Let's Collaborate.

It's happened to the best of us - that frustrating first call after a major solution launch.  The phone rings, and a sales rep start asking...

• "Where's the price sheet?" 
• "Competitor abc is setting this trap for us. How do you recommend we respond?"
• "Do we have a case study on that?" 

If your response is… “Launch?  What launch?”  Ooops.  Like the best laid plans, the best laid launches require military-like planning.  Major launches should involve nearly everyone in the company.  Yet rarely do companies have a quarterback whose sole purpose in life is to lay awake at night and worry about huddling the team around launches. With no one in charge, launches escape, followed by a circus.  Here's a (true) story to illustrate. 

Chapter 1, The Escape.  

Years ago I was working for an organization where engineering was able to include code in a release for an often-requested feature a month ahead of schedule, but forgot to let others in the company know.  The only mention of it was deep in a help file in the release notes, and one very-happy customer happened to find it, and called the support desk with a question.  Our support team, along with the rest of the company, was not aware that the feature was on the street just a wee bit early. 

Chapter 2, The Circus.  

Teams company-wide had to drop what they were doing and backfill. Sales needed prospecting profiles, pricing, FAQs, brochures, PowerPoints, updated proposal language, contracts, warranties, demo tools, and more.  Executives needed talking points.  Finance needed sales forecasts and costing.  Support need FAQs, hands-on demos, and detailed product notes.  HR needed revised quarterly goals by department, and outlines of special training needs.  Partners needed camera-ready materials to repackage. Marketing needed have media plans, news releases, and campaigns ready to drive demand.  Everyone felt disrupted and understandably annoyed.  

A booster shot for brand

A bad launch, like the one shared in this story, hurts brand.  So why is it a coordinated launch is something everyone wants and no one is willing to champion? There's a real opportunity for marketing to champion the coordinated launch cause, like a booster shot for brand.  A little pain ahead of time goes a long way upon go live.  With a tried and true approach, great communication, and a little project management - it's not hard to pull off.  And wow does it save headaches--most importantly, for customers. The payoff in service upfront will yield dividends for years to come.

A killer checklist

The secret to a great coordinated launch is having executive support, working a killer checklist, anticipating challenges, and leveraging the strengths of your team.  At Quantum Age Collaborative, we use a 60+ item checklist with our clients that has been refined over the past two decades and will be in perpetual refinement for decades to come. Each launch is unique and offers little best practices that collectively make for big impact.  

ROI that keeps on delivering

When staff are fully empowered to stand behind the launch, executives can expect to see faster ROI for the company-wide investments that went in to it. Sales is ready to spin, marketing is ready to drive demand, finance can forecast, and support is ready to take calls.  The ROI comes a whole lot earlier, and with far fewer headaches.  A little military-like planning really pays off. 

Oh one more thing… when you're calculating ROI for a coordinated launch effort, don't forget to include savings on aspirin! 

More than a decade ago I attended a panel discussion at a national healthcare conference. After a lively
exchange between the C-level panelists, the floor was opened up for Q&A with the audience.  The first question posed was “What keeps you up at night?”  One CEO’s response was “finding good people” – and his colleagues on the panel concurred. 

It’s a thread we hear over and over again.  And it seems universal, even in the best run organizations, regardless of stage in company life cycle, size, or industry.  Large companies seem to struggle with best applying the talent they have, and smaller ones often struggle with asking talent to stretch across unfamiliar business functions.  While every executive strives to hire A players, the reality is they still crave expert input to move their organization forward in meaningful ways.  And they long for experts who collaborate with the organization’s existing teams (not in a vacuum)—not those who rattle off the standard bulleted list of recommendations, then move on to the next gig.  But these experts can be incredibly hard to find—and they are expensive (if not impossible) to hire.

During my many years in healthcare publishing, I took countless calls from executives on the hunt for experts to help tackle challenges, small and large.  The need was universal:  whether it be leaders in academia, state associations, product/service solution providers, healthcare operators, entrepreneurs…even fellow publishers.  During these conversations I’d hear about the need for  a fresh perspective.  Acceleration. Deep expertise.  Senior wisdom.  Innovation.  Creativity. Things every organization needs to different degrees in slightly different ways and at different times in their progression.

That was the genesis a year ago of a vision for a new type of community, a gathering of experts in healthcare with global perspective, grounded in the reality of decades of experience.  So I started a list of experts who’ve impressed me in this business…and the gifts they bring to the people they serve.  Before long, I had a list of dozens – all with dream-like CVs, and power-packed results only experts who really know their stuff can deliver. There was one little problem.  How in the world could I hire them all and create the dream company?  Ironically to hire them would take away their elfin magic, which is what all those CEOs want in the first place: an outsider to come in and shake things up.

So enter Quantum Age Collaborative.  What you are about to experience is an agency unlike any the world has ever seen, where the most amazing, brilliant, and passionate people we’ve ever met are joined together under a common purpose:  to move healthcare forward.  They do so tirelessly because it is so much more than just a job, it’s a calling.  Over the course of their careers they have touched tens of thousands of lives, and they exist for the pure joy of bringing out the very best in people to achieve their vision, aspirations, hopes…and dreams.   But these aren’t ordinary dreamers.  These uber gurus get energy from results that matter.   They are die-hard realists pushing results.  Results like:

• Finding a single coding change that generated millions of dollars in justified additional revenue, which opened up an opportunity for one organization to launch a new, state-of-the art community and rehab center.
• Creating a business plan to launch an entirely new category of operator, which will thrive in a new era of healthcare and payment reform.
• Helping an entrepreneur get an innovative new solution off the ground, generating awareness leading to tens of millions in organic revenues.
• Guiding a senior living organization to effectively tell its story of quality outcomes to win ACO and MCO partners.

For the first time in healthcare, leaders looking for just the right mix of experts can turn to Quantum Age Collaborative.  Whether they need a booster shot that lasts a week, or embedded experts to move major initiatives to meet longer-range strategic goals, the Collaborative offers a huge diversity of talent. You won’t find lightweights on this website; this is no temp agency.  Quantum Age offers only the best experts at the top of their game. The collaborative is a transparent, accessible, and supportive network of the best of the best people we’ve found, whose reputations are built on trust.

So…what is keeping you awake at night?  Ready to achieve the impossible?  Let’s collaborate.