This first in a series of vertical-market analyses looks at how to sell solutions to health-care customers.

While public companies throughout the country know all too well the information-management complexities of complying with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, health-care organizations have an additional and often more complex standard to meet. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) sets formal standards for securing and retaining sensitive patient health information.

For health-care companies, HIPAA creates a patient-care and legal minefield. For solution providers that hone their knowledge of the health-care market, HIPAA is a chance to cement customer loyalty by saving clients money and reducing risk.

Paper’s Pain Points
Over-reliance on paper documents in any industry can be expensive and inefficient, and HIPAA’s requirements just compound these problems. To better serve their health-care customers, solution providers should explain some hard-copy realities. First, paper hurts patient care when clinicians can’t find quick answers to medical or billing questions that are buried in file folders. Second, paper is easy to lose, through something as mundane as misfiling, or as dramatic as a fire or a natural disaster. Third, paper makes it difficult to control access to specific information and to audit who reads and edits a file, two mandates for programs like HIPAA. Finally, paper can stall the efficient processing of invoices, contracts and other essential business documents that keep health-care organizations running.

Answers to these problems include multifunction products (MFPs) and the right document management software. For solution providers, MFPs can boost margins beyond the single-digit levels available from traditional printer hardware sales. For example, adding even relatively simple electronic archiving software to a contract for a couple of dozen MFPs can represent an additional $2,000 in profits, software vendors say. Add installation, configuration and training services, and solution providers may see another $1,500 in business, to turn a 5 percent to 6 percent margin for printers into a total package approaching a 30 percent margin.

Answers for Health Care
When selling a hardware/software combination to health-care organizations, solution providers should follow a few simple rules, document management veterans say.

• Keep the message simple. Customers may balk at the perceived complexity of a full-blown document management system. Incremental approaches that start by transforming paper into electronic formats for storing and retrieving information from a central repository can allay these fears.
• Know the industry. Take time to understand the impact of HIPAA and other challenges faced by health-care customers and use this knowledge to shape your conversations. Thus, rather than promoting technology and the latest features of a proposed application, solution providers should discuss how to increase security, reduce regulatory risk and improve patient care with a document management system.
• Don’t underestimate the need for in-house training. A solution provider’s sales staff will need time and resources to learn the health-care industry and document management solutions. This may mean some time will be lost pursuing orders. However, the upside will come in developing a sales strategy that can be applied with minor adjustments to a wide segment of health-care organizations.
• Speak from experience. By installing their own in-house document management systems and processes, solution providers will gain an intimate knowledge of the necessary technologies and what it takes to integrate them, which will lend credence to their discussions with customers.