Enter Your Email Address to Receive a
Copy of MedicExhange Member Demograhpics

Opinions...  everybody has one. Anyone that has ever sat in a corporate planning meeting can attest to the tension that can come with trying to unify the disparate opinions, ideas and perspectives of the many stakeholders in any given organization. While executives, sales, marketing and development may each have independent goals and agendas, one common denominator propels the initiatives of each and every department: the customer.

Businesses thrive based on their ability to successfully answer, anticipate and adapt to changing customer needs. Being buyer-conscious requires work, particularly in transitioning markets like healthcare. Today's healthcare buyer faces challenges that are altogether different from those of 10 or 20 years ago. To respond appropriately, vendors have to stay abreast of new market needs, as well as each customer's unique position in progressing towards them.

Rapid evolution in the healthcare information technology sector, for example, has resulted in a tidal wave of new and innovative products entering the marketplace, each promising to help providers bridge the gap between where healthcare is today and the digital health organization of tomorrow. The companies with the best understanding of customer objectives and pain points will walk away victorious.

Billian's HealthDATA and Porter Research frequently work with healthcare IT vendors on market needs' assessment and product positioning, using direct customer feedback as the unbiased voice of reason. Billian's HealthDATA is applying those same methodologies to current internal product development initiatives aimed at improving the resources that sales and marketing professionals have to leverage in the healthcare B-to-B sales process.

In the coming months, Billian's HealthDATA plans to roll out new advanced search features for the company's Portal product, an online healthcare prospect profiling database. A beta group of both new and practiced users is currently being established to provide the company with candid feedback directly from the market the product is designed to serve. Billian's HealthDATA will leverage online communities, Web surveys and social media tools to help simplify the process of collecting customer feedback. This feedback will be the guiding light by which new Portal tools and features are finalized, removing the guesswork from the product development process.

There is no visibility at point blank range. Product familiarity can plague even the most reputable of companies. Vendors are often so close to their products that they can lose sight of the big picture. Customer feedback provides that fresh perspective that companies need to make sure development initiatives stay on course and continue to provide users with solutions to their newest, biggest challenges. The relationship between vendor and customer is a symbiotic one: If you work to provide them with solutions to their needs, they will in turn work to provide you with directive on where to go next. It really is as simple as asking.  

Source: Billian's HealthData