[Read Between the Tech: Epi 2] Digital Transformation of Advica Health

• Employee health and technology: https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/life-sciences/our-insights/using-digital-tech-to-support-employees-mental-health-and-resilience

• Technology roadmap creation: https://www.proserveit.com/technology-roadmap-lite

• Digital transformation: https://www.proserveit.com/blog/how-to-accelerate-digital-transformation-in-your-organization

Read the Transcription

Disclaimer: This transcription was written by AI, thanks to Descript, and has not been edited for content.

[00:00:31] Eric: Welcome, Kevin. Glad to have you here. Great. I'm excited to have a bit of a chat about Advica and a bit of chat about technology, so looking forward to hearing your perspectives.

[00:00:40] Eric: I'll give you a minute to introduce yourself and then I'll take off some questions.

[00:00:43] Kevin: Okay, great. Eric, thanks and great to be on podcast today. I love it. So just to give a, some background in my background and story as I grew up actually in the employee benefits business, so I was in that business over 30 years and actually I'm still in that and I worked.

[00:00:58] Kevin: First of all in corporate head office, and then I went, moved with my family around the country and then started my own employee benefits consulting firm and grew that to one of the largest in the country. But through that work, I dealt primarily with business owners, executives, HR professionals, and when people had health issues, they would reach out to me.

[00:01:19] Kevin: It could be anything from where do I go for a knee operation, or I've just been diagnosed with a certain condition; what would you recommend? And so I used to help people get through the system. I used to help people navigate, and actually, it was actually one of our customers that's still a customer today.

[00:01:35] Kevin: Whenever I see this president or founder, he says, oh, you saved my life. And, of course, I actually didn't save his life. But what happened was through screening, we found out he had kidney cancer. And I don't know if you know anything about kidney cancer, but if a growth goes to the outside of your kidney, Then it goes throughout your body cuz your kidneys obviously filter, and it usually shows up a as secondary cancer, and it can be fatal.

[00:01:59] Kevin: And so through testing, we were able to diagnose his cancer in stage one, get it blasted out before it ever progressed or reached any other parts of his body. And it was actually him that gave me the idea initially. He said, you know what if ever you could do what you did for me. In terms of helping get diagnosed and get them, and get through the system and get the right treatment, he said, I think it'd be a very viable business.

[00:02:23] Kevin: So I actually put together a re-request for proposals that I went out to the market to see cuz I said there's gotta be somebody in Canada doing Health Navigate. Right? I put a laundry list of things together that I thought would be appealing, like executive medicals. Second opinions mental health supports.

[00:02:41] Kevin: And what I quickly found out is that no one organization could do all these things under one roof. So I thought, okay, I guess we'll be the company that does that. So initially, I started the business as a, I'll say, service to my benefits customers. And it just grew. And I, every week, I'd get reports, and we didn't spend a nickel on marketing, and I hired a first one nurse, and then I've been, and it just kept growing.

[00:03:04] Kevin: The reason is you, and I think are similar in age, Eric, and when we're out and seeing our friends or at parties, what do people talk about? They talk about their health, unfortunately. Yep. And one person will say, I'm on a waitlist for four months for an MRI. And somebody else, one of our members, will say, oh, I'm, I'm a, I got in two weeks.

[00:03:21] Kevin: How'd you do that? Oh, I'm a member of this program. So it just grew. So since then, I've subsequently diminished my day-to-day activities in my benefits business and really grow to Advica health. And pleased to say that's what brought you and me together.

[00:03:35] Eric: Yeah, again, we're a customer. We believe in how much it can help employees.

[00:03:39] Eric: I don't have as dramatic as stories as you shared, but I definitely have experiences with my family using the program and supporting both my family and all the employees at ProServeIT. So it's a hugely valuable service. And it's exciting to kinda hear about that journey and that growth and the pivot into supporting people.

[00:03:57] Eric: I love that, Kevin. And I guess as we look at our relationship and our journey together, what were some of the business challenges that concerned you when we first started talking? So share with the audience maybe how those business’s challenges surfaced in you, and then what caused you to say, okay, I need some help.

[00:04:14] Kevin: Yeah, so when, I'll say, when we, when I really got serious about the business, which would be about a year and a half or two years ago. We obviously sat down and made projections on where we saw the business growing, and our goal is to help a million Canadians, uh, solve their health issues on a daily basis, and then eventually 10 million Canadians and keep it growing.

[00:04:35] Kevin: But right now, the target is a million, and that we can help. And if we can help a million Canadians solve their health issues every single day, then we're helping, I'll say society and, and the country and people and everything else, which is really what drives me and all of our employees. But so when you look at that, I'll go back.

