5 Truths about Lab Outreach
Leslie Sprick, my business partner, and I do a lot of outreach planning in the laboratory industry. As I think about 2010 and lessons learned during 2009, a few thoughts come to mind about Lab Outreach. I decided to share five of these thoughts with you--the title of this article is 5 Truths about Lab Outreach.
Truth 1: Real outreach programs are operated as a business--top line, expenses, and profit or loss. Any other business model, while maybe noble or charitable, is not a real business.
Truth 2: When you decide to enter the market with an outreach service line, know, absolutely, that one or more of your competitors are already providing services to your target market--find and use your competitive advantage from program launch!
Truth 3: Customer churn has been going on in the U. S. market place for many years--I can no longer count the number of times Quest Diagnostics and Lab Corp have bought and lost the same book of business over the past 25 years. At least Quest has decided to explore new market expansion outside of the U. S. mimicking Sonic.
Truth 4: If you cannot measure top line net revenue, expenses, and bottom line profit or contribution to fixed, you cannot manage it.
Truth 5: You can earn a lot of money for your stakeholders if you figure out a way to error proof your outreach support systems. The biggest opportunity, in my opinion, is electronic order entry and result reporting. Millions maybe billions of dollars are being wasted because of paper requisitions. Front-end billing staff is 100% wasted expense--I challenge you to do something about it!
Share your comments with me and other blog readers--I know some of you have actually worked through these issues very successfully.
Have a prosperous and healthy New Year!