Finding Your Anchor Offering
A great way to achieve rapid growth is to establish an anchor offering. This is a product or service offering that meets two key parameters:
1. It solves a real need
2. It involves a product or service that you do well and that differentiates you from your competition.
Don’t overengineer something. Don’t overcomplicate things. Find a real need and meet it. Then, build a marketing platform around this offering and use it to propel growth. Let’s look at an example.
At Entrada in 2010, I inherited a dictation and transcription platform. Over time we built out additional modules. We immediately embraced two core tenets with this initial offering.
First, one key technology breakthrough occurred around this time. In mid-2007, the first iPhone was released. The Entrada platform in 2010 was Windows desktop and Windows mobile. Oops! In short order, we sunset existing platforms and went all in with Apple. We later added Android.
Second, the Healthcare HITECH Act was signed in 2009 and started rolling out in 2011. It mandated that all clinics and hospitals in the U.S. adopt a certified Electronic Health Record (EHR). We decided to embrace this in a way that had not been done before. What did this mean?
Two words – electronic markers.
Doctors support structured data collected in an EHR with subjective explanatory text spread throughout the EHR template. Historical input options:
Do it yourself via typing or self-edited speech recognition
Dictation and transcription: Dictate, transcriptionist completes the note; a completed document returned as a PDF separate from structured data captured in the patient chart. This made sharing information difficult as it was effectively kept in two places. To combat this, groups often paid staff to cut and paste completed narrative into fields within the chart, delaying chart completion and adding additional expense.
We successfully automated the process of splitting text into appropriate sections and inserting it into the EHR template. We called this big breakthrough – ExpressNotes dictation.
In one continuous dictation, the doctor spoke the narrative for multiple sections of the EHR. We electronically tagged each section as a unique text stream. After processing the information was automatically returned into the EHR for review and sign-off co-mingled with the structured data captured at point of care. We even received a patent for our ability to break apart files on a smartphone.
Once we integrated with an EHR platform, this innovation had multiple benefits.
We had found a way to keep physician productivity high while also driving better satisfaction and compliance with their EHR by requiring them to review and sign everything in the EHR.
Not only that, they cut down on EHR lines dictated, allowing us to charge a fee that gave us solid margins while also allowing them to save money.
Finally, we did all that and radically cut down the time from point of care to final chart sign-off.
This one innovation, coupled with our easy-to-use mobile app, led to our growth into an Inc. 500 company and set the stage for everything we did later.
Every company has the ability to build a unique product, skill or service offering that can meet a glaring need in your market and set it apart from competitors. You just have to dig down and find it.