00;00;01;15 – 00;00;14;16 

Jeff Howell 

Welcome to Home Health 360, a podcast presented by AlayaCare. I’m your host, Jeff Howell, and this is the show about learning from the best in home health care from around the globe. 

 

00;00;18;12 – 00;00;44;28 

Erin Vallier 

Welcome to another episode of the Home Health 360 podcast, where we speak to home care professionals from around the globe. I’m your guest host, Erin Vallier, US director of sales for AlayaCare Software. And today I am joined by fellow sales leader Erik Wetzel, the VP of sales at Enquire Solutions. He’s here to talk about increasing operational efficiencies. 

 

00;00;45;04 – 00;01;19;21 

Erin Vallier 

Erik has a diverse background in sales and marketing and brings over ten years of experience to the tech world, most notably with the government and health care solutions. He currently resides in Castle Rock, Colorado. And when he’s not working, you might just catch him hiking or doing anything fun outdoors with his two pups. He also prioritizes spending time with friends and family and loves anything having to do with sport, which is his real passion stemming from his time playing professional baseball. 

 

00;01;20;05 – 00;01;21;16 

Erin Vallier 

Welcome to the show, Erik. 

 

00;01;21;25 – 00;01;24;08 

Erik Wetzel 

Yeah, thank you for having me. I’m glad to be on. 

 

00;01;24;11 – 00;01;37;10 

Erin Vallier 

Yeah, I’m excited for the conversation. But before we dive in, I have a silly question. How on earth did you go from playing professional baseball to a ten plus year career in technology sales? 

 

00;01;38;00 – 00;02;03;14 

Erik Wetzel 

Oh, wow. So that’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it? Honestly, and I know it sounds horrible, but I would say I just stumbled into it. You know, as much as I would love to be a professional baseball player now and MLB and making millions of dollars, I knew that I had an uphill battle. So there’s just so many talented guys out there that really a backup plan for me was always top of mind. 

 

00;02;03;14 – 00;02;31;18 

Erik Wetzel 

So for everyone out there who knows me, I’m super competitive. So sales and marketing always seem like the route to go. And from that I will say that stemming from my career, I’ve always tried to run my departments like a sports organization to, you know, keep some of the competitive, competitive ness there and some of those foundations being a team over everything, embracing accountability and selflessness and, you know, getting results and winning no matter what. 

 

00;02;31;19 – 00;02;47;20 

Erik Wetzel 

So, you know, I could probably go on and on for it of of where I’m at now and what I was doing before. But, you know, I get asked all the time about, you know, after being there and doing what I’m doing now, you know, is it worthwhile? And I can honestly say that I love what I do now. 

 

00;02;47;20 – 00;03;06;22 

Erik Wetzel 

I love the people that I get to go to battle with each day. And I’m extremely blessed for the opportunity to be in this industry now and be able to make an impact on the people that are taking care of our loved ones. So in the corporate world, we always got to find a little something that gives us something to write home about. 

 

00;03;06;22 – 00;03;16;08 

Erik Wetzel 

We’re not firefighters, so being in the industry, we are, you know, gives me that good feeling that we get to help people who have a really tough job. So that’s that’s where I’m at today. 

 

00;03;16;17 – 00;03;39;11 

Erin Vallier 

I love a story. Thanks for sharing. And you bring out a very good point. People who played sports make really great salespeople. There’s something about that because it takes a village, right? It takes a team. And it also takes that competitive edge in order to just get out there and get told no all the time. All right. So I’m going to get back to topic here. 

 

00;03;39;22 – 00;04;06;06 

Erin Vallier 

I want to first say a, I really appreciate you coming on to the podcast to talk about operational efficiencies. As you know, I like your CEO, Adrian Schauer declared war on repetitive tasks earlier this year, and I believe today’s topic goes right along with that theme. So tell me, Erik, from a business efficiency standpoint, why is technology more than ever so crucial for home health care? 

 

00;04;06;23 – 00;04;28;08 

Erik Wetzel 

Yeah, it’s a great question. I mean, for me, this question seems like an absolute no brainer. I’ve been in a lot of industries in my career. I’ve been all over the place and somewhere for sure, slower to adopt tech than others by anything having to do with health and care for our loved ones should be at the absolute forefront in adoption, in my mind. 

