WorkCompWire’s Leaders’ Speak column features a two-parter from Jack Bailey of Bailey Southwell.  He has worked on a lot of transactions in our space and knows a lot about deal-making.

Bailey’s point about the growing importance of technology, and specifically the need for accreditation around cyber-security is dead on. His other thoughts on the importance of execution and customer service are as well.

I do have a different perspective on one of his statements.

From WorkCompWire:

Trend Away from Monoline Vendors to Integrated Service Offerings: While this isn’t necessarily a new concept in the industry, payers increasingly emphasize the benefits of having multiple service lines handled by a single vendor in their contract decisions. As an example, see the below quote from the recent quarterly earnings call of publicly-traded industry vendor:

…singularly focused vendors are quickly becoming obsolete while payers recognize a greater efficiency and effectiveness of integrated services.

Two points here.

First, outside of the quote – which I’ll get to in a minute – I don’t see any supporting evidence for this assertion. OneCall is the best example of a diversified service provider, and we all know how that experiment has worked out.

It hasn’t.

In contrast, single-focused vendors such as bill review firm Conduent, physical medicine management company MedRisk (HSA consulting client), DME/Home Health provider HomeCare Connect, and PBMs (most of which focus almost entirely on pharmacy) are doing well. Conduent and MedRisk are the largest providers in their business sectors, HomeCare Connect is growing rapidly, and PBMs myMatrixx (HSA consulting client) and Optum now dominate the work comp pharmacy business.

There are many reasons for this – which I’ve explored in past posts in mind-numbing detail – but the core issue is the same as in any other industry – doing one thing really, really well is hard enough. Doing several things really well is damn near impossible.

As Bailey noted, payers are demanding excellence in execution and customer service, demands that have (with rare exceptions) not been met by diversified service providers.

Point two.  The quote in Bailey’s piece comes from CorVel’s CEO. 

Of course Clemons would say that integrated services are the bee’s knees;  CorVel’s business model is predicated on getting as many dollars from its customers as possible.

Supporting evidence for my contention that single-focus companies are doing well, and are very attractive to investors is everywhere.

For example, SUNZ’ purchase of case management company Ascential Care and Mitchell’s acquisition of physician adviser/peer review/IME firm MCN. Both Ascential and MCN were founder-owned and had narrowly-focused businesses; they weren’t diversified.

Then there’s Paradigm’s acquisition of Adva-Net for about $110 million, a transaction completed in the last month or so. Adva-Net was also founder-owned (with some venture capital as well) and narrowly-focused; it brings a network of pain management providers and facilities to the table.

This follows Paradigm’s purchase of Foresight Medical last year. As I said last September, “Foresight’s niche is narrow but important – the company’s core business is negotiating prices for implantable surgical devices.”

Finally, in all my conversations with larger work comp payers, the vast majority of buyers want best-in-class services – because their customers expect and demand it. SVPs of Claims, VPs of Medical Management, Chief Medical Officers – I’ve never heard one say “I’ll take mediocre service levels and results because working with one vendor makes my life easier and is less burden on my department.”

Yes, there are exceptions, primarily for smaller payers who don’t have the staff or resources to handle multiple relationships. In that case, the “multi-offering supplier” approach makes sense, and this can be an attractive niche, with vendors building attractive businesses around wide service offerings.

What does this mean for you?

Market segmentation is key; understand what your buyers’ problem is, and solve it. Larger payers want best-in-class, and many smaller payers are looking for simplicity.

The three top takeaways from HSA’s 2018 Survey of Bill Review in Workers’ Compensation and Auto are:

1. It’s all about customer service
2. Analytics are lacking
3. Medata leads the pack

We’ll dive into customer service today, and discuss the other takeaways later this week.

From the Survey’s Executive Summary:

The importance of customer service cannot be overstated. At a time when the BR industry and payer community are looking at e-billing advancements, connectivity, and predictive analytics to make BR faster and more efficient, customer service rose to the top of the list when discussing or scoring the most important aspects of BR.

Whether we were asking “are bill review vendors differentiated?”, “how important is customer service”, or how respondents ranked individual bill review vendors, customer service kept coming up. Whether respondents outsourced bill review or processed bills internally using a third-party application, whether their companies were large or small, operated in a single state or nation-wide, customer service and variations on that theme were pervasive.

For example, one may well think bill review is a commoditized business, where vendors compete on price and relationships. Fully 2/3rds of the 30 respondents believe bill review vendors are differentiated, primarily by responsiveness, customer service, and a sense of partnership.

Stepping back, this is not surprising.

In any commoditized market, the customer who believes they are being listened to, serviced promptly and competently, that their vendor/partner really cares about the relationship and is always looking to add value, will view that vendor as a partner – a key differentiator.

In non-commoditized businesses, buyers don’t care nearly as much about customer service. Think Apple; people stand in line for hours if not days to buy their latest tech because it can do all this innovative stuff, has a really great camera and screen, can store a gabillion photos…(and many of us love to show off our latest toys to jealous friends). And often that tech has bugs and costs a fortune and shatters when you drop it and battery life sucks and it is obsolete in months… (Disclosure – I’m an iPhone, Mac Air, and Mac desktop user…but I’ve never camped out at a Store)

Or Tesla.  Costs a mint, one has to wait months to get the car you want, software can be buggy, getting service is a pain in the neck, charging is NOT easy or simple or readily available in many places…Yet lots of people buy Teslas.

I know, there are deep psychological/emotional reasons we humans want to own iPhones and Teslas. That doesn’t negate the key point here – people buying highly differentiated products don’t care about customer service.

Service can be THE differentiator in a commoditized business.  

Tomorrow, data analytics.

What does this mean for you?

Much of workers’ comp – claims, medical management, insurance, related services – is pretty much commoditized. I would argue  – and the research clearly indicates – that differentiation is not only possible, but critical to your company’s survival and success.