HP & Network Design

The key to unlocking shared value? Build relationships with all kinds of strange bedfellows and collaboratively design win/wins in the context of ecosystem wins.

A decade ago, a few technology creators like Hewlett-Packard that were not platform-based businesses took notice of these new economics and began (re)activating the networks in which their enterprises were already embedded. Over a 24-month period starting in 2009, we at Dialog Group worked with HP®’s PC division to grow their 3% share of the healthcare providers market to 21%. At the time, HP, with a market capitalization of $3B in 2007, should have been #1 in the healthcare market. We wondered why its sales across the healthcare sector—everywhere from small clinicians’ offices to large hospital systems—had been so inexplicably low.

First, we listened to what was going on in their sales network.

Specifically, the conversations HP’s salespeople and resellers were having with prospects in the United States. We quickly unearthed the problem: the salespeople focused exclusively on the commodity they wanted to sell. The computer: its power and durability, color and weight, speed and cost. They didn’t speak to the real concerns of healthcare buyers and the problems they were trying to solve with their computers: improving patient outcomes, securing electronic health records, protecting the organization against HIPAA complaints. 

Digging deeper, we discovered that each healthcare provider actually started their buying journey for capital equipment with the organization’s purpose. In most cases, the heart of the business was an integrative, 360-degree vision of health, designed to meet the current reality and optimized for all 11 stakeholders. Of course, any technology strategy had to enable that all-inclusive dream. Each provider would identify which technologies and how many computers would be needed to realize that mission, then plan how the hardware and software “build” would be rolled out in the workplace. An RFP would capture those requirements. Responding to an RFP as if it were merely a shopping list didn’t make sense for these mission-driven organizations. Especially at that time, when every Chief Medical Officer and IT Director was worried that the federal government had put Medicare and Medicaid funding penalties in place to strongly encourage the adoption and “meaningful use” of EHR (electronic health record) systems. Not only must the dialog between HP and its healthcare prospects move upstream and connect with the larger challenge of this move to EHRs. It must also shift from the head (the “build” phase) to the heart (the “dream”). That revealed a yawning gap in the capabilities of the company’s salesforce. Knowing this, we set out to fill that gap and scale their network by rapidly changing HP’s conversations and leveraging the company’s ecosystem.

Second, we designed a way to connect the network to itself

Connecting the network to itself is a core principal of Network Design. We started by helping HP sign up large EHR providers like McKesson, MedPlus, and EMD/Merck KGaA as partners. Immediately, the conversations with customers and prospects shifted to these exciting new partnerships. In the face of the EHR disruption, knowing these organizations were coming together with a shared purpose somehow made the need for change easier to take.

We also identified certain existing channel partners as “heroes” and gave them preferential treatment. This soon had others clamoring to enter the sector with HP.

From there, we helped HP build direct relationships with the largest healthcare resellers.

Instead of relying on their existing ecosystem of channel partners to try to sell into healthcare, HP armed the seasoned salespeople in these established resellers with a unique offer. Depending on the size of the healthcare provider they were talking to, they could offer them an EHR assessment for free or for a nominal cost, at most. That assessment became enormously valuable for everyone involved. Not only did it give prospective buyers a customized roadmap to “meaningful use”. It also gave 12 HP and its channel partners the opportunity to learn everything they needed to know to sketch out a comprehensive sales plan.

Last, but not least, to enter the partnership dialog was Intel®.

The California-based tech company, Intel, was interested in demonstrating their commitment to safety and security in the healthcare industry, became part of a joint value proposition with HP and McKesson.

So we created the “EHReady” program. Our motto: “You are ready, we are ready, EHR is ready." Any of HP's healthcare partners could call the 1-800 help desk we set up at our Dialog office and get assistance with a customized piece of direct mail, a help sheet, or training for their teams. We cheerily answered the phones, “Welcome to the path of most assistance.” Whatever the partners needed, we developed.

Why bother sharing a few assets? The business network we had just reconnected was a living system; therefore, energy was its universal currency. Strategically sharing assets released energy blocked in the system and unlocked additional tranches of value. With only a nominal budget, this concierge level of support effectively eliminated resistance in the network, delivered an 18% increase in market share, and helped put HP on the map in the healthcare sector.

In the end, everyone in the HP ecosystem—from the patients and doctors to the EHR providers, channel partners, and healthcare resellers—benefitted from coming together in partnership to transform their whole network to electronic records. In business, we are totally and utterly dependent on the ecosystem, the network of networks, in which we exist. Let us next look at how network thinking and holistic decision making have been applied to generate shared value in a business upon which we all depend: agriculture.