narmar wrote: - Reliq’s ‘Sales / Business Development’ department (2-3 individuals) is regularly presenting to new customers. Sometimes Reliq will submit a bid as part of a bidding process and will be the winning bid.
- When a customer is interested in Reliq’s platform, a product demo will take place. Sometimes more than one meeting will be needed to agree on a pilot. The customer pays the cost for running the pilot, so customers will want to be sure before committing funds and their own patients time and cooperation to a pilot.
- The pilot period will vary by customer. Some customers will require certain customizations and extensive periods of testing other will want a base application. The healthcare institutions that want the platform to manage more complex patients will go through a long pilot period and will document the findings every step of the way before concluding on the pilot.
- Once the pilot is concluded, contract negotiations start and can result in a full rollout (all patients) or partial rollout to a subset of patients (only cardiology for example).
Note: Pilot length will range based on the type of healthcare institutions and the complexity of the patient requirements. Enterprise customers (ex: Sacred Heart – Fieldman) will have a longer pilot period to be able to document and sufficiently conclude on the pilot before moving the results up the chain of command. However, other Non-Entreprise customers like PAZ and the ACO will have a shorter pilot period and will move relatively quickly into an agreement.
- When the deal is concluded, the process of preparing training documents, packaging artwork, training the first wave of patient facing individuals (for PAZ this is a set of nurses who will in turn train other nurses, for the ACO this is the doctors, in other cases this can be a 3rd party service provider), and the purchase of some hardware inventory starts.
Note: Reliq is a pure software provider. It can store and resell the hardware, but this is a very capital-intensive direction. Accordingly, Reliq has made a very conscience and very smart decision to be a pure software company and develop a market-leading platform. It is very important to know that Reliq’s platform works with the majority of hardware in the market. Thus, allowing Reliq to be versatile and agile in the market place.
- Then the GO-LIVE date is announced. At this point the following is happening during the first month after Go-Live is announced:
- Sufficient hardware for a couple of thousand patients have been purchased and is being re-ordered every couple of months.
- The first 500 patients are being on-boarded and the first wave of patient facing individuals (who have been previously trained) are heavily involved in the process and are explaining and answering patient’s questions for the first time.
- A FAQ is developed based on the first month’s experience and the nurses/doctors/ or service providers start training subsequent waves of patient facing personal.
- The following months after the 1st month, the process becomes smoother, all questions have been dealt with and patient onboarding accelerates.
Note: While patient onboarding accelerates, there is a cap to how many patients can be on-boarded at the same institution.
There is always a limited number of patient facing personnel, and most healthcare institutions have budgeted the cost of hardware on a monthly basis to be spread out over a certain period of time. All these details are hashed out during step # 5. That is why Go-Live announcements specify the total number of patients to be onboarded by a specific date.
I personally think most institutions will start with the 500 monthly patients and increase to 750-1,000, 3-4 months in and possibly 1,250-1,500 6-7 months into the process.
- Approximately 2 months after Go-Live, Reliq’s on-site role becomes extremely diminished and Reliq’s involvement can be almost entirely managed remotely. The hardware provider(s) will deal with any hardware issues on-site or off-site and the patient facing personal (sometimes hired 3rd party for a fee paid by the healthcare institutions) will deal with continuous patient onboarding.
Reliq, as the software provider, will be managing the customer relationship remotely by doing system diagnostics, system maintenance, upgrades when needed, introducing additional functionalities to existing patients, troubleshooting (for a fee) when needed, etc.
Note: At some point in the near future, Reliq will hire additional account managers that will be set up for each group of customers or a specific geographical area (ex: Texas, Ontario, London, etc.,).
Currently the role of account manager is being done by the ‘Sales / Business Development’ team (same 2-3 people meeting customers and closing sales agreements and managing steps 1 to 8). This is a major key success factor for this company, as current management has the know-how, networks and skill-set required to close mega deals before building staff levels that would initially not be fully utilised.
Bring in the sales and then bring in the staff required to support those sales contracts and not the other way around. In my opinion, Reliq can reach north of $50M in annual recurring revenues before ramping up their staff levels. We are already at $32.5M CAD and this company is just getting started.
I think we pass the +50M level (expected revenue at full deployment) by Q1-Q2 2018, Could be even earlier if a large deal closes.
Conclusion: Due to its strong management, Reliq’s customer acquisition cost is almost negligible as a percent of the sales contracts it has landed. Now they are developing a very strong reputation in the state of Texas and customers are starting to knock on their doors. This will only increase over time, which will accelerate sales growth.
A steady flow of patients will guarantee a better patient experience and increase the satisfaction of the nurses/ doctors with the platform as any issues are dealt with earlier and the strain on the system is minimised.
The key is to have more institutions that start onboarding patients on the platform and not the same institution onboarding 2-3K patients monthly. Slow and steady will absolutely win the race in this case. Keeping in mind that each 1,000 patients is worth $600K in annual recurring revenue.
Reliq will keep stating new pilots, signing new agreements, and will keep on building the pipeline of patients
Reliq’s ‘Sales and Business Development’ team is obsessed with satisfying their customers; so closing on $32.5M CAD in recurring annual revenues is just the beginning in my opinion.
Good Luck To All,
narmar