 

00;04;28;16 – 00;04;48;18 

Erik Wetzel 

In our industry, we deal in seconds, and it’s not in minutes or hours or days. So having the right tools and technology in place not only saves time and money, but depending on the use case, can also be saving lives. So one of the main selling points that we have at Enquire is helping organizations run their business and improving their processes. 

 

00;04;49;11 – 00;05;12;21 

Erik Wetzel 

So as I mentioned before, they can, you know, the people that are in the business can care for the people that are our loved ones, and that’s what really matters. So I’ll take it one step further, saying that health care is obviously one of the most regulated industries in the world. And the fact that we are still using pen and paper and storing them away and file cabinets is absolutely mind boggling to me. 

 

00;05;13;16 – 00;05;41;22 

Erin Vallier 

Certainly, I agree with you there. So what I’m hearing you say, one of the main points here is from a business efficiency standpoint is you’ve got seconds, right? You could be a life or death situation in health care in the home and having technology in place to help you navigate that and have better outcomes is super critical. I totally agree with you there, and I totally agree with you that it’s ludicrous to be still on pen and paper. 

 

00;05;42;01 – 00;06;07;15 

Erin Vallier 

And I read a statistic. 30% of agencies are documenting completely on paper today. That’s a lot of agencies and 70% of home care agencies are still using that paper fax method. I’m curious, you know, why do you think technology hasn’t been fully embraced in this niche, giving the efficiency gains in the regulations that we just mentioned? 

 

00;06;07;26 – 00;06;28;18 

Erik Wetzel 

So I actually have a really unique view into this in relation to my time spent in the public sector selling govtech. You know, obviously anything that I’m throwing out our opinions and there’s probably not, you know, that you could go any which way with them. But we all know that government is notorious for resisting change and being extremely slow to adopt new tech and processes. 

 

00;06;28;25 – 00;06;51;07 

Erik Wetzel 

And I see a lot of the similarities within the home care space. So I would say in my point of view, there’s a big case of if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it syndrome. And what I’ve seen again at inquiry, because we service both the senior living as well as the home care side, are really two drastic differences in buying behavior and where they’re at from a tech adoption standpoint. 

 

00;06;51;19 – 00;07;25;12 

Erik Wetzel 

Senior living is very up to date with tech and have embraced the changes, whereas on the other hand, within home care are challenges for convincing organizations that have been gained by using pen and paper or Excel spreadsheets that they should now invest in the new technology and processes when nothing was really wrong before. So the way I look at it is our job is to show them that with the right tools in place in the long run they will save money because they will have better data to allocate resources and track what’s working and not working. 

 

00;07;25;21 – 00;07;48;22 

Erik Wetzel 

And then they will also save time by eliminating all tedious manual entry and repetitive tasks, which is what this whole podcast is about, which in the end of the day will allow them to focus on what really matters. And I keep going back to it caring for our loved ones. They should be focused on the small, little menial tasks that seem to come up every day and we don’t have a really good solution for so yeah. 

 

00;07;48;25 – 00;08;12;22 

Erin Vallier 

I thank you for sharing that. And and I want to touch on something you said. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. For those out there who are using paper, who are listening to this podcast, I’m going to challenge you to think about is it broken or not? How much more efficient can you be or how much better care can you provide if you know within any given moment that one of your clients is at risk because your technology is alerting you to that? 

 

00;08;13;00 – 00;08;29;17 

Erin Vallier 

Like there’s a lot of things to be gained there. So I push on that one just a little bit. But moving on here, you know, what are some specific ways technology can help care agencies grow their business, improve their processes and decrease those repetitive tasks? 

 

00;08;30;04 – 00;09;04;29 

Erik Wetzel 

Yeah, another great question. So in my opinion, as far as the benefits go, you know, I think really it’s it’s endless. You know, we think with all the tech that we have these days, you know, we can find something for everything to help any processes or problems that we’re having. So it could be reducing manual data entry, you know, automatically sharing necessary data with clinicians and schedulers, you know, automating the intake process, more streamline referral management, better data to make more informed decisions. 

