Express Therapy Portal ties in to antiquated backend systems, a strategic investment forward for future enhancements.
Express Therapy Portal will allow 3 legacy products to sunset - each with a slightly different user experience, feature sets, and order requirements.
Over the past 5 years, "ease of doing business" is the number one pain point for customers. Express Therapy Portal is an updated platform with features like order update notification that user expect but were not available in older platforms.
Digital orders and therapy management require less touches with fewer errors than phone and fax. Continuing to convert more customers to digital will improve revenue recognition.
The legacy 3M Express website launched in 2007 followed by the iOnHealing and iOnSupport apps in 2016. While improvements have been made, none allow for a user experience customers expect today and have different primary user bases. There is a desire for consistent, one-stop shop solution.
flowed through digital channels in 2021
mostly on the legacy 3M Express website but data analytics are limited due to the age of the site
volume passes through one of the three digital channels and will need to be converted to the new site
for hospitals and skilled nursing facilities go through legacy Express and will need to be converted
My contributions on this project changed drastically — I started as the lead researcher and came back to the project in 2023 as the business owner, launching the product and continuing to build and prioritize new features.
I conducted over 20, 1 hour interviews during the discovery phase primarily to understand how orders are placed, what happens to them after being sent off, and identifying the numerous pain points in the process. We completed 4 rounds of research with both sales and customers.
Synthesis primarily turned into mappings and artifact creation to make sense of the fragmented, manual workflows related to orders. I created multiple ecosystem, stakeholder, and journey maps, identifying tools and software used, and pain points.
Due to the size of the system, we focused testing on specific sections at a time. Our goal was to understand the user's workflow and mental model as it relates to orders, patients, and therapy management. Depending on the section, features varied between sales and customers.
I opted for a research vendor to complete customer research, simplifying health care compliance and augmenting my capacity. I selected about 50 health care providers from usage data, creating quotas for roles based on the total user base. I developed the discussion guides and research goals which the vendor executed.
The chaos of the map below represents a happy path for an order, touching up to 8 different people/teams depending on different variables. We primarily focused on the home order during research and development improvements due to its complexity and room for efficiency improvements.
Overwhelmingly, complaints were not with the individual legacy products for order input but with the order process which occurred after. A guiding principle became to offload as much as possible to the front-end of the new system to avoid downstream problems all together.
Due to fragmented systems, there is often duplicative efforts and communication without moving an order further along in the process.
Today, order status and information about what is needed to release an order is manual. Phone calls, Teams chats, emails, and texts run rampant.
Although both stakeholder groups shared most pain points, they were intensified for sales reps due to the high volume, as they managed both their own orders and those placed by customers.
Many clinical documents are required for insurance approval and payment, and without EMR integration, printing and faxing remain the most efficient submission method.
We conducted 4 rounds of prototype testing, refining key sections of the site. Research insights were used to write epics and user stories for development. At this point, my involvement ended until about 1 year later when I joined the business team.
When I became the business owner, many key decisions had already been made, which brought various challenges. Since I had been away from the project for over a year and was only roughly familiar with the business case, I needed to quickly get up to speed on the strategy, product launch plan, and prior business decisions.
To accelerate the launch, leadership opted for a two-phased approach: initially releasing the home order features first, followed by the rollout of inpatient acute features and market.
Challenge: The distinction between customer segments isn't clear-cut — about 70% of home orders from an inpatient setting. Without incorporating the inpatient features, converting these customers would be challenging, likely impacting adoption.
I joined mid-Mary 2023 with less than 5 months until release. We had a hard deadline for commercial launch in order to launch at a major wound care conference in November.
Challenge: We were cutting it close - certain feature sets were being cut for speed and there was little time for comprehensive testing, sales education and training.
Our team was without a business analyst (BA) who normally would have been responsible for the testing plan. Express Therapy Portal was the largest digital rollout for this or any group — the testing requirements, groups to involved, etc. were unclear.
Challenge: Even with beta customers and sales reps, testing would be much shorter than desired.
How to guides, marketing flyers, 3rd party ads, and how to videos were all underway.
Challenge: Since development wasn't complete, the creative agency didn't have access to all the necessary content, resulting in a game of hurry up and wait.
3M was also planning to spin off their entire health care company with upcoming decisions on the new CEO, executive leadership team, company name, and brand... 3M Health Care officially became Solventum April 1, 2024.
I focused on 6 key areas while getting up to speed and development work continued.
Understanding business case and data analytics around order channels. Developing metrics and targets for order volumes, user sign up, and efficiency.
Selected 6 customers from different market segments, organization sizes, and legacy product usage.
Finalizing budget and 3rd party spend, strategizing best ways to reach out of hospital market segment without causing confusion with phased launch
Supporting project manager in developing test cases and escalating any blockers to ensure cross-functional team time commitment
Supporting US marketer in developing launch packet with key personas and messaging and e-learning content
Finalizing and prioritizing topics for 8 how to videos. Creating drafts of print guides for main features - placing device and supply orders and submitting wound measurements.
Case managers and post-acute health care providers, home health nurses, wound care clinic staff
For iOnHealing & iOnSupport products
Print ads
LinkedIn ads
Google ad buy
Banner ads
Conference sponsorships
3rd party e-blasts
Sales reps were the initial users, and they immediately identified many lacking features and bugs stopping usage and adoption.
I assumed a visible leadership role to rebuild trust with the sales team, from individual reps to the national sales leader. I prioritized open communication by being accessible, acknowledging limitations, collecting feedback, and providing updates. Together with the project manager, we refined the backlog and developed a clear action plan with target completion dates for necessary updates
As a result, we fostered more collaborative relationships between sales, the business team, and U.S.-based marketing. Despite setbacks, we successfully sunsetted two of the three legacy products on schedule, and usage significantly increased following our major improvement efforts.
