January 24, 2023
Hello All,
It’s newsletter time again! We have had a busy couple of weeks getting everything going for the new year. Of course, we finished 2022 running fast so it makes sense that we picked it up in January.
SPC. We had our annual SPC, Strategic Planning Meeting, last week and we made incredible strides to get a clearer view of the future and where we are going. One of the major breakthroughs last week was that we established a new BHAG for the company. As you may or may not recall, a BHAG is a Big Hairy Audacious Goal a term from Jim Collins book, Good to Great. I have been struggling with our old goal of growing to 1000 Rising Star Employees over the last few months. Nothing wrong with the goal and we will have 1000 employees someday, but it wasn’t really the call to action that motivated anyone. I think it served its purpose for the time we had it, but we need something more meaningful and motivational. This is our new BHAG:
Transforming health care through innovation by improving caregiver proficiency, delivering better patient experiences, and empowering hospitals with quality metrics.
This is a true call to action. Transforming Health Care Through Innovation, that part will become our new tagline replacing Life Safety Made Simple. This is more telling of what we do. Transforming health care through innovation: that is what we do every day, innovate! That’s what we do when we improve workflows on the Responder 5/Enterprise. That’s what we do in R&D when we automate the Stryker bed, create the ability to read and write between the Responder 5/Enterprise and the Vocera system, and that is what we do when we use CareSight to improve the noise level in a facility. We are innovators. Our new Brand Promises are:
• Improve the Caregiver’s Day (Improved workflow, less noise, reduce interruptions, and more time with the patient