 

00;09;04;29 – 00;09;32;04 

Erik Wetzel 

And really the list can go on and on. But I think the benefit that I focus on here the most and I guess the two that I’ll focus on the most are really the automated processes and the manual entry. So you can look at any of these in two ways. And I think depending on the way that the organization is set up, the way that they’re going to be adopted, most of them have a number of systems they already working out of on a daily basis. 

 

00;09;32;11 – 00;10;03;04 

Erik Wetzel 

So I think from the automated process standpoint, you know, taking away those systems and having them actually pass data to one another is incredibly helpful in actually taking away those repetitive tasks that you’re going to do in. And then on top of that, you know, the man hours needed on those tasks. You know, Joe, we’ve seen manual data entry and a monthly basis range from 12 to 18 hours that somebody is spending a month. 

 

00;10;03;27 – 00;10;23;28 

Erik Wetzel 

And to me, that’s a frightening number, right there. So that’s more of the bigger organizations, I would say, for like smaller organizations who don’t have a tech stack in place and are still embracing that pen and paper and excel spreadsheets, their issues are going to, I would say, revolve around manual entry more. And let’s be honest, we’re all human. 

 

00;10;23;28 – 00;10;54;18 

Erik Wetzel 

We all make mistakes. But I can assure you it’s a lot easier to make those mistakes when you can spot check in a report or easily be alerted if something is off. And again, in the health care field, having these tasks in a different industry may not be that impactful. But when we’re dealing with with health care and loved ones and people that lives at stake, one mistake, the smallest mistake can go a long way to really impacting the business and really affecting someone’s life. 

 

00;10;54;18 – 00;11;21;12 

Erik Wetzel 

So I think that’s huge. So I think when organizations rely on manual entry, we risk losing more data. There’s more chances for mistakes to be made, as I mentioned before. And then I think there’s a lack of reporting of we can’t make informed decisions if we don’t have the tech in place and we’re not actually putting those things in tools that we can report on and make the informed decisions on the back end. 

 

00;11;21;12 – 00;11;43;02 

Erik Wetzel 

So and then the last thing that I actually was was a big trey in the government space. When I was in there was physical documents. You know, I mentioned above the fact that we are still using pen and paper and having file cabinets is probably one of the biggest risks I’ve ever seen and in both government and in health care. 

 

00;11;43;02 – 00;12;11;03 

Erik Wetzel 

So you you know, I think I could probably go on and on about this. But I think the long story short is we don’t want organizations to change everything, whether small or big, but we want to make sure that they know that with a little tech adoption, they can be doing things ten, 20, 50% better. And, you know, for me, as a business owner or a business executive, isn’t that what we always strive for is to be a little bit better each day. 

 

00;12;11;03 – 00;12;13;09 

Erik Wetzel 

So I think that’s kind of the main focus. 

 

00;12;13;27 – 00;12;38;18 

Erin Vallier 

So many gray points in that answer. Erik, thank you. And what you said really hit home with me from a past life. Being on the provider side of health care, one of my roles was more, more corporate compliant. So I had to manage those 12 C use, if you will, for all of our caregivers. And the nurses are different from the therapists. 

 

00;12;39;00 – 00;13;22;04 

Erin Vallier 

Unfortunately, we had to do this on three flat forms and then keep those paper records and literally it’s a part time job for me. It was 20 hours a week because I had so many therapists and nurses I was working with. So, you know, from a business efficiency standpoint, if we’d had something in place that helped me engage in flow through information just back to the EMR saying all good they can go to work like that would have saved us so many man hours, like hundreds of thousands of dollars a year between me and the scheduler and all of the people who had to like, participate in this process. 

 

00;13;22;14 – 00;13;43;19 

Erik Wetzel 

So while Right and how do you. Yeah, and honestly, how do you you know I think our biggest problem yours and mine, you know, being on the sales side is how do we show and help business owners and executives understand this because it’s a big issue. And I think again, we go back to change is hard. Nobody wants to change. 

 

00;13;43;26 – 00;13;53;14 

Erik Wetzel 

But if we can help each and every organization get a little bit better each day, I think it’s going to improve the overall care and the overall way these businesses are growing. 

