Salesforce CRM platform enables Atos Medical to focus on its patients

Using data to better help customers

In a world increasingly shaped by digital technology, medical technology provides a unique opportunity for innovation to directly benefit people. By making sure that new treatments reach patients faster and simplifying the process to receive critical care, information, and equipment, digitally driven organizations can improve the quality of life for those most in need. Any work that can be done to make the experience easier for patients, whether by making their journey fast and painless or by enabling an organization to reach out to them proactively, can have a substantial impact.

So, when Atos Medical, a leading provider of neck stoma care to around 100,000 customers, saw an opportunity to improve the way it performed patient care management, the company did not hesitate.

“Our whole identity is built around a customer-centric approach,” explains Henrik Helmer Hansen, Vice President of Strategy & Commercial Excellence at Atos Medical. “Everything we do, every decision we make is about making life better for our users. As we’d spread out across the world, our various teams had become a bit isolated and developed their own ways of managing patient data and contact. Unfortunately, this meant that we really didn’t have a universal view of our users, all of whom needed critical care of some kind.”

A global solution for a global organization

To better serve its customers and create more personalized experiences, Atos Medical wanted to develop and implement a new customer relationship management (CRM) platform. By doing so, the organization could introduce standardized processes for data storage and utilization so that teams could share information and ensure that the overall company had a common understanding of customer needs and conditions.

“When everyone’s entering data manually and using different formats that are suited to local processes rather than global use, it becomes difficult to really engage with our users in a way that fits their particular needs,” Mattias Leire, Vice President of Tracheostomy & IT at Atos Medical. “This meant that some of our users were contacted with services that they didn’t need or later than would have been ideal. This didn’t fit our identity or our ideal methods, which meant it was time for one single global approach to data management.”

This realization led Atos Medical to select Salesforce CRM technology as its solution. The organization worked with Capgemini to take an agile approach to developing the solution through a series of short sprints. By the end of these collaborative efforts, Atos Medical had a platform that was fully integrated into its other systems and offered teams all over the world a 360-degree view of their patients. In addition, automation and standardization minimized human error and helped the organization avoid knowledge loss resulting from absences or turnover.

“Going into this project, we wanted to get back to our customer-centric roots,” explains Hansen. “This was about Atos Medical delivering key medical equipment to the people who needed them as quickly as possible and making it as stress-free an experience as possible. With our universal approach to data, it’s easier now to reach our users exactly when and how they need us.”

Taking the next step into the future

Of course, this isn’t the end of Atos Medical’s pursuit of innovation within the medical sphere. The organization foresees continuing changes resulting from new digital technology that will make its own operations stronger but also change how patients engage with the organizations that can help them.

“Well, one of the first ways I see customer contact continuing to change is through omnichannel communication,” says Hansen. “As time goes on and people get more mobile, they also keep looking for new ways to connect that better fit their needs. We want to be as flexible as possible so that users from all walks of life and all sorts of backgrounds feel comfortable accepting our help during one of the most stressful periods of their lives.”

With the option for contact through SMS, mobile applications, and video calls, Atos Medical and other healthcare-related organizations will offer users greater control over an increasingly personalized experience. This approach would create another avenue through which Atos Medical can engage with its users and ensure that medical information is put in the hands of those who most need it.

“AI is everywhere today, and it’s no different in the medical field,” Hansen explains. “In the future, it’ll be much easier for our users to learn about the equipment we offer without needing to wait for a response. And really, this will just be yet another option from which to choose their particular, preferred form of communication.”

As healthcare continues to evolve, Atos Medical foresees a dynamic future built around predictive analytics, AI, and digital interfaces through which users can reach experts any way they want and at any time. Regardless of the new technologies that enter the industry, the organization plans to keep its focus where it has always been and where it truly matters: the customers.