Redesigning Customer Onboarding to Support Growth

How standardized implementation processes and supporting systems shortened onboarding and reduced customer costs.

The Business Challenge

A medical scribe services company managed operations through spreadsheets and wanted to establish an enterprise-wide system using Salesforce. Customer implementations took approximately nine months and cost $750,000 out of pocket. An onsite review of a new customer implementation revealed highly inconsistent processes that could not simply be replicated in software.

What We Discovered

The main obstacle was not the absence of an enterprise system alone. Implementation activities lacked a repeatable method, and operating requirements needed to be defined before they could be supported effectively by technology. The company needed a common approach to onboarding, training, operations, and initial billing.

How We Changed the Operating Model

Using Lean Six Sigma concepts, we helped establish standardized implementation processes, checklists, and customer-specific standard operating procedures. We then designed system support for the implementation lifecycle: contract signing, recruiting and training, project management and accounting, shift planning, time and attendance, go-live support, and initial billing.

Business Results

Customer onboarding fell from nine months to 120 days, and out-of-pocket onboarding costs were reduced by approximately $500,000. The company subsequently grew threefold over two and a half years and was acquired.

Why It Matters

Technology becomes more valuable when it supports an operating approach designed to work consistently. Defining and standardizing the work first made implementation more repeatable and helped position the business to support growth.