The Best Software Tools to Run Your PERS Company
In a recent PERS Insider survey we asked readers what software you use to manage your customers and run your business. The answers were across the board and there seems to be no dominant platform in the PERS space.
A few contenders popped up including EZpers, Hubspot, Salesforce, and Brightree so we decided to do a deep dive into this question and spoke with a few industry vets about the CRM systems they use for their businesses. We asked about some of their favorite features, and profiled what types of PERS companies might benefit from using a similar system.
What CRM Do You Use For Your Business?
Jordan Savitsky, CEO of ATC Alert, was thrilled to talk about his company’s unique software solution. Unlike other PERS companies that may settle on one system (like Salesforce or Hubspot), his company chose to create a proprietary integration of CRM tools from different platforms including Hubspot, Chargebee, and ShipStation. Instead of shoehorning his business into a one-size fits all software program, Savitsky’s goal was to create a best in class tool box, “We found a few different systems that are the best at what they do. And then we developed it into one ecosystem where everything talks to each other.”
David Crawford, VP at Guardian Medical Monitoring, also made the switch from an off-the-shelf CRM and brought his business over to Brightree and its built-in CRM BrightSales, a system that specializes in billing and patient management. “It gives us a comprehensive view of the business from an operational, billing, and sales perspective, and it does not add any incremental costs,” said Crawford.
Noah Gifford and the Philadelphia-based Alert Medical Alarms elected to go with the only CRM platform specifically designed for the PERS Industry: EZpers. Working collaboratively with owner Matt Graham, Gifford praises the CRM’s exclusive position within the market, and appreciates the institutional knowledge that comes along with Graham.
“I think the uniqueness of it is that it’s all PERS. It’s not just a broad spectrum CRM. Matt is very familiar with healthcare and different payers – and that was something we aligned with that’s helpful,” said Gifford.
A fourth option that we learned was popular with some larger companies in the PERS space was using Salesforce as a sales and customer service CRM and tying it to SedonaOffice, the security industry-focused finance package for billing and accounting.
Business Impact
While all three companies have been using their current CRM platforms for a relatively short period of time, they have already seen an impact on their day-to-day business.
Gifford has been impressed with how EZpers cuts down on training time for new employees, “I’m happy to know that when I bring in a new employee they’re not going to have some crazy adaption of five different portals, five different monitoring centers. It’s all in one.”
“My employees absolutely love it,” said Savitsky. “We took something that used to take them four hours every day, and now it’s a click of a button.”
Crawford adds, “It has given us so much more data and insight into our performance. By having a detailed view into sales and service trends by equipment type, customer, line of business, etc. we can adjust our efforts quickly based on real operational data.”
Decision To Make The Switch
Switching CRMs can be a monumental task, and one that can’t be approached lightly. But Crawford couldn’t pass up on key features offered by BrightSales versus his previous CRM, Salesforce. “[Bright Sales] is built into our operations and billing platform so the only integration is to our monitoring software. It gives us accurate reporting information of not just sales trends but also our service delivery performance across sales, install, and service that we can pass onto our customers and use internally to improve.”
Otherwise, Crawford states, “Salesforce is tough to beat.”
Looking to collect key data that wasn’t a feature of a previous CRM was the impetus for Alert Medical Alarms to make the switch to EZpers, “We really needed software to collect all of our data. We work with different monitoring centers, we have different devices, we work with different healthcare payers and providers. We want employees to be able access everything in just the touch of a button.”
ATC Alert had a different issue to manage when brainstorming a CRM transition. “We always wanted to create it and implement it, but the real impetus was that we made an acquisition, which significantly increased the size of the company,” said Savitsky. “We thought if we don’t do this now, then it’s going to be so much more difficult because we’re going to have so many more accounts to manage.”
Best Feature
Savitsky raves about his CRM’s next generation data analysis, “My favorite feature is it has amazing reporting. I had full time employees creating reports, and now it’s just a beautiful dashboard. Our billing software, since it’s so powerful and it just specializes in recurring billing...scientifically uses artificial intelligence to figure out when’s the best day of the month to bill this person, the best time of the day to bill this person. This way we have much higher collection rates than we had before.”
Gifford had a few favorite features of EZpers, but singled out the CRM’s ability to integrate with the monitoring centers he uses including Affiliated Monitoring. He also loves the ability to track the lifecycle of a device, where problems might pop up, and the ability to diagnose issues and get the device operational again.
What’s Missing?
While BrightSales is a powerful tool for Guardian Medical Monitoring, Crawford does wish it had one additional feature integrated into its toolset, “the ability to run and manage marketing campaigns.”
Alert Medical Alarms is waiting for a CRM that’s able to incorporate monitoring center activity. Luckily, Matt Graham told him the feature is in the works for EZpers.
Ready To Switch?
Noah Gifford suggests that PERS companies that have more than a thousand clients and multiple touchpoints across the healthcare space should seriously consider implementing EZpers into their business, “If you’re a successful PERS company and work with a thousand plus clients and you have different monitoring centers, different devices, different payers, different providers and you’re looking to streamline that,” then he recommends EZpers.
According to Crawford, Home Medical Equipment (HME) companies would best be served by switching over to Brightree but warns, “BrightSales is only available with Brightree, so if you’re not looking to change your operational software, this is not the product for you.”
Jordan Savitsky encourages other companies to go the customization route similar to ATC, “Based on the CRMs I’ve seen other PERS companies out there using, and I’ve seen a bunch, I can’t think of a PERS company, small or large, that would not benefit from what we have.”
But don’t ask Savitsky how to buy it – ATC is keeping this secret to themselves.
Want to tell us about the CRM your business uses and why it’s great? Reach out to editor@persinsider.com and we’ll profile other platforms in coming issues.
