Episode 197: Aligning Product Development with Business Objectives in Healthcare with BJ Boyle
In this episode of the Product Thinking podcast, I had the pleasure of speaking with BJ Boyle, the Chief Product Officer at PointClickCare. BJ brings over two decades of experience in health tech, having honed his expertise at leading companies like Cerner and now PointClickCare. His deep understanding of the healthcare landscape and commitment to user-centric product management make his insights invaluable for anyone in the industry.
During our conversation, BJ shared his journey into product management, emphasizing the importance of truly understanding the needs of end users—whether that’s nurses, doctors, or administrators. He highlighted the unique challenges of product management in the healthcare sector, where regulatory requirements and user experience must be balanced with innovation and growth. BJ's approach focuses on fostering strong relationships within the executive team to ensure that product strategies align with organizational goals and market needs.
If you’re intrigued by the intersections of healthcare, product management, and technology, this episode is packed with actionable insights. Read on as we explore BJ’s hard-won expertise on transforming health tech products, the significance of cross-functional collaboration, and how to leverage customer feedback to drive innovation.
Whether you’re a product leader or simply interested in the future of health tech, you won’t want to miss this conversation!
You’ll hear us talk about:
07:45 - Bridging Product Teams with Real-World Market Insights
BJ discusses the critical importance of exposing product managers to real-world market scenarios, especially in the complex world of health tech, where user personas like nurses and doctors don't operate in the same way as everyday consumers. He explains that getting product managers out into the field—shadowing nurses or interacting with real users—is key to driving better product outcomes. Through customer advisory boards, partnerships, and the work of a growing UX research team, PointClickCare is ensuring its product managers are connected with the actual environments their products serve. This approach helps them better understand user pain points and needs, even in highly regulated industries like healthcare.
22:15 - Balancing Subject Matter Expertise with Product Skills
Here, BJ highlights the challenge of balancing domain expertise with product management skills in the healthcare industry. He explains that early in his career, many product managers came from user roles, like nurses or business managers, which resulted in strong domain knowledge but a lack of core product management capabilities. As a solution, BJ discusses the importance of blending product managers from various backgrounds, including those with classical product training and those with domain expertise. This mix allows teams to execute more efficiently and avoid the pitfalls of either too much backlog or not understanding the healthcare space enough to make informed decisions.
39:53 - Embracing AI to Solve Staffing Challenges
BJ expresses excitement about the potential of AI and technology to transform healthcare, especially in addressing staffing shortages. With AI-driven tools like predictive models and smart documentation, he sees an opportunity to alleviate administrative burdens on healthcare providers, allowing them to focus more on patient care. He discusses how the industry is evolving from simply meeting regulatory requirements to leveraging technology to improve staff efficiency and patient outcomes. He also shares his personal connection to healthcare, which fuels his passion for enhancing care transitions and eliminating outdated practices like relying on fax machines.
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Intro - 00:00:01: Creating great products isn't just about product managers and their day-to-day interactions with developers. It's about how an organization supports products as a whole. The systems, the processes, and cultures in place that help companies deliver value to their customers. With the help of some boundary-pushing guests and inspiration from your most pressing product questions, we'll dive into this system from every angle and help you think like a great product leader. This is the Product Thinking Podcast. Here's your host, Melissa Perri.
Melissa - 00:00:37: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Product Thinking Podcast. Today, we're joined by BJ Boyle, the Chief Product Officer at PointClickCare, a leading healthcare technology platform. With over two decades of experience in healthcare technology and product management, BJ has a proven track record of translating client needs into innovative business strategies that drive results. BJ oversees product management and operations functions for senior care and acute and payer business units. He plays a pivotal role in both the development and long-term vision of the company's products. Today, BJ will share his insights on product management and health tech, the power of storytelling, and his journey as a Chief Product Officer. But before we go talk to BJ, it's time for Dear Melissa. This is a segment of the show where you can ask me any of your burning product management questions. And today, we're going to the phones. Let's hear our caller.
Caller - 00:01:25: Dear Melissa, I'm a UI UX designer at a SaaS startup that's rebuilding our product after outgrowing our no-code version. The rebuild, led by a team of seven engineers, is expected to take over a year, and significant scope is being cut to manage the timeline. Our CTO is considering hiring a product manager to streamline the process, but after listening to your podcast, I'm wondering if we actually need a platform product manager to help define the core elements of the rebuild. Is that the right approach, and how should I present this to our CTO?