 

00;13;54;01 – 00;14;02;16 

Erin Vallier 

100%. So, Erik, in your experience, what are the most important pieces of tech that a home care business can implement? 

 

00;14;03;15 – 00;14;33;04 

Erik Wetzel 

Yeah, so, you know, I think knowing that all home care first and foremost is about patient care. For me, any technology that can drive caregiver satisfaction and patient quality is always going to be at the top of the priority list. With that in mind, though, the tech that keeps your organization profitable, such as referral management and speed to lead, will allow for your market share to increase and on top of that, your brand awareness to grow, which is super important. 

 

00;14;33;04 – 00;14;59;20 

Erik Wetzel 

So it also ensures you have consistent processes and operations around onboarding new patients, which as we both know, is critical. So, you know, it’s a proven fact that there is a hierarchy and streamlining the work and making intake a repeatable process. I think that’s one of the key things to hit on and then also say the ability to use data, so such as like BI tools to drive business growth strategies is huge. 

 

00;15;00;15 – 00;15;12;03 

Erik Wetzel 

So if you know who you are and in my opinion more importantly who you’re not caring for and why, then the agency can better approach their growth strategies and help propel them to the next level. 

 

00;15;12;19 – 00;15;26;16 

Erin Vallier 

So we need sort of an operations and business operations or an agency management tool. You need something to manage your intake and your referral sources and you need a good BI tool is what I was hearing. 

 

00;15;26;16 – 00;15;27;23 

Erik Wetzel 

Yes, absolutely. 

 

00;15;28;07 – 00;16;02;18 

Erin Vallier 

Yeah, that makes sense to me. I know from my personal experience on the private provider side and also they’re working with clients to implement technology that implementing technology is quite the adventure. I like to tell people that the return on investment is experienced in a curve and I know this is audio, so audience draw a J. You know, you’re going to start at the tip of that J and then you’re going to go on a roller coaster ride that goes down first and holy hacky, you hold on to your hat. 

 

00;16;02;26 – 00;16;24;22 

Erin Vallier 

But then at some point you’re going to start climbing that hill, and that’s when you’re going to experience that really marked advantage of going through that little dip in performance. So I guess my question for you, Erik, because you’ve been doing this for ten years, what are some specific challenges that organizations can expect to face when they’re integrating new technology? 

 

00;16;25;23 – 00;16;39;01 

Erik Wetzel 

Yeah, absolutely. And just to touch on on what you said, you know, let the listeners know about the J Curve. I wasn’t the only one that had to do a refresher on on what the J curve look like. 

 

00;16;39;01 – 00;16;39;15 

Erin Vallier 

And. 

 

00;16;39;15 – 00;17;04;13 

Erik Wetzel 

That’s me being in sales for a really long time. So what I’ll say is we all know the age old saying, so you have to spend money to make money and nothing worthwhile comes overnight. So this is in business and in life. So, you know, before diving into how it relates specifically to home care, you know, I want to jump back into kind of just an analogy of back to my baseball days and compare it to implementing a new software. 

 

00;17;04;21 – 00;17;37;18 

Erik Wetzel 

So if I wasn’t out there busting my butt for hours each day and doing the little things to get 1% better each day, as we’re talking percentages above, I can assure you my competition would be so the way I look at it is it’s the exact mentality that all these business owners and executives should take. And honestly, it’s really hard to do so if you’re not spending the money, the time, the effort to get that 1% better each day and improve your processes, I can assure you you’re your competitors will be. 

 

00;17;37;23 – 00;18;07;26 

Erik Wetzel 

And there’s going to come a day when they’re going to take your spine running out of town like it’s just not the brutal truth. So with with that analogy in mind, I’ll kind of talk to specifically to to homecare and the challenges they may face. And the first one I look at is kind of user friendliness. So in my opinion, while tech is obviously aimed at innovating and simplicity, it’s not going to be of any significance if it’s too difficult to use. 

 

00;18;08;16 – 00;18;27;24 

Erik Wetzel 

It’s all about the end users. So always keep that in mind when you’re implementing something new in our industry. I think we’ve seen it a lot. Not everybody is super tech savvy, so any any new tech that you’re bringing on that is not user friendly is going to be really hard to get those end users to adopt it. 