In a recent PERS Insider survey we asked readers what software you use to manage your customers and run your business. The answers were across the board and there seems to be no dominant platform in the PERS space.
A few contenders popped up including EZpers, Hubspot, Salesforce, and Brightree so we decided to do a deep dive into this question and spoke with a few industry vets about the CRM systems they use for their businesses. We asked about some of their favorite features, and profiled what types of PERS companies might benefit from using a similar system.
What CRM Do You Use For Your Business?
Jordan Savitsky, CEO of ATC Alert, was thrilled to talk about his company’s unique software solution. Unlike other PERS companies that may settle on one system (like Salesforce or Hubspot), his company chose to create a proprietary integration of CRM tools from different platforms including Hubspot, Chargebee, and ShipStation. Instead of shoehorning his business into a one-size fits all software program, Savitsky’s goal was to create a best in class tool box, “We found a few different systems that are the best at what they do. And then we developed it into one ecosystem where everything talks to each other.”
David Crawford, VP at Guardian Medical Monitoring, also made the switch from an off-the-shelf CRM and brought his business over to Brightree and its built-in CRM BrightSales, a system that specializes in billing and patient management. “It gives us a comprehensive view of the business from an operational, billing, and sales perspective, and it does not add any incremental costs,” said Crawford.
Noah Gifford and the Philadelphia-based Alert Medical Alarms elected to go with the only CRM platform specifically designed for the PERS Industry: EZpers. Working collaboratively with owner Matt Graham, Gifford praises the CRM’s exclusive position within the market, and appreciates the institutional knowledge that comes along with Graham.
“I think the uniqueness of it is that it’s all PERS. It’s not just a broad spectrum CRM. Matt is very familiar with healthcare and different payers – and that was something we aligned with that’s helpful,” said Gifford.
A fourth option that we learned was popular with some larger companies in the PERS space was using Salesforce as a sales and customer service CRM and tying it to SedonaOffice, the security industry-focused finance package for billing and accounting.
Business Impact
While all three companies have been using their current CRM platforms for a relatively short period of time, they have already seen an impact on their day-to-day business.
Gifford has been impressed with how EZpers cuts down on training time for new employees, “I’m happy to know that when I bring in a new employee they’re not going to have some crazy adaption of five different portals, five different monitoring centers. It’s all in one.”
“My employees absolutely love it,” said Savitsky. “We took something that used to take them four hours every day, and now it’s a click of a button.”
Crawford adds, “It has given us so much more data and insight into our performance. By having a detailed view into sales and service trends by equipment type, customer, line of business, etc. we can adjust our efforts quickly based on real operational data.”
Decision To Make The Switch
Switching CRMs can be a monumental task, and one that can’t be approached lightly. But Crawford couldn’t pass up on key features offered by BrightSales versus his previous CRM, Salesforce. “[Bright Sales] is built into our operations and billing platform so the only integration is to our monitoring software. It gives us accurate reporting information of not just sales trends but also our service delivery performance across sales, install, and service that we can pass onto our customers and use internally to improve.”
Otherwise, Crawford states, “Salesforce is tough to beat.”
Looking to collect key data that wasn’t a feature of a previous CRM was the impetus for Alert Medical Alarms to make the switch to EZpers, “We really needed software to collect all of our data. We work with different monitoring centers, we have different devices, we work with different healthcare payers and providers. We want employees to be able access everything in just the touch of a button.”
ATC Alert had a different issue to manage when brainstorming a CRM transition. “We always wanted to create it and implement it, but the real impetus was that we made an acquisition, which significantly increased the size of the company,” said Savitsky. “We thought if we don’t do this now, then it’s going to be so much more difficult because we’re going to have so many more accounts to manage.”
Best Feature
Savitsky raves about his CRM’s next generation data analysis, “My favorite feature is it has amazing reporting. I had full time employees creating reports, and now it’s just a beautiful dashboard. Our billing software, since it’s so powerful and it just specializes in recurring billing...scientifically uses artificial intelligence to figure out when’s the best day of the month to bill this person, the best time of the day to bill this person. This way we have much higher collection rates than we had before.”
Gifford had a few favorite features of EZpers, but singled out the CRM’s ability to integrate with the monitoring centers he uses including Affiliated Monitoring. He also loves the ability to track the lifecycle of a device, where problems might pop up, and the ability to diagnose issues and get the device operational again.
What’s Missing?
While BrightSales is a powerful tool for Guardian Medical Monitoring, Crawford does wish it had one additional feature integrated into its toolset, “the ability to run and manage marketing campaigns.”
Alert Medical Alarms is waiting for a CRM that’s able to incorporate monitoring center activity. Luckily, Matt Graham told him the feature is in the works for EZpers.
Ready To Switch?
Noah Gifford suggests that PERS companies that have more than a thousand clients and multiple touchpoints across the healthcare space should seriously consider implementing EZpers into their business, “If you’re a successful PERS company and work with a thousand plus clients and you have different monitoring centers, different devices, different payers, different providers and you’re looking to streamline that,” then he recommends EZpers.
According to Crawford, Home Medical Equipment (HME) companies would best be served by switching over to Brightree but warns, “BrightSales is only available with Brightree, so if you’re not looking to change your operational software, this is not the product for you.”
Jordan Savitsky encourages other companies to go the customization route similar to ATC, “Based on the CRMs I’ve seen other PERS companies out there using, and I’ve seen a bunch, I can’t think of a PERS company, small or large, that would not benefit from what we have.”
But don’t ask Savitsky how to buy it – ATC is keeping this secret to themselves.
Want to tell us about the CRM your business uses and why it’s great? Reach out to editor@persinsider.com and we’ll profile other platforms in coming issues.
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