Melissa - 00:01:57: So you are correct. In this case, since you are rebuilding a platform, you're going to want to look for somebody who has experiences on platform product management. Now, this is still going to be a product manager. This is not a technical person. This is not an engineer. This is a person who's a commensurate product manager, but has experience leading strategies for platform. And when you're thinking about rebuilding a platform, there's a lot of choices that you can make here. It's not just about doing a one-for-one analysis of what we had on the old one versus a new one. We also have to look at our entire product strategy and decide, are there any products we need to kill? Are there any things that need to be condensed? Let's say if we have multiple services or multiple components going around, you're going to want to really look at that strategy and then look at your product as an audit and figure out how do we take slices of that to put onto the new platform. Usually when we're rebuilding a platform as well, you're going to want to start to move some stuff onto the new platform, and you'll probably still have stuff on the old platform. Figuring out that structure and what's important to move onto the new stuff versus keeping on the old stuff is very important. So there's a lot of trade-offs in there too. And it's not just a technical trade-off situation. It's a commercial trade-off situation. When you're trying to get people to migrate onto something new, especially if that's involved, there's an art to asking them to do something for you. So you want to make sure that you're delivering enough value to get them to migrate. So that's why you need a product manager there, but it's good to have somebody who has dealt with platforms before and can start to think around the structure and work with the architects on that.
Scope out what's the best first release for that platform. How do we combine it back to the commercial landscape of it? So this person wouldn't really be reporting into a CTO. They're going to be reporting into a CPO. So that's really what I want to stress there. So you really want to align this person underneath the head of product. The head of product should be looking at your entire strategy and your entire product and saying, what do we kill? What do we keep? What's the most important things? How are we thinking about the future? And then this person is going to manifest that through the build. So I hope that helps. Definitely look at the experience rebuilding platforms here. There are a lot of product managers out there. I would make that pitch that this person is going to come in and make sure that you're building and prioritizing the rebuild correctly so that you can get it out to market faster. And you're not building a lot of things that are not going to be needed. I've worked on a lot of platform rebuilds where we built a lot of things that were not needed because it didn't work strategically. And the people at the time didn't take the time to go back and say, hey, is this really necessary? Is this going to help? Where do we scope this out? How do we think about what we keep and what we lose? So don't focus on building it one for one. Really focus on where the value is going to be driven and rethink the concept of what that platform is.
I hope that helps. And for those of you listening, go to dearmelissa.com and let me know what your future questions are. Now, let's talk to BJ. Are you eager to dive into the world of angel investing? I was too, but I wasn't sure how to get started. I knew I could evaluate the early stage companies from a product standpoint, but I didn't know much about the financial side. This is why I joined Hustle Fund's Angel Squad. They don't just bring you opportunities to invest in early stage companies, they provide an entire education on how professional investors think about which companies to fund. Product leaders make fantastic angel investors. And if you're interested in joining me at Angel Squad, you can learn more at hustlefund.vc.mp. Find the link in our show notes. I'm BJ, and welcome to the podcast.
BJ - 00:05:22: Thank you for having me, Melissa. It's a pleasure and an honor to be here, for sure.
Melissa - 00:05:26: So you've spent over two decades in health tech. You've been working at places like Cerner and now PointClickCare. Can you tell us a little bit about what drew you to this field and how you got involved in product management?
BJ - 00:05:37: My journey, probably with a lot of people in my age group and where we're at now in this role, my first job out of college was I worked for a small startup software company that was in the health tech space. And I was implementing software across the country, just helping train and being really close to customers. And like anybody at a small company, you wear a lot of hats and start to bring that feedback back. And we started growing really fast. And when you started growing fast, what happens? Everyone just can't get all their features through the CEO anymore. So we started describing this problem we're having. Turns out that was product management. And I raised my hand for that. And that was really my first foray. And I was hooked. And for me, with my background, it was sort of this perfect combination of, I always felt it was so important for us to sort of understand what the customers wanted and build accordingly. And so it allowed me to kind of get into that zone and really been growing that way ever since. And I think for me, the things that kind of, I think it's important as a product leader that you can connect to the business in which you're serving. And so I feel like having that personal mission-driven focus around healthcare has always made it easier for me to connect the dots. And so that's really kind of how my journey started. And I've sort of stayed in that space throughout the entire time.
Melissa - 00:06:54: So you've been a chief product officer now for about two years. Can you tell me some of the lessons learned? What surprised you about making the jump into the C-suite?
BJ - 00:07:02: I think I still have a lot of lessons to learn. So my journey, and maybe give a little background a little bit about PointClickCare too, I think we've been a SaaS provider in the health tech space from the very beginning. We focus primarily on senior care and long-term post-acute care as the core sort of historical part of our business. And a few years ago, I was very involved in then also building from scratch and launching a brand new part of our business, which then allowed us to get into hospitals and health plans and other groups to really kind of connect the dots across. And so that experience of sort of leading product, but also getting to wear like a GM hat and understand how to drive that new business gave me a lot of different perspectives. And so as we brought those two businesses together, the challenge for us was, where do we see the synergy or the opportunities between those? And I had an opportunity to kick on the chief product officer role to drive the entire portfolio to where we wanna go into the future.