 

00;18;28;09 – 00;18;58;05 

Erik Wetzel 

Then you have the challenge of integrating systems and dealing with One of the biggest things I see on a daily basis are tech silos. So with all the tech facilitate facilitating change and growth, it’s easy to develop a tech ecosystem full of silos. And for everybody that that doesn’t know what a tech silo is, it’s really the notion of you have one tool that basically is on its own and it’s not talking to anything else, it’s not connected to anything. 

 

00;18;58;05 – 00;19;34;14 

Erik Wetzel 

It’s basically living on its own island. So an example of this may be that your CRM doesn’t talk to your website forms or your intake and discharge processes are segmented and filled with redundancy. So any of those can can drastically affect the adoption and how the tech does moving forward. And then lastly, I’d say it’s something that I don’t think a lot of people think of, but I think the challenge of asset tracking in our industry, I hear medical professionals all the time complain of that tracking medical history and health reports are super time consuming and they cause major delays in their work. 

 

00;19;34;14 – 00;19;58;21 

Erik Wetzel 

So having the right CRM in place will allow everyone to rest easy, knowing that all the data and important info from your hours will be all under one roof. And more importantly, there won’t be a need anymore to bounce back and forth between systems. So bottom line, with all of that, they’re going to be growing pains no matter what with implementing new technology and any organization in any industry. 

 

00;19;58;21 – 00;20;19;12 

Erik Wetzel 

But as business owners and executives are growing pains just part of the job, in my opinion, I’d much rather deal with them early on and get them out of the way so they don’t become an issue down the road. So I would say, and the way I leave it is would you spend a dollar to make 100? Would you take an hour to save 100 hours? 

 

00;20;19;20 – 00;20;22;02 

Erik Wetzel 

I think it’s good to put it in perspective. 

 

00;20;22;17 – 00;20;53;00 

Erin Vallier 

Absolutely. Some really great points. I think for me, the takeaways there were make sure it’s user friendly and that means get your stakeholders involved who are actually going to be doing the work to help you make that decision and make sure that all of your technology talks to each other, because that will help reduce those repetitive tasks and decrease the opportunity for human error and just give you that one source of truth so that you’re not having to log into 50 different things in the day. 

 

00;20;53;00 – 00;21;11;27 

Erin Vallier 

I think I think those are really great points. I know throughout your career, Erik, you must have experienced both really successful implementations of software and those that just completely failed. In your opinion, what did those successful companies do differently? 

 

00;21;12;13 – 00;21;35;13 

Erik Wetzel 

Yeah, I’ve it’s crazy, You know, again, being in so many different industries and all of the tech adoption that that I’ve went through and you know honestly I can say that there’s there’s never this one size fits all approach, you know and I think if companies try to do that or have, you know, people go over to a new company and assume that it’s going to be the same as last place they’ve been, they’re wrong. 

 

00;21;37;03 – 00;22;02;28 

Erik Wetzel 

You know, some things will work, some things well. But I think a lot of the successful implementations that I’ve seen and been a part of really include, I would say the first being able to know your why. I think adopting the new tech is is really not to be taken lightly. It’s a big deal. So typically the goal is to remove a pain point or improve some aspect of the business is what you’re shooting for. 

 

00;22;02;28 – 00;22;24;05 

Erik Wetzel 

So people are more likely to adopt something new if they can see how it helps them to better achieve their day to day goals, objectives and in turn, you know, see how they’ll be more productive and successful. So, you know, I think what I say there is always keep in mind that when implementing the new tech, you’re disrupting the status quo within your organization. 

 

00;22;24;05 – 00;22;51;03 

Erik Wetzel 

So, you know, I’ll tell you, change can quickly cause frustration and resistance. I’ve seen it time and time again. And if it’s not handled the right way and that why is not addressed upfront, you won’t have the full buy in and commitment from the parties and it can lead to delays. Slow down of projects and eventually it can create employee and customer satisfaction issues which, you know, we all know no company can afford or would want to go through at all. 