[00:04:52] Kevin: Prior to our relationship, we were, I'll say, in a little in the dark ages, like the way customers reached us was by phone or they emailed us, and then we would, our nurses would then help them get through the system and navigate the system. So from our perspective, there were a few challenges. One is to scale.

[00:05:11] Kevin: To scale our business to where we need to get. There's no way we're; we would've been able to do it. Uh, operating the way we did operate. When I look back, there were a few challenges. One of them is just a to make it easy for our customers to use our service, right? So they can go on their phone, which as you can do now, and absolutely get on the phone and within a minute, be talking live to a doctor, nurse, get a prescription, get prescription delivery, get.

[00:05:38] Kevin: Diagnosed, whatever's required. So that would be we just wanted to make it super easy for our customers, and at the time, it wasn't super easy, right? So that would be number one. Second we deal with medical records every single day from a privacy standpoint. From a record-keeping standpoint, we need to make sure that we're a hundred percent compliant, right from that perspective.

[00:06:02] Kevin: Third thing is we need, as we've grown our network, so the way you know Wingless service, but when you use the service, we then have to access ours. Network of specialists, let's say it's MRI clinics, specialists, doctors, what? What? Both public and private systems. We have over a thousand specialists or partners that we deal with across Canada that we help our members.

[00:06:26] Kevin: So we needed to make it n. Easy for our nurses to access that system. Right? Because you think when, when a nurse when we first started, and you phoned up, and you needed, let's say here, here's no throat specialist. She may remember the ones that we use, but now when we have over a thousand of those specialists across Canada, there's, so we need to make it easy for them to access that.

[00:06:48] Kevin: And, also just from a patient standpoint, a, a real void for us was as a member, Be to be able to access records, right? Your own records. Yeah. If you've, I know you've used the healthcare system. We all have, and you think of the normal journey. The normal journey is you might see a doctor, and then you might see a specialist, and then you might see another specialist.

[00:07:09] Kevin: But they all, no, none of them are really talking to the other. Right. So we need a system to put all of that information under one roof. Right under one platform, right, for our customers. That was a long-winded answer, but hopefully, I've outlined tho those were our challenges, and those are the things that we're, we've worked on, and we're continuing to work on as an organization, so,

[00:07:32] Eric: Yeah, no, that, so again, that's a great story of how you looked at the customer centricity of your solution, how you looked at automation being something to allow you to scale and grow as the business grows without the business processes cracking.

[00:07:45] Eric: And then you didn't necessarily say the security word, the word security, but that idea of private and conventional information being having a secure foundation so that you can build on top of that or layer up, in your technology house or technology systems. I think you nailed the core focus of where we'd want to guide any business like yours dealing with really important topics, life-saving topics, dealing with health information and trying to make it more accessible.

[00:08:13] Eric: So, great summary of the problem. One of the challenges we hear a lot from customers is, They don't understand the technology piece or that it’s made very complex. So as you think about your advisory process and the advisory team that joined you and is helping guide you through this, maybe describe some of the feelings around reducing complexity or making technology more approachable as you sit with Pete and Jamie and all the different people in the team.

[00:08:37] Kevin: Yeah, you know what, it's great, it's a great question, and I know when I talk to other presidents and cos, and even I'll say in my past life, It's when I look at my role, it's to drive the business and lead the business. And it's almost like technology. It's fearful, right? It's this; it’s scary. It's this black hole, right?

[00:08:55] Kevin: Yeah. Oh no. And so fortunately, I have people on my end that actually like diving into the technology side, which is great cuz I leave it to them to do it. But I will say, I mean from our perspective, what I found, cuz I was involved initially at a very high level and then and continue to work with your team, with Jamie and Peter and.

[00:09:14] Kevin: I'll say, you made it very, you made it easy for me to understand where we were going and what the roadmap was, and took away a lot of those barriers, right? Like a lot of those barriers, the fearful, should I even be? I remember even sending my business partner asking Austin note saying, do you need me in this meeting?

[00:09:31] Kevin: Because it's one of those areas that you're going, okay, that's not my expertise. But I was involved in those meetings, and Jamie and Peter, what I liked about them and actually yourself and the team is. You really approached it from a business standpoint, right? It wasn't, okay, here's technology, and at least I never got the feeling, here's the technology, you need it.

[00:09:50] Kevin: It was always, okay, let's back up. What's the business need? What is, what do your customers need? Okay, what does the business need to support that? And then let's get a plan in place that will then address those issues. And I think I've mentioned to you before, Eric, that what I really liked is you, your team took a very business approach to our business, right?

