by
John R. Fischer, Senior Reporter | August 27, 2018
From the August 2018 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
“It’s about the ability to understand what the customer is looking for in terms of value and provide that value,” Bill Kollitz, president and chief operating officer of Innovatus, said. “It’s about being able to react quickly and provide solutions that meet the needs of our customer base.”
There is also a tendency to think of ISOs as being small operations, but that is not always the case.
Few providers are 100 percent in-house or outsource today,
according to Avante COO and president Steve Inacker,
but instead a mix of both, contemplating 'make versus buy'
decisions more and shifting from in-house to outsource
and vice-versa depending on their circumstances.
“Crothall is part of Compass Group, North America, and our parent company, Compass Group is one of the largest employers in the world,” said O’Donnell. “We have phenomenal backing and resources. One example of these resources would be including the capital in our client’s proposal to bring our client’s shop up to date, outfitting it with casework and the needed tools and test equipment.”
MVS and ISO organizations look toward the future
Remote diagnostics continues to be a growing field of interest for both MVS divisions and ISOs, with both groups working to enable faster and more efficient troubleshooting of on-site resource calls with the backing of greater preparation and knowledge of what parts are needed.
Greater emphasis of AI, digital services and cloud capabilities are also expected for predictive analysis of equipment and automatic software upgrades, though Walker with Alpha Source warns that while efficient, such technologies may create hurdles for the next generation of service engineers.
“About fifteen to twenty years ago, we went from teaching people entire systems and how they worked to sitting them behind a computer and running software, to the software searching for where the problem is,” he said. “AI is going to push that even farther down, where there will be fewer engineers. Those that are here may not have a real knowledge of how the actual piece of equipment works.”
To Avante’s Inacker, change will come in the form of a more level playing field, with ISOs and MVS divisions sharing equal access to all aspects of equipment to perform full service at manufacturer specifications.