 

00;22;51;03 – 00;23;18;11 

Erik Wetzel 

So the second I would say is communicate, communicate and communicate some more. I could probably say communicate about a million times. And it doesn’t just apply to this, but communication when implementing a new technology is super crucial. So I think achieving the user adoption, the new tools really requires that. And I think it’s you got to get all the stakeholders involved early on. 

 

00;23;18;11 – 00;23;42;14 

Erik Wetzel 

So not only early on, but also consistently so I think a lot of times I’ll see companies, they’re really good off the bat and then things will start to fade because technology these days in enterprise software is not an overnight implementation. It takes weeks, it takes, you know, after that, it takes months to really get trained on and get up to speed. 

 

00;23;42;14 – 00;24;16;13 

Erik Wetzel 

So, you know, I think what we do and what we call this at inquiry is socializing. So I keep mentioning social ties. Your why within leadership in all impacted parties and then also include a detailed plan for implementation, testing and training. Go live post, go live. Having all of that actually planned out where your people can kind of plan their days around it and see what they’re getting into, I think shows it’ll grow confidence within everyone because they see leadership with a good plan and they know, hey, we’re doing this for a specific reason. 

 

00;24;16;13 – 00;24;38;04 

Erik Wetzel 

It’s going to help us grow and it’s going to help us all be more successful. So the next, I would say, would probably be not skimping on training. It sounds easy, but effective training is anything but so I think most people think they can watch online training videos and magically they’ve adopted the new technology. I may be one of those people. 

 

00;24;38;12 – 00;24;58;00 

Erik Wetzel 

I really wish it was that simple. So, you know, I think one of the biggest risks I see to the adoption of new tech is the lack of sufficient training and time to actually devote to the training people need to see and play in the software environment. They need to see how it’s going to be specific to their work processes prior to go live. 

 

00;24;58;06 – 00;25;21;11 

Erik Wetzel 

And I think in our industry, a majority of users are, as I mentioned before, are not tech savvy at all, which makes training and onboarding one of the most crucial steps to a successful adoption. If the staff and employees feel comfortable using the technology, they’re they’re going to enjoy doing it more. They’re going to go to it. They’re going to leverage it more, which in turn should create better results. 

 

00;25;21;11 – 00;25;40;02 

Erik Wetzel 

And then next, I would say the need to identify an actual champion. So a lot of times we think when when we’re implementing a new technology that it’s just going to be rainbows and butterflies and everything is going to be wonderful and that everybody is going to work together and all the parties are going to be on point. 

 

00;25;40;02 – 00;26;01;16 

Erik Wetzel 

But that doesn’t happen. So I think a lot of companies are so focused on deploying the new tech that they fail to have a change management plan in place so an internal champion can communicate and engage with their peers in a way that outside consultants can, which in turn will give the adoption strategy the best chance for success. 

 

00;26;01;16 – 00;26;19;11 

Erik Wetzel 

I think being able to relay and being able to be on the ground floor will drive a lot of confidence with everybody else who’s going to be using the technology. And I know I’m talking forever on this. But lastly, I think it’s so important to monitor and measure. Those are two really big words for me, and I use them all the time. 

 

00;26;19;11 – 00;26;47;16 

Erik Wetzel 

So once implementation has been completed, you can’t just assume things will run on their own. So make sure you monitor, you measure both adoption and the usage to fully understand like what the text effectiveness is and where you may need to change your strategy. I think a lot of times we go into things with a certain strategy and a certain point of view on what we want to achieve, and then we stick with that no matter what we’re going to do. 

 

00;26;47;16 – 00;27;11;01 

Erik Wetzel 

But I think once we go through the implementation part and we learn the technology and see what the capabilities are, we might change what our strategy is or we might change based on who our stakeholders are wanting to see or what our goals are at the end. So I think listening to feedback and being open to the potential of adjusting strategy is super important to achieving the why. 

 

00;27;11;02 – 00;27;29;04 

Erik Wetzel 

So again, that’s a lot right there. But I would say all of that summed up really comes down to an organization needing to plan for identify and address change and challenges early on. And I think on top of that, also being able to gain the buy in and commitment for the adoption of the technology. 