[00:10:11] Kevin: Because as for us to grow to a million and then 10 million people that were gonna help every day with their health issues, you're not gonna do that on a shoestring, and you're not gonna do it without tech supporting it. Yeah,

[00:10:23] Eric: you, you need tech. But we're both in the people; business tech is just the glue that binds it together.

[00:10:29] Eric: Yeah. If you're not finding good people on either side, you end up with a poor outcome. So you need to find, again, the humans that need help and the humans that want to help. And technology is that bridge between them.

[00:10:40] Kevin: Yeah. No, I'll, I'll even say that, and as we aren't even, we keep re-identifying where we're going in our future, and I believe we have a meeting booked either next week or the week after with you and your team.

[00:10:51] Kevin: To, to re-look at the customer journey and, which is great, I'm thinking. Okay. And it was actually you and I that you offered, which I loved was, let's walk through again, let's walk through the new vision of the customer journey, and then we'll look at then what's, what tech will support that. So again, just we're starting with the customer.

[00:11:10] Kevin: Which is the most, I thing? Yes. And you hit on a

[00:11:14] Eric: topic there. It's the continual evolution. So technology's not a turn it on, deploy it, install it, migrate your information there, and you're done for the next ten years based on how fast things are changing, how fast your services are changing, how rapidly you want to grow to a million humans.

[00:11:35] Eric: Assisted it. It's a lot of stepped change so that you're building as you need it, not building the solution for a million members when you only have the members you have today. So it's about that growth journey and knowing, and investing just in time. Yeah. Yeah. It's a really good cyclical concept and says the journey is never done as long as you're helping more humans.

[00:11:56] Eric: The journey continues on the tech side too.

[00:11:58] Kevin: Yeah. A hundred percent. Yeah. And that's, and again, we, I know we already did this one time and we're now we're doing it again and we'll probably do it again a year from now. Just the whole customer journey, cuz it'll continually change as healthcare needs change, as people's needs change.

[00:12:14] Kevin: Yeah.

[00:12:14] Eric: And as the systems change too, as the whole, there's changes in our healthcare system that you can see happening over time. Maybe not fast enough, but those changes cause that need and the load in the healthcare system is so high right now. Yeah, for sure. So as you think about the timelines and horizons, one of the things we find often with customers is you have to map the journey to their capacity for change.

[00:12:37] Eric: So how do you think about your ability to allow your team to do their jobs, supporting all the people you take care of and help and keep healthy versus spending time changing the tech and changing the business processes to grow? And where do you find that balance and maybe how did you see that in. The roadmap and in the plans.

[00:12:58] Kevin: Yeah, G, great question. And one of the things that I know personally I've always tried to do is work on the business instead of in the business and. When I do that, when I actually, in, for me, the, what works is I actually schedule all fri I schedule Fridays to work on the business. So that's not in the day-to-day, it's not answering emails.

[00:13:18] Kevin: It's not just going through my normal, it's working big picture on the business, strategic direction, that type of thing. And I find when we work on the business versus in the business, when I, we do a good job of that myself and as a team. Then, then the business runs much better. So it, it helps you on a day-to-day.

[00:13:37] Kevin: And then if I take it a next step in terms of technology, I look at what the work we did for you was very, or you did for us, I should say, was very strategic. Because we were working on the business and what I liked, again, from a high level standpoint is you started with the customer, as I mentioned, and then you came up, your team came up with a roadmap, right?

[00:13:59] Kevin: So Jamie and Peter actually came up with a roadmap and it wasn't, we're getting this done in a month, and if I look back, I'm gonna say it was probably over a six month period, so it felt very, It felt like we were making progress and we would have, I would've monthly check-ins. Personally, our team was dealing with it every single day, or at least a few times a week.

[00:14:18] Kevin: But from a, I'll say my perspective, it was a, it was the right amount of effort to work on that part of the business. And it wasn't like it took away hours and hours of what we want to do every day, which is help people solve their health issues. So I thought it was very good cuz there was actually a plan.

[00:14:34]  Kevin: There was a plan, there was a timeline. And as it's not our expertise, it's not my expertise. We don't even know who the players out were out there. What you also really helped us with is, uh, request for proposals. So once we identified the needs and what we needed, then your team went to work and did a request for proposals and really helped us analyze all the proposals, shortlists the proposals, and even to the point of negotiating price, the price points and everything else, your business, it's, it's, it's, if you call us about a health, Issue.

[00:15:07] Kevin: We know who to go to and how to solve it. Yep. And that's what we relied on your, you and your team to do. And you did. You helped us through that. Thanks.

