HCB News: How do you see the reliance on external expertise and advisement changing with VRM?
EM: Listen. There will always be a need for third-party advisement from consultants due to their broader perspective on certain issues and their focused expertise in others. As it stands right now, though, health systems are relying on these outside voices too much. There’s tons of low-hanging fruit out there, and multiple ways they can use readily available information and basic project management capacity to improve operations, sometimes dramatically. What we’re proposing is simply that health systems shift the bar for consulting expertise a little higher.
By taking on achievable goals themselves, they can turn to external resources for truly challenging problems where that outside perspective adds genuine value. We’re already seeing this in with our own services and vendors we work with, healthcare organizations are beginning to seek self-service tools for services where they had brought in external resources in the past.
HCB News: What is your vision for Venddy in 5 years with regards to shifting the vendor-customer relationship in the ways you've described?
PR: We recognize that there will always be an imbalance related to technological innovation. New vendors and new products are unfamiliar to everyone at their outset. Right now, though, the boom in innovation and the information gap for buyers mean that they are often being pushed into using new software or services regardless of the best fit. With more—and more transparent—information available to all, and with health systems approaching vendor management as systematically as they approach other areas of their work, we think there’s a much better balance to be struck. We believe that Venddy will allow health systems to be empowered to independently identify external product and service needs and reduce the impact of marketing and sales budgets, allowing for innovative companies to thrive and reducing low performing and redundant solutions.
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