Developing a strategy to enter the health industry
Internal program, 2020 - 21
BRIEF
In 2020 we defined five streams of work as part of our company strategy and market positioning. ”Theme cluster” is one of the focus areas. The target was defining and entering an industry with high demand for digitalisation and turnover potential, establishing domain expertise, and building a long-term business pipeline on all levels.
OUTCOME
As the team leader of the Health Theme, I’ve built and guided the core team to launch a set of initiatives, tools, and created methods to explore and innovate the Health industry.
As a result, we have developed a strong domain competence and launched an innovative offering to address industry needs. With our multi-competence approach (Design, Tech, Business, Marketing), we have established a strategic role in the market by taking a stand and showing the clients the way by solving their problems with our approach. Customers now have the chance to interact, discuss and learn with us. Internally, we have influenced different areas of the Futurice business involving various experts.
CHALLENGES ALONG THE JOURNEY
“We need to diversify our portfolio of clients. What can we do?”
In a multidisciplinary team of experts, we approached the challenge by investigating different industries. In this case, we considered the energy industry, digital government, food industry, and fintech. We analysed and compared those by looking at different criteria: high demand on digitalisation, turnover potential, multi-level impact potential (political, social, technological, economical), and the interest of the internal team. After our research and comparison, we decided to focus on the Future of Health, which includes the different health-related industries, particularly MedTech and Pharma.
“How can we enter the health industry? We don’t have a strong experience.”
During the early phases of the program, we found it challenging to enter a highly regulated and not yet digitised industry like Health.
To collect more information and understand the market, we started to interview and collaborate with market experts.
As a result, we identified our core skills in our cross-industry experience and the expertise in guiding clients through the digitalisation and innovation processes. We applied our core offerings in data strategy, data-driven processes, and digital service creation (value-added services beyond the core product) to help health companies innovate and become more resilient.
To validate our thoughts, we packaged our point of view and launched the health campaign. We talked to clients and experts, presented our ideas in articles and conferences.
“Health sector is complicated. Even experts struggle to understand and explain the complexity of the healthcare processes fully.”
By working more deeply with health clients, we realised how complex processes and workflows are in the field.
We needed a tool to facilitate the discussions and co-creation with clients. Thus, we launched the Connected Health Kit (CHK): a toolkit designed for the healthcare domain, with two specific purposes in mind. First of all, to analyze workflows – including the most complex ones – and secondly, to facilitate the co-creation of new, data-enabled solutions and services for a wide variety of medical environments, processes and use cases. The CHK is a collaborative tool. It helps identify opportunity areas with room for improvement and creates digital service concepts that utilise data and digital interfaces to simplify workflows and build better customer journeys.
“Healthcare struggles more than other industry to digitise their processes and services. So how can we help to innovate?”
After the first projects, we refined and improved our approach and offering for the health domain. In addition, we combined our new tool, the Connected Health Kit, with other methods: Lean Service Creation and Service Vision Sprint. Finally, we have confidently defined a four-step process to support health clients in the innovation and digitalisation process: from problem definition to product launch and scaling.
MY ROLE
Strategic leadership
Initiating the internal program and setting up the core team.
Leading the entire strategic creation process from the industry definition to the offering launch.
Thought leadership and driving the market presence with domain expertise.
Design leadership
Define, design, implement and test new methods and tools to address specific industry needs
Involving and coaching external team members to contribute to the program and develop content and tools
Marketing and promotion
Supporting the marketing team in organising the promotion campaign and events
Accounting and Budgeting
Managing the costs of the initiative