 

00;27;29;26 – 00;28;05;29 

Erin Vallier 

Yeah, I love that perspective. It does sound like a lot, but I think we can break it down into just really change management. You hit on all the the tenets of change management. You need to focus on your why and socialize that and make sure your employees know that it’s really all about them to make their jobs easier and then more efficient and then communicate, communicate, communicate, train, train and retrain and have that internal team at the end who can be there and monitor and implement that change management plan, measure and measure and, you know, modify on. 

 

00;28;06;00 – 00;28;30;01 

Erin Vallier 

Absolutely that. That’s kind of what I got from that. And that’s a really important strategy to think about when you are going to implement technology. Just know that it is going to take a little bit of work for sure to be successful. Now, Erik, you currently work for a company that provides a customer relationship management platform, otherwise known as a CRM, and you guys focus on senior living and home health. 

 

00;28;30;15 – 00;28;38;16 

Erin Vallier 

So for those who are listening that aren’t really familiar with what a CRM does, can you explain to us what is a CRM? 

 

00;28;39;01 – 00;29;24;22 

Erik Wetzel 

You know, I think CRM has been it’s expanded so much since the time that it really came around. The way I describe a CRM is it’s really the base that all companies and their tech is built on. So I think really if you don’t have it in, you’re coming in, you’re a smaller organization and you’re coming from a pen and paper, you know, storing all files in file cabinets and you really don’t have any tech to start a CRM is, is the place to go because you really build on top of that because it’s you know, it allows for businesses to really easy track all communication, you know, nurture relationships with leads, prospects, clients, and 

 

00;29;24;22 – 00;29;53;05 

Erik Wetzel 

then, you know, specifically to that home health space CRM can include so many things. So like a care plan management system, scheduling, billing, invoicing, marketing automation can be part of it, time tracking, patient records management. And really the list goes on and on. And I think CRMs today are getting so robust. So like when we think of CRM, we think of Salesforce probably being the biggest and most robust system. 

 

00;29;53;05 – 00;30;23;12 

Erik Wetzel 

But if anybody’s ever seen Salesforce like it, it does everything. Yeah, I’m surprised it doesn’t drive itself. So it’s I mean, it it’s, it’s a crazy tool. Exactly. So the way I look at Enquire is we’re essentially the salesforce, but we are designed specifically for home based care and for the senior living space. So we have we built our products more on that niche industry as opposed to, you know, being a very broad system like a Salesforce. 

 

00;30;23;12 – 00;30;45;20 

Erik Wetzel 

So, you know what, I will say this and just to add on to people that may not know their CRM or are looking to make a move and get a CRM, a lot of organizations, they want a CRM to do everything, and that’s just not ever going to be the case. The CRM can help solve a lot of problems, but you’ll still need to build your tech stack around it. 

 

00;30;46;07 – 00;31;09;09 

Erik Wetzel 

And as we mentioned time and time again, you got to make sure everything is well integrated and talking to each other. So as much as I would love for our CRM to do everything that you would need, you know, that’s why we get to partner with awesome companies like Ally Care and different companies that can enhance the tech stack and make sure everything is all under one roof and make sure that your business is growing the way that you want it to grow. 

 

00;31;09;26 – 00;31;24;27 

Erin Vallier 

Thank you for sharing that perspective and giving us a little bit more information about what the CRM does and it doesn’t do. I like the point of one piece of tech isn’t going to do it all. Have those conversations on a daily basis. I’m like, Well. 

 

00;31;26;20 – 00;31;28;01 

Erik Wetzel 

I have them all the time. Yeah. 

 

00;31;28;09 – 00;31;48;02 

Erin Vallier 

You’re going to need to have a couple of pieces of tech. And we’ve been hitting on, you know, this integration thing. So tell me, how can this a well integrated CRM improve business efficiency and allow providers to provide a higher level of care? And why is it so important that that CRM be integrated? 

 

00;31;48;25 – 00;32;23;14 

Erik Wetzel 

I think this is going to be another long answer. So so bear with me. You know, I would say the first way is it improves the speed and quality of the decisions that you’re making. So in the last few years, the segment of CRM data management and analytics analytics has really been helping generate smarter and faster decisions. So I think organizations are leveraging them to work remotely as they now require instant access to the latest information, which now with with the tech that we put out is available real time. 

