Owners of healthcare practices must reevaluate how they look at their businesses. It’s not always easy. When demand causes you to think bigger, your technology budget becomes a major priority. Let’s look at some changes a growing healthcare practice should consider.

Most practices succeed when management adapts to challenges. Whether that means learning from specific case studies or an innate confidence to succeed, you don’t doubt that challenges will come from all angles. Technology smooths these angle’s edges. Here are a few tools worth studying:

Internet-Based Telephone System

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is an Internet-based telephone system. What matters to you is that VoIP saves your practice money compared to the local phone company’s traditional telephone service. Why should your business waste money better spent elsewhere? A VoIP system uses your company’s existing Internet bandwidth to deliver integrated, enterprise-level call, text, and conferencing services—and costs far less than what the local telco charges.

A cloud-based, professionally maintained VoIP system solves many communications issues often seen with traditional phone systems. These include:

• Price – VoIP customers see immediate cost reductions when eliminating reliance on the telco since VoIP utilizes your office’s existing Internet service.
• Scalability – You can easily add or remove phone lines and extensions with VoIP. A new phone can be up and running in minutes.
• Mobility – VoIP systems typically come with “softphone” options that transform any smartphone into a VoIP phone.
• Options – Any option a traditional telephone system has, a VoIP platform offers. With VoIP, you receive comprehensive communications tools integrated into your business’s other operational systems.
• Hardware – Hosted VoIP systems use top-shelf hardware to ensure reliability with unsurpassed call quality.

A new hosted VoIP system covers all your business’s communication needs. It’s indispensable to a growing practice.

Web Presence

Brand awareness is vital to today’s healthcare practices. Consumers count brand awareness and convenience as their most important variables when choosing a product or service. So having a web presence is more important than ever. But a mere website isn’t enough anymore. Today’s businesses must do more than focus their marketing efforts locally using traditional methods. They also need to invest time and effort into their web marketing.

Many businesses now use social media to “start the conversation.” Outlets such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Reddit, Snapchat, and Twitter promote business access to a customer base you may not otherwise reach. Healthcare practices start conversations on social media by sharing knowledge via blogs and other content. By directly interacting with consumers, you respond to user inquiries and promote your good work through case studies and other testimonials.

Social media outlets can quickly become a great way to engage an audience seeking answers to their problems. By linking your webpage to your social media accounts, you will increase traffic—which increases sales opportunities.

CRM

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is operational management software serving as a liaison between a business and their (potential) customers. CRM comes in many forms; its purpose is always to streamline and facilitate action on the operational end and offer support on the consumer end. Some of the features found in CRM include a laundry list of features such as:

• Contact management
• Lead management
• Relationship tracking
• Account management
• Quote and purchase management
• Procurement/Vendor management
• Workflow automation
• Sales process automation
• Service automation
• Campaign management
• Business analytics
• …and more

Why do you need these options? Because as your practice grows, you won’t have time to do every task. If your reliance on automation has increased, CRM is a great tool to enhance departmental interoperability. It provides an efficient and collaborative workflow to support the growth of your practice.

Combine CRM tools with payroll software, supply chain management software, service delivery software, and more to provide your practice the resources needed to support end-to-end operations.