And so, like anybody else who jumps into product, I thought full steam ahead, how do we drive? All these great ideas we have, finally, nobody's in my way. We should push this through. I think I've learned so much. I think in no particular order, I think taking on a chief product officer role in a company that's been high growth, high success, but is looking for that, like what's next? I think it's really important to not just assume the way what we've done to get there is what we need to do to get to the next level, right? And I think so that meant a lot of, if there was opportunities that, that myself or my leadership team could see on how we could impact change, it's always worked before. So, you know, we're gonna have to really socialize and educate and drive that change on how we can operate differently and lead us there. So I think that was one lesson, you know, not everybody sees the need for change. And so part of my task was how do we put processes in place and how do we push that forward? And then the second big lesson for me, I think, was how important the executive team is in the CPO role. I always say I need to put my point-and-click hair hat on first before just my product hat, because those relationships with my peer group are so important for the success and getting through roadblocks across the organization. So those were two.
Melissa - 00:09:15: So on that first one too, when it's managing that change, there's a great book too. And I think it's called What Got You Here Won't Get You There. Totally reminds me of this. What were the things that you felt like needed to change in order to get to that next level? And like, what stage were you at when everybody started looking around saying, hey, I don't know if this is going to keep serving us as we're looking for our next big move?
BJ - 00:09:37: Two things really stand out. And I should say, we're still a work in progress here too, right? I think, but for anybody who takes on the role, even though I had been at the company for six and a half years before I took on the role, it took me almost a year to kind of wrap my arms around and say, here's what I think is sort of my vision and direction. And we're still growing there. But I think two things really kind of jump out. Number one, in a company that's growing fast and has high growth ambitions, we spend a lot of time focusing on, I sort of think of like initiatives or milestones. Did we get that next product out the door? Did we get that next new release out the door? We're kind of very much wired that way. And I think as we got bigger, one of the things you also have to keep in mind is that our product managers have to feel ownership over the health of the product they have. So what's that balance of, did I get the new thing out? Am I still keeping my current customers happy? What's NPS look like? What's satisfaction look like in driving that accordingly? And I think the second part that we've learned, and actually this is a transformation we're starting to go through now, is that as we've grown, we fundamentally would want to sort of take our tack and apply it to new adjacent markets. Can my EHR that worked in skilled nursing now go work in a senior living community or in the home or others as examples?
And we also sort of assumed that if we can build once for one market, it would work everywhere. And we have traditionally been organized, thinking about our product organization, owning components of the platform. Maybe you drive the clinical or the financial or the billing or whatever. And I think what we're finding is that while that's really important, we also need our product leadership, whether that's at a directory level or others to feel accountability for the market itself and have good cross-functional alignment with that market GM and the market sales team. And so that's just not magically going to happen, right? And so how do we kind of take that and say, you are responsible for the success of this market. How do we make sure we're prioritizing accordingly? So, those are two things that are still work in progress that are absolutely shifts that we're all sort of in one boat rowing in the same direction.
Melissa - 00:11:41: How are you thinking about getting them more exposure to the market and making sure that they look at it? When we think about organizations, you could do, like you said, components. You could do it by market. Are they overseeing a broader spectrum or are you kind of aligning them to personas?
BJ - 00:11:54: Great question. I think it's a little bit of both. I think in health tech, one of the things that's hard, the hardest challenge when someone maybe comes from a B2C company into a healthcare company is that, you know, if I'm working on a cool app, I can test it and give it to my family and friends and get feedback right away. When I'm in a health tech company and I'm building something for a nurse or for a doctor or somebody, it's kind of, you're a step removed from living it. And I just think making sure that we are connected to the end user persona is so critically important. So what we've kind of gone through this evolution is that there's markets. So in market segments, so maybe that's a large enterprise organization or a single point facility. And then there's personas. We know you need to understand who the personas are that need that solution. And so our ownership sort of is I'm in the market and I own the personas at which my product serves. And I think in healthcare, we got to get out there, right? We got to get out there and get in shadow and learn and have a great group of customers that we can kind of interact with.
Melissa - 00:12:59: How do you set up the shadowing and the user research necessary for that? When I work with healthcare organizations, it's always a concern, right? The patient privacy, all the HIPAA compliance, all that stuff. But it's true where if you don't get to see a nurse using your platform or you don't get to see a doctor in the moment, what their frustrations are, you'll never learn how to improve it. So what's your way of making sure that your product managers are out there listening to users and get that exposure?
