) to discuss how she participates in global collaboration, and how that collaboration supports diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) in the healthcare industry. Laura Catalina Navarro Rodriguez, an account manager at Perficient, facilitates a culture of collaboration and strong communication across global teams. I enjoyed hearing about how she has seen projects support accessibility in healthcare, and I’m sure you will too!
Thank you so much for joining me today, Laura! I’d love to kick off with hearing more about your role. How does your work impact Perficient’s culture, growth, and clients?
Laura Catalina Navarro Rodriguez, Account Manager
I define my role as being the “synapse between neurons” to facilitate and promote communication between Perficient teams and clients to strengthen our position as a global company. The objective of my role is to collaborate, build, and maintain a robust relationship with each partner, client, and account stakeholder, ensuring multiple points of contact and staying especially attuned to individual and business needs. I work closely with partners, clients, and stakeholders to:
- Clearly define business needs
- Create winning and innovative strategies
- Coordinate with global operations and capacity teams to ensure maximum business value for our clients
- Support our LatAm teams in their efforts to deliver the highest quality services
How is Perficient – as a global team – driving excellence for our clients?
Perficient’s main excellence-driving factor is our people. We have strong technical talent, with senior level roles represented in all of our global delivery centers.
Most importantly, our people are accountable, vocal, caring, and driven to deliver high-quality solutions and exceed client expectations.
We have a strong unity mindset. We are part of a global team, and despite our differences in location, culture, beliefs, collaboration styles, and in some cases language (or slang), we belong to the same united team – global delivery. We are a fully diverse team working for the same purpose: to deliver excellence.
We drive excellence by ensuring that we involve the right experts at the right time. We all have the same opportunities to participate, propose, challenge, and explore. Being respectful of differences and utilizing each person’s unique skills to their fullest potential gives us the ability to implement the best solutions successfully.
Why is it valuable for organizations to promote diversity through global teams, and within global teams?
Diversity is a part of the human experience. While working with a diverse group of people, we cannot take a “one-size-fits-all” approach. This is why our people are the most important factor in delivering excellence. If we ignore our differences (language, culture, time zone, motivation, and ability), the spark in our highly motivated team will fade.
Working with teams across the globe, we can utilize strengths from every team. When working on a proposal, in most cases, the best recipe for success involves utilizing a blended team. For example, a blended team may be the best option when a client needs a specific skill set best represented in one part of the world, but also must meet a formal requirement, such as having a team in their time zone. Within blended teams, the key to success is communication. The team must have strong communication to stay aligned on delivery needs.
In LatAm we have a saying that goes “two heads think more than one.” Understanding that we all think differently helps us communicate successfully while working in a diverse team. All ideas should be listened to and considered. The LatAm delivery center is now a compound of five different countries, each country with several offices. There is a whole lot of variety in ways of thinking and skillsets, and there is a lot of potential. So, promoting a culture of openness, unity, and strong communication helps us feel included and work together equitably.
Digital transformations can either help healthcare organizations achieve greater equity or inadvertently exacerbate it, so it’s important that we approach our healthcare work through an equity lens. How are you seeing Perficient’s collaboration across the globe help deliver projects through this lens?
As end-to-end partners to our healthcare clients, it is important that we:
- Foster collaboration and inclusion with our global delivery centers, with the common goal of achieving excellence for our clients
- Utilize blended teams, giving everyone the opportunity to participate in the construction of solutions
- Fully understand and address the client’s needs
Healthcare organizations in the US are increasingly focused on equity in healthcare. Our work can create a huge impact to society, especially in the healthcare industry. Utilizing virtual health and other technologies, we are seeking to make the most effective tools available at the right time and place and with appropriate support for every patient to improve access to care.
Through a partnership with one of the top digital health cloud platforms for Software as a Medical Device in the US, we’ve collaborated to improve the patient experience by enabling healthcare and life sciences organizations to better understand and address consumers’ needs.
READ MORE: A Tide That Lifts All Boats: Overcoming Inequity in Digital Health
See Success in Action: Improving one of the largest health providers in Colombia’s digital experience
Here’s an example of a project we delivered through an equity lens. Our payer client partnered with us to improve their digital platforms.
The Colombian healthcare system is divided into two types of payers:
- subsidized, insures people with lower income
- contributory, insures the people that can afford a monthly payment
We helped this client ease the process for enrollment, login, change logs, and information updates, reducing the amount of time invested from the payer and the paperwork needed. This resulted in higher coverage of people accessing the healthcare system. It also provided more efficient service for people already covered by subsidized or contributory payers. We also added the ability to enroll over the phone, expanding accessibility to people without internet access.
EXPLORE NOW: Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DE&I) in Healthcare
Healthcare Leaders Turn to Us
Perficient is dedicated to enabling healthcare and life sciences organizations to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion within their companies. Our healthcare practice is comprised of experts who understand the unique challenges facing the industry. The 10 largest health systems and 10 largest health insurers in the U.S. have counted on us to support their end-to-end digital success. Modern Healthcare has also recognized us as the fourth largest healthcare IT consulting firm. With more than 20 years of experience in the healthcare industry, Perficient is a trusted, end-to-end, global digital consultancy.
We bring pragmatic, strategically-grounded know-how to our clients’ initiatives. And our work gets attention – not only by industry groups that recognize and award our work but also by top technology partners that know our teams will reliably deliver complex, game-changing implementations. Most importantly, our clients demonstrate their trust in us by partnering with us again and again. We are incredibly proud of our 90% repeat business rate because it represents the trust and collaborative culture that we work so hard to build every day within our teams and with every client.
Contact us to learn how we can help you plan and implement a successful DE&I initiative for your organization.