 

00;32;23;24 – 00;32;46;07 

Erik Wetzel 

So this helps in improving the speed and quality of the decisions which will in turn improve the overall quality of care. So as we talked about it before, we deal in second. So having the real time data is really crucial to the success and the overall care that we’re talking about. The next is is in the increase in business agility and optimization. 

 

00;32;46;07 – 00;33;15;22 

Erik Wetzel 

So because home health care orgs are expecting teams to provide instant and smarter responses within the evolving business environment, real time insights help these teams stay updated with the latest data to match what the organization urgency may be, which we didn’t have before. So CRM is also take out the need for manual input and allow for automated workflows, which, you know, again, go back to what this podcast is about. 

 

00;33;15;23 – 00;33;39;25 

Erik Wetzel 

It can save your staff hours each week, which in turn will help the whole organization be more productive. It also helps improve customer service. We kind of focus on the sales and marketing side, but from a customer service standpoint, having up to date, real time information is absolutely crucial. So organizations are now invested heavily in that real time data. 

 

00;33;39;25 – 00;34;11;06 

Erik Wetzel 

It’s not for their sales and marketing specifically, it’s for their service because, you know, customer satisfaction can make or break your organization. So having that organize real time data is key to success. And then the last one, I promise, is ability to identify and act on the short term market changes. So as we all know, some organizations are highly sensitive to rapid market changes and knowing this real time data and speed to lead is is crucial to business growth and survival. 

 

00;34;11;06 – 00;34;36;21 

Erik Wetzel 

Honestly, with so much emphasis on patient experience, organizations have to respond swiftly to the change in cost demand and also customer trends. So long story short, I think a solid CRM will drastically increase business efficiency by removing the manual, repetitive tasks and giving organizations the data to make better informed decisions on how to run and grow their businesses. 

 

00;34;37;06 – 00;35;03;13 

Erin Vallier 

You hit the nail on the head, I believe, and it’s just sound after hearing your response that it’s basically a no brainer for organizations to adopt a few key pieces of technology, especially if they are planning to engage in more programs like Hospital at Home. And I saw a home health care news survey that 51% of the respondents had planned to get more into that hospital at home. 

 

00;35;03;19 – 00;35;31;06 

Erin Vallier 

And that does require to have faster responses to referrals from hospitals. Having that information in near real time to make those clinical decisions, all of that leading to better financial outcomes, more financial outcomes, better patient outcomes and increased job satisfaction because it removes those five and $10 tasks from the employee and allows them to use their skills and knowledge. 

 

00;35;31;19 – 00;35;47;15 

Erin Vallier 

So I love that perspective, Erik, and I really do thank you for sharing your wisdom with us today. I have one final question for you. If our listeners want to get in touch with you to learn more about Enquire how may you be reached. 

 

00;35;47;15 – 00;36;03;20 

Erik Wetzel 

Yeah. So really, you can add me on LinkedIn. I’m sure there’s probably a bunch of questions out there, or they can email me at sales at inquiry solutions dot com and just let them know you’re looking for me and I’ll make sure to respond back. 

 

00;36;04;06 – 00;36;11;07 

Erin Vallier 

Fantastic. Thank you for letting the listeners know. And it was an absolute joy to have this conversation with you. 

 

00;36;11;23 – 00;36;16;08 

Erik Wetzel 

Appreciate you having me on. It was an absolute pleasure. 

 

00;36;17;05 – 00;36;46;04 

Jeff Howell 

Home Health 360 is presented by AlayaCare. First off, we want to thank our amazing guests and listeners to get more episodes. You can go to alayacare.com/homehealth360. That’s spelled Home Health 360 or Search Home Health 360 on any of your favorite podcasting platforms. The easiest way to stay up to date on our new shows is to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. 

 

00;36;46;28 – 00;37;10;02 

Jeff Howell 

We also have a newsletter you can sign up for on alayacare.com/homehealth360 To get alerts for new shows and more valuable content from AlayaCare right into your inbox. Thanks for listening and we’ll see you next time.