BJ - 00:13:24: We've done a few things. I actually don't think there's necessarily a one-size-fits-all. I will say, I'm going to go a little bit around your question here for a second, because I think one of the really interesting things is making sure that product managers or senior PMs or group product managers feel accountable to the health of their product. And when I say health, it's everything from how is it being used, is it delivering value, etc. And I think if you feel ownership for the health of your product and not just churning out features, that... Strong product managers or aspiring to be strong product managers naturally see, wait a second, the health is connected to those who use it and how do we get through there? Two things have happened. I think we have built Point Click Care as a company where we have a long-term retention, high retention rate, long-term sort of strong customer advocates. And so we have a group of customers who are very vocal, very interested where we can go to and follow a nurse for a day or follow the practitioner.
And so I think we've leveraged the normal paths that way. And we also want to make sure that we don't continuously fall to the same people, right? So that sometimes we may want to find somebody who don't understand PointClickCare as well so that we can go through that. So I think it's build a group of sort of customers who have raised their hands, creatively leverage partnerships where appropriate. So we've had an example where over the last couple of years, we've launched a brand new category of our product into health systems as they look into post-acute. And in that scenario, we're also learning, but we're also kind of advocating, right? Because we're not replacing an existing system. We're replacing non-existent process. So helping people educate. So we've had people who've shadowed along with a family when they got discharged from a hospital to a nursing home and follow a case manager for the day. We've followed nurse practitioners. So it's about relationships, I think, and making sure that we just dedicate it to the time.
Melissa - 00:15:22: Do you have a user research team that helps you go out there and build those relationships? Or who's really in charge of finding the people to shadow and asking them if they'd like to opt into this?
BJ - 00:15:31: We do a little bit of both. I will say that PointClick here has, we've been more heavily investing in user research in UX than maybe we have historically. In fact, over the last two years, we've added a number of UX researchers and that's the first thing that our product teams want more of now, now that we've seen how that works. And so we think of user experience. We also have a team that's really starting to look at the whole customer experience and the customer journey across. And so how do we go through that? So our UX researchers do a lot of the work, I would say for net new initiatives for us when we're trying to get into something new or a new group. Our PMs tend to do a lot of the work when they're sort of evolving and managing their products as they see. We also have what we call CAB, which is Customer Advisory Board. That and those represent the different personas too. We have an IT and CAB, we have a clinical CAB and an ownership club, for example.
Melissa - 00:16:23: It's good to hear you too say that your product managers want more user researchers. They want more people on their team. There's this whole kind of angst right now in the user research department because I think a lot of them got cut during the layoffs. People are like, do we really need user researchers? Hearing you say that is great. What else have you seen be the value that they bring to the team? Why are you investing in this role?
BJ - 00:16:43: Such a good question. I think what we've seen is the UX researchers do a nice job of sort of bringing in an unbiased approach, a formula to make sure that we're getting feedback and we're not coming in with our own hypothesis coming in, right? Sometimes we as product managers, I put myself in this category, we've thought so much about the feature, the new solution we're building, that our questions naturally tend to sort of look to validate that initial hypothesis. And what we found is that our research team does a really nice job of driving the questions, maybe where it avoids any biases. There have been some examples where we've made, we've jumped in and, you know, a great one in healthcare. So we serve everybody from large enterprise customers down to a single skilled nursing facility that maybe is in rural Kansas, as an example. And we tend to make some assumptions that everybody wants ultimate customization. And so we were working on a total revamp of how we do something. And one of the things we learned was, you know what, that's actually too many options. Take away the options. Just tell me what the best path was. And I'm not sure we would have just naturally uncovered that on our own, because we were already thinking, we know there's that, there were certain customers that want to have every option under the sun. And so our UX team was able to kind of help and drive us through that. The second thing that they do just, I think, is really do own persona definition for us. So that, you know, we have a lot of product managers. We don't want to all define those personas differently. So how we can apply those is really in the jobs to be done is really critically important.
Melissa - 00:18:18: That's critical too for healthcare with all these different roles that you could be focusing on. One of the things you mentioned as well for one of the big lessons learned becoming a CPO was that your first team is the executive team. Tell me a little bit about what were your expectations and what did you discover, you know, stepping into the C-suite?
BJ - 00:18:35: You know, again, I think the importance of those relationships in that we all own our area. Everyone's really busy, really kind of driven to push their area forward. And I think I may maybe made some assumptions that either everybody already understands what our strategy is and I don't have to waste time doing that. Or they don't want to go into all those details. We have it. And the truth of the matter is, is that none of us can really build something great without having the go-to-market support. We need to help understand what the sales team needs. And I think it's inevitable that I'm going to have a product that doesn't work the way we want it out of the gates or a sales target that was overpromised or there's something across the lines that we work together. But I think what I have found is that strong relationships of trust helps make it so that at the C-suite, we're not pointing fingers or we're not saying, I don't know, product does this or sales does that or, you know, marketing does this. And so I think that was one really important lesson. The importance of space. Spending time. One of the things I always tell new product managers is that the magic of the work we do doesn't happen at the big meeting. It happens before the meeting. And I think that is a lesson that, like a re-lesson I had to relearn when it comes to the executive team. What are the relationships? How do we know what's important to this group or that group? And we got each other's back, right? So if I'm talking to my team and there's something going on, we're representing that PCC view. The second thing I would say as part of that is. The importance of finding the right balance and what a roadmap is, is that, you know, the same roadmap that we're operating at a detail level isn't what the executive team needs.