[00:15:16] Eric: And I guess maybe what impact did you see for either a customer or an employee or maybe one of each as you've gone through the first leg of your journey or the first leg of your triathlon of technology?

[00:15:29] Kevin: Yeah, very appropriate to talk about triathlon right now. So as I'm exhausted cuz I was up at 6:00 AM training again this morning Anyways. Yeah, I think two things. First of all, when you, when any time as you implement change in an organization, It's met with resistance, right? Any and with, and technology's no exception to that, but I would say we involved and through you, we involved our team, the team that would be impacted.

[00:15:54] Kevin: And a lot of that was our nurse navigation team actually and our lead nurse navigator. So we involve them very much in the process cuz they're the ones that daily interact with our client and then also need to be supported by the system and our, you know, all of our specialist networks and everything else.

[00:16:09] Kevin: So they're really the inter intermediary between the customer. And what we were relying on you, your team for. So they actually, for to, and I'll say in a good way, surprising, they were very positive about the whole a, the project because they saw it as a way to help our customers even more, help them more efficiently, help them quicker, allow our nurses to access their networks quicker.

[00:16:35] Kevin: So they were very excited about it from that perspective. And I'll say from the consumer standpoint as we're doing a soft launch right now, but a fact that our members can go on their phone and hit a button and get Advica navigation or get virtual care where they can talk to a doctor or nurse within five minutes and get prescriptions and all that type of thing.

[00:16:57] Kevin: So that's going very well as well. I would say from both ends, uh, really no resistance, like from an employee standpoint, I would say it was the opposite of resistance. It was like, yeah, we need this. And I think they had the confidence in you and your team, that you were the ones that were, would help us get to the goal line of this stage, as you mentioned.

[00:17:17] Kevin: And then from a a consumer standpoint, anytime we can make their life easier in accessing our services and one-stop shopping and easy access from the phone, then we're gonna get better outcomes and better retention and growth and everything else. So yeah, I would say both. If we had to look at where those blocks, boxes checked, I would say yes in, in both cases.

[00:17:39] Kevin: And

[00:17:39] Eric: as you think about your growth journey, as you think about that, that March to a million members, and you think of the foundational work we've done in leg one of the journey, is there any one highlight that stands out to you? One kind of key turning moment that you'd say, Hey, this is the linchpin or watershed moment in this digital transformation journey?

[00:17:58] Kevin: The one that sticks out for me, there's actually two is would be the ability for our members. To be able to access our program simply and easily, right? So that they, they can instead of, instead of six months later when they have a health issue, trying to remember, okay, who do I call? Or where do I go? The fact that they can just go on their phone and access our service would be number one.

[00:18:22] Kevin: And then number two would be for our nurses, the fact that they can then access our vast network of dieticians, nutritionists, specialists, MRIs. Ear, no throat specialist, cardiovascular, whatever it is. The fact that they have that at their fingertips is too, I think is, I think those two things. And you probably notice I keep talking about how it, how it really, how what you're doing relates to the end consumer, cuz that's really what it's about.

[00:18:51] Kevin: Yeah. So I would say those two things would, would've been critical and we'll continue to be critical. We need to make sure we're, we continue to just accentuate those two services. I'd love to

[00:19:03] Eric: wrap these up with. Two tips and an offer. So if you have one tip for other companies in the health industry and healthcare industry, from thinking how you're thinking about technology, thank you.

[00:19:15] Eric: You've moved into that technology leadership arena. And then one tip for the audience on personal health, something they can do quickly and easily to be healthier. And then maybe if Advica has an offer for the per survey TE customer community, that'd be amazing.

[00:19:29] Kevin: As I'll wind up. Yeah, so that's a loaded question.

[00:19:32] Kevin: So I'll start with number one is I would say, as I mentioned earlier, daily and weekly and monthly converse with a lot of people, a lot of presidents and cos and executives. And I always think of, I think the common misconception is tech is this black hole, right? And it's, I'm gonna let my tech people handle this and everything else.

[00:19:52] Kevin: So I would say don't be afraid to go down that path for sure. I'd also say for your listeners, we've hired you to be our fractional cto. Right. We are, we haven't been to this point, to the point where we needed a full-time cto, but we need needed assistance and work on an ongoing basis so you don't have to make this plunge to go out and spend a couple hundred thousand dollars on a cto.

[00:20:15] Kevin: You can use a company like yours for a fractional cto, which has been great. So that would be, number one would be don't be afraid. And hook up with a good partner that will help you roadmap what, what you want, what your vision is, and then what, how tech supports that. Similar to what you've done for us.

[00:20:34] Kevin: Your second thing, second was tips, and I'll say two tips. Uh, one would be for those of you that run a business that are presidents and cos or executives, A differentiator today for you will be looking after your employee's health. Cuz when you look after their health, especially what people have been through in Covid, you are differentiating yourself.

[00:20:56] Kevin: We've got a lineup of customers that are coming on for January one cuz they want to draw a line in the sand and say, Like you've done with your employees, Eric, they wanna say, we ca we, we care about you as an employee and we care about the health of you and your family, and we're supporting it with a program like Advica Health, right?

[00:21:13] Kevin: That gives them access. As I always say, our mantra is expert access anywhere, anytime, right? So as we go down this road of, is it back to work? Is it working from home? Is it hybrid? Whatever it is, it's getting, giving your employees access. Anywhere, anytime, whether they're at home, whether they're at the office when it's three or am, whether it's whatever.

[00:21:35] Kevin: So that's that. So I would just say from a company standpoint, I would Cons, I would say it's super important that you go down that path. And what we're saying seeing is customers or companies that drew draw a line in the sand and put those health supports in place, they're differentiating himself. From other organizations out there.

[00:21:54] Kevin: You ask a personal health tip, I've got thousands, but since we're dealing on technology, I'll use a technology that really helped me and it's around sleep. As Eric, I do a blog and a regular blog, and when I write about sleep, it's by off the charts. My most read blogs, so we get 82% hit rates. When I write about sleep, it just shows me people have issues with sleep.

[00:22:15] Kevin: And so at the Be, just to share a story, at the beginning of Covid, I was having trouble sleeping. Typically I was in my office that I'm in right now, and then I'd eat dinner with my wife and then we'd go in the family room and maybe the TV and on or whatever, but I'd bring my laptop with me and I'd be do, but, and even, and I wasn't even often doing work, it was just, oh, I'm doing personal stuff.

[00:22:35] Kevin: And it was actually my business partner Asta, that who's very up to date in terms of mental health and supports and all that type of thing. And so she asked me about my day and my night and I sh shared with her what I was doing and she said, your brain doesn't know if you're on a, if you're doing work or personal.

[00:22:51] Kevin: In other words, I might be Googling something or just looking up races or. Something, but your brain is still saying, oh, he's in work mode, right? So I shut that night, I, or the next day I shut my computer and left the office as I do now, I'll say 90% of the time, I shut my computer and I actually take my phone and I put it at the front door and plug it in.

[00:23:11] Kevin: So I'm not even at, so at night, I'm not accessing those screens right away. I noticed the difference in my sleep. Like right away because I think it just from the brain standpoint, I was able to relax more at night and that type of thing. So I know you love technology, but I'm gonna say shut your screens off at night.

[00:23:28] Kevin: Love that. Definitely don't have one beside your bed when you're going to sleep. So that would be, and actually if, you know, I wrote a book called It's Never Too Late to Be Healthy. It is on Amazon if anybody wants a copy, but it's my, it's in there. There's a thousand other tips of how I changed my life around from in my own story.

[00:23:45] Kevin: And plus 30 recipes and everything else. So that's in there as well. And I think your third question was in terms of an offer. Two things, one, even on your own, per any of your listeners or customers that even wanna improve their own health journey, I'd be I'd more than pleased just to jump on a call. All they need to do is reach out to me and we'll send you the contact information.

[00:24:06] Kevin: And secondly, we have a program called our Gold Program, which is really aimed at executives. President CEOs, executive teams that really provides white glove treatment and accessing the very best health supports and pre a lot of prevention, like we do tons of things that just prevent anybody from having health issues down the road.

[00:24:25] Kevin: But for your, I'll say affiliates and customers and associates, we'd be willing to put that in at a 20% discount. And again, we'll send something out to your team on this. It's, we run a membership model that's usually $119 a month, so it would be $99 a month for your whole family to basically look after your family's health today and ongoing.

[00:24:46] Eric: That's amazing. Thank you so much, Kevin, for your insights, your inspiration, and your health tips. Uh, really appreciate it getting to hear how Advica is doing in their digital transformation journey, and I'm looking forward to our meeting next week. Awesome. With that, Betty, you'll sign us off and thanks Kevin.

[00:25:02] Eric: Have a great afternoon. Okay,

[00:25:03] Kevin: thank you very much. Thanks much for joining us, everyone. Thank you, Kevin. Thank you, Eric. Great session,

[00:25:09] Katherine: and that's all the time we've got for today's episode of Read Between the Tech. We hope you enjoy listening and learning something new about how technology can help shape the success of your organization.