You know, at the executive team, what's the right level so they understand what's coming, maybe what changes we may have to make. And what I have found that's worked well for me is a sort of a chief product officer view every quarter. Hey, here's what I'm worried about. Here's what you should be worried about. And then let the data drive everything else. And so those were two things that I think, did I just sort of jumped in and let's see how it works that I found have been really important. That's our executive team. So that's the C-suite and maybe our general managers. So that, you know, in the conversation there is how do we drive prioritization a couple quarters out? It's not right now. And so I think that's really important so we can have a chance to say, hey, what are you hearing for six quarters out? What do we need to go do research? And we can kind of come back and bring it up. It also, as a side note for other CPOs, I have found that has created a really nice opportunity for us to create windows for sort of our rising stars on the team. So maybe I have a product manager, a director come and present what's going on in their portfolio that quarter or create a window where we can get them some exposure and then some learning. And I think that's a really great way to kind of build that cycle too.
Melissa - 00:21:19: That's really neat. When you're talking about what you're worried about too, what level are we talking about? Super high level problems or features?
BJ - 00:21:25: Typically, it's higher level, right? I think, you know what, an example that's probably a strong lesson learned that's probably unique to healthcare and maybe banking or some other industries is regulatory stuff. And historically, and even recently, we've had some bumps where there's regulatory changes happening. Maybe the entire executive team doesn't know. And I think it's really important to say, hey, later on this year, there's big regulatory changes. Here's how we're feeling. We're kind of in the yellow right now because states are still making changes. We're in the green to make sure they have. And I think that's an example of where that is such an important cross-functional thing. Any regulatory change doesn't just happen on an island. And so that's an example where, hey, I'm a little concerned that we're a little behind here. I'm going to put that in yellow. It's not quite red status, but need you to help push your team or be aware that this is coming. Or in some cases, if the regulatory impact is big enough, we actually might see buying behavior slow down because it's going to have impact just on the day-to-day use. In the buildings or the customer sites.
Melissa - 00:22:26: How do you stay abreast of those regulatory changes? They're usually happening a lot. There's a lot of legalese. What are you doing to make sure that you're staying ahead?
BJ - 00:22:34: I think we're probably not unlike most health tech companies, but I think we've got a team who is dedicated to regulatory updates. An interesting choice we made is years ago, actually, before I was in this seat, we used to sort of have product managers also be responsible for the regulatory updates. And what we found was that's really hard to balance both of those. So we actually took some essentially allocation and stood up a regulatory team. Actually, it doesn't even report to me. It reports to our regulatory affairs group where part of them is making sure that they're on top of it. And they work really closely hand in glove with the product team when those things are coming. The biggest challenge that all of us have is sometimes there are hard and fast dates and you know you have to be compliant. Sometimes there's a lot of tomps like this could happen, that could happen, right? And so it's just making sure that team does a really great job filtering sort of the noise from reality and that we have to make sure we hold each other accountable that way.
Melissa - 00:23:33: Did you know I have a course for product managers that you could take? It's called Product Institute. Over the past seven years, I've been working with individuals, teams, and companies to upscale their product chops through my fully online school. We have an ever-growing list of courses to help you work through your current product dilemma. Visit productinstitute.com and learn to think like a great product manager. Use code THINKING to save $200 at checkout on our premier course, Product Management Foundations. In health tech, very much like finance or any other company that has domain, right, complicated domain that you have to understand, you have to work with all of these stakeholders. You got your regulatory people. You probably have a lot of healthcare people in the organization. How do you help educate those people on what you do with product management? You mentioned a little bit before that kind of assumed everybody knew what was going on over here, but how do you help work with those people? And what have you found to be most effective to bring them in the fold?
BJ - 00:24:31: This is probably one area where I've seen change the most in my career. And I don't know that we have a one size fits all answer. You know, if you think about the role of product managers, at least in health tech, probably everywhere, I would say. But you sort of have these three intersecting circles. You know, do I understand the domain? Do I understand the art of product? And I always say the last one is sort of, do I understand the engineering process enough to be helpful or push the engineering teams? And then, of course, that's circled by this sort of go to market. What I've seen is, you know, when I was working at a different company 15 years ago, we had a lot of end users in the role of product manager, right? Like maybe you're a nurse or you're a back office, business office manager, and you use product X forever. And hey, come join us. You have all the subject matter expertise. Come beyond our product team. And I think what we found in that scenario was if everybody does that, then we're focusing a lot of our time teaching product skills. How do you prioritize? How do you break it down? How do you really understand to look at applying across the market? And sometimes they struggle. We have really great, giant, big backlogs, but weren't necessarily moving at the speed we wanted to or understanding how to go to market.
I think when we go and we just hire a great product manager from a different industry, then the question is, how do we help educate you on health care? Right. And we have seen when I look at it across the team, I think it's a looking across the team. Do we have all those rights? Do we have all those right skill sets? I think we've had a lot of tremendous success hiring newer product managers who are coming sort of more classically trained in product or have worked in high tech to understand how product works. They may be matched up with some subject matter experts we have on the team who can help us understand. So the subject matter expert role in the company kind of plays a quasi extension of a customer in some ways. And so I think I look at the team and say, do we have those right skills across? And I think we need a good balance.
Melissa - 00:26:29: Seen the same exact thing. And a lot of companies that go through transformations as well, they'll move a lot of subject matter experts into the product manager role. And then what I've always found is having the mix is really what makes it better. But if you don't have anybody who can execute on product, everything goes really slow and you can't get out the door. And I've also seen as those subject matter experts, you don't understand things like platforms or when should I use an API or when we're building something, how do we think about making it extensible or repeatable for other things? And there's some patterns that come up in product management that they just have not had experience with yet. And that's totally fine. But if you don't have the people around them to help learn from or be exposed to, that's where I've always seen it run into trouble.
BJ - 00:27:12: Yeah, I totally agree. This is where, I mean, another part in the leadership role is, are we looking at assessing the entire team and organization for capabilities and understanding that, you know, maybe we got somebody who's really strong on the subject matter expert. How do we leverage that across multiple PMs so that we can still execute?
Melissa - 00:27:31: When you're thinking about working with especially executives in the healthcare area, how have you been helping them get up to speed with, you know, what is product management about or why do we do certain things if they haven't been exposed to it before?
BJ - 00:27:44: That's an interesting question. I feel, and maybe my experiences are unique, I see more and more comfort in sort of acknowledgement in what the role of product management is. And I think that it's becoming more and more important than expected. I think that there's a couple of things that sometimes go by, like when I find myself sort of explaining what we do. It's not so much, do you need product managers? What are all the things that happen? Trade-offs is a really important one. I think that when a request comes in, or we've got a customer who's interested, or maybe a new potential customer that doesn't quite fit the target segment exactly the right way, and we want to go after them. I think it's really important for product managers and frankly, product executives to tee up what the trade-offs are. And I think that's the biggest one sometimes that I have found is we could do that, but let's make sure we also are comparing it and contrasting it. And I think working that across to make sure that that's clear is really important. And that's a big part of what product managers need to do is important. I also think that, and this is a journey, Blankly Care is kind of evolving through the role of product managers working really closely with product marketing managers, working with our go-to-market teams so that what's the role of PM so that we can enable the team and then we can run and scale, right? So we think a lot of, if we introduce a new product, can it scale to our customer base? How does that work? And make sure that those handoffs are really clean. I think years ago, we found that we could have been a lot better of going from sort of launch to scale. And I think that's the other role, helping people to see what product does in that scenario.
Melissa - 00:29:22: I think there's a lot of confusion in the industry right now, certain places, about the division between product management and product marketing. How do you think about what does product marketing own and this is where they come in versus this is what product management owns?
BJ - 00:29:36: I think you're right. I think there's confusion in the industry. It's also sometimes what I find is when we hire a new PM or a new product marketing, they might have worked somewhere where immediate works slightly different than it does at point pre-care or at insert company X. And so sometimes that's a little bit about how do we operate? I think going back to the way we started, I think it's really important that product in product marketing or product in marketing have a really strong relationship and understand what the end goal is. How are we defining launch success? Are we accountable for the number that we're driving so that it doesn't just feel like I'm deploying features and it's on you, right? And I think we've gone through an exercise where we've actually gone through a racy model, for lack of a better term, where we're kind of going through it. Who owns what? Who's a contributor? And what we have found is that that is a guideline, like that's a directional course, but that doesn't mean that you can't forget about the contributors in that case and not just who's accountable. And so I think good teamwork. Is really important here in that that's what's there. I don't think it's necessarily a black and white separation. Sometimes it's a little bit about what works well in your business unit or in your line.
Melissa - 00:30:46: When you're looking at cross-functional relationships, besides just product marketing across the organization, which ones do you think are critical for really nailing for a company that's on the journey to move into more of a product-led product management model?
BJ - 00:30:59: It goes without saying, product and engineering have to be hand in glove. And I mentioned earlier how we're kind of looking at how do we align product leadership to market and product health. I actually think having like at a director level or above up here to shared like an engineering director and a product director have shared directional ownership is really important there. So I think obviously product and engineering is key. We mentioned marketing. I think especially in a SaaS environment like we are in, it's just so important that we're connected really closely with the team that does the implementing. I think that just is fresh in my mind. But I think, you know, one of the questions we have to think about is are we designing to implement quickly? Are we causing a bunch of headcount to have to be added to just implement a new feature? And that's a lot easier to do while we're building than after the fact. So I think that's a really critical one. And then the last one I'll say, it just might be a bit unique. Our company or where we serve, but we have found that sometimes you get customer feedback coming in from all angles, right? Whether it's directly from the customer or whether it's from support tickets or the CSMs or from sales or other, it's sometimes there's a lot coming through. And we, like everybody else, have fallen into sometimes, hey, look at my big giant spreadsheet of requests. How do I make sure that I'm there? And so I think making sure that in our business are the solution engineers or our sales consultants. And so I think it's just that whole view of that customer journey or that customer experience and how product has to fit in there.
Melissa - 00:32:33: On the implementation piece, you're reminding me of some of the work I was doing at Athena Health. We had a huge implementation team that flew everywhere to put it in. And I think it's interesting because sometimes what I've observed with companies that have the implementation services is that they forget about that onboarding piece, right? Or they forget about how much it costs to do that. And it's, oh, no, it's fine. It doesn't have to be super easy to use or anything like that. That team's going to set it up. What have you learned around that journey and how do you help encourage your product managers to really focus on the cost to provide or get started or the adoption on some of those features and not have them just push it off to the services team?
BJ - 00:33:09: I think there's also a really exciting topic in here, somewhere that I'll get to. When I took on this role, obviously, we've been around for 20 years. And there's some legacy product and process that are there that kind of works. I think there's a question of, should we go back and fix that? And what's the ROI for that? I think we spent a lot of time thinking about when we launch something new, are we bringing that into accounts? And I think it's actually bringing an implementer or others into the cross-functional team that actually can sign off before we move from as part of our PDLC. So in our PDLC, we go from early access to limited availability to commercial. And how long it takes to implement is a requirement in some of those. So we kind of call those out. The one I was going to bring up that I think is really interesting, and this is one that I'd love to get feedback from others on it as I talk to my networks and others. Is that as we go into new markets, you know, we're a company that's in a lot of different areas as we look and explore into new markets. That means that the expectations of speed versus scale can sometimes be different. And one of the things that we have learned, frankly, the hard way, is that the type of people who implement or who are the success managers or even product managers or sales in an early stage kind of market. An early stage product are probably different than those who are really great at. I just released a new feature and need you to implement it to all 10,000 customers. And I think what we have found is when we go into new markets is that we need people who make sure their incentives are aligned. They're comfortable with ambiguity. They're comfortable with giving us feedback and we can work itself out in balancing that sort of incubation work versus brand new work. And I think those are tied together.
Melissa - 00:34:54: It's a great point. I think people sometimes don't understand that you can test in healthcare too, right? Like you can test in these markets, you can get feedback. It's not all about not big bang releases, but you can still run experimentation on stuff that's highly compliant or regulatory. It sounds like you've got these criteria. One, we need to get people who are going to give us feedback, work with us. How do you kind of manage that experimentation? How do you make sure that you're getting the right feedback? You set the expectations for customers who are going to incubate it, understand it, test it early.
BJ - 00:35:23: It's a little bit of an inexact science at times, right? But as I mentioned earlier, we launched, we're a couple of years into a product development lifecycle that's really important to drive stages. And I think what's important there too is that those stage gates, those are not just terms that product knows, right? Those are terms that are referenced in our cross-functional team. And I think we've learned some lessons the hard way and we are still experiencing them that the type of customer who's like your ideal early access, early adopter customer in picking the right ones is really important. And so I think what we have found is that there are times where you have lots of customers who want to give you feedback and then there are customers who want to see and give you feedback and leave and there's who are willing to kind of put it in, test and learn and go through. And I think getting better and making sure we identify who those are and that we can be there. And in some cases, we actually contractually sort of say, hey, you're going to implement these. You're going to give us feedback. We're going to be available once a week or more to make sure that we do that. I think that's really important versus, hey, just sign up and then we'll see where it goes. So I think holding our customers and the teams accountable to that work is really important.
Melissa - 00:36:30: So if somebody opts into a beta or says, yes, I want this, you actually do some kind of contract with them where you're like, we're going to sit down and go through this and you're agreeing to this time to be able to get early access.
BJ - 00:36:41: Yeah, in some cases, in like new product launches, I think that's really important, right? I think the expectation is that we're here, you're going to get your hands on it early, we're going to react, but you need to do it. We need to get feedback. And if we go through all this work and you don't get a chance to do, that's defeating the purpose. So that's sort of the value exchange, you know, in exchange for you get to impact what we're working on, right? You may even get a discount for a while because we're going to go through that. But in turn, you're a partner for that reason. And I think that's really important.
Melissa - 00:37:10: I don't know why, but I feel like I've heard from people that they don't believe sometimes when I say you can go out there and pitch to get feedback from people because they get early access. They get, you know, people want to use new products. They want to get out there. I've heard so many people be like, that's not true. Like, why would somebody want to spend their time giving us user research and, you know, all of this stuff? What's been your experience with that? It sounds like you've got partnerships, you develop those. How do you pitch it?
BJ - 00:37:34: We have found, and maybe this is a healthcare thing, I will say we're fortunate at PointClickCare that we've got a lot of passionate customers to what we do. We have found that the pitch is not for everybody. Not everybody's ready. You know, a lot of customers have too much on their plate. Comey, whatever, it's baked and ready. Other customers are really interested in influencing what we're building and see a value in, I think I can influence the early stage to kind of meet my need. And that's usually why they're willing to sign up. And that's usually the pitch. The pitch is like, hey, you know, you've been on us for a long time to build this new analytics product or insert here. And so we're working on it. We've got engineers on it. It's coming out. We're looking for three customers who would really love to kind of give us feedback. And the nice thing is, is that you're gonna give us feedback and it's gonna go straight to the engineering team in the roadmap right away. And that's the trade-offs. And I think we've had a lot of success with that. Again, I think it's not for everybody. And I would also say, sometimes you have to say no. I don't think every customer who wants to do that is also good for that stage too. Sometimes the agendas are because I want a certain feature added or others. So I think you have to choose wisely.
Melissa - 00:38:46: That's a great point for people to remember out there too. So BJ, you've been working in healthcare for a very long time. What are you excited about when it comes to health tech? What are the trends you're watching? What makes you really passionate about these days?
BJ - 00:38:58: You know, like everybody else, I think technology and AI and everything else is creating a unique opportunity for us to make a difference. We talked a lot about moving from the system of record, which is like a traditional sort of health tech EHR, to a system of intelligence, to a system of action, I think is what's really interesting. And I think some of the latest tech and even things we're exploring it is that it actually offers a really interesting time to make staff more efficient. And staffing problems is like the number one, two, and three problem all of our customers have. I can't find enough nurses. I can't find enough doctors. I can't keep up with all the regulatory demands. And even if there was magically money available, I'm not sure that all of those, the qualified advice and staff are available. And so we're sitting at a time where we should not be just about collecting information or meeting regulatory. How do we make them better. And so whether that's predictive models or some of this really cool ambient listening technology that's happening, or we're really looking at how do we drive search and smart documentation? I think that's the exciting part is have we hit the spot where we're moving from? I need to put tech into my provider site to meet all the regulatory to text actually making me provide better care or driving outcomes.
Like one of our favorite things that we've done over the last few years is really talking about. Transitions of care. And I think it's something that we all can connect to, you know, even me personally. One of the reasons why I joined PointClickCare eight years ago was my grandmother had a situation where she went from the hospital to a rehab center and all of her information didn't flow over. And you're like, why are we still relying on a fax machine all these years later? Right. And we've seen the industry and a point click care. We made such a difference so that such an impact already on. So, you know, that's an emotional journey enough already when you go from home into a healthcare setting. You don't want to have to worry about writing things down. 17 places are responsible with a fax machine having some impact on you. And so how do we solve that? I think the industry is crossing has them on that. And now it's about insights into efficiency and drive. And so I think that's the next wave.
Melissa - 00:41:08: It's pretty funny because a lot of people are having this debate about, is AI going to take away jobs? And I think healthcare is a perfect example of it's not. It's just going to make people have their lives back and nobody's going to be doing paperwork for the next, you know, eight hours after their shift.
BJ - 00:41:23: What do doctors say? They call it pajama time. We think a lot about how do we help people work to the level of their license? And I think that's really critically important for sure.
Melissa - 00:41:32: That's a great slogan too. I love that. Really customer centric. Thank you so much, BJ, for being on the podcast. If people want to learn more about you and weight, I care. Where can they go?
BJ - 00:41:42: First of all, thank you so much for having me. I've been an avid listener and a follower and I should give you a plug as a graduate of the CPO Accelerator program here, which was so awesome. Pointclickcare.com is all things about us and I can be hit on LinkedIn at BJ Boyle and others. So I'm there.
Melissa - 00:42:00: Thank you so much, BJ, for being on here again. And thank you to our listeners for listening to the Product Thinking Podcast. If you don't want to miss another episode, click subscribe or like. And definitely leave us a review. That always helps us see how we're doing with our guests and make sure that we target the right people that you want to hear too. So thank you so much for listening. We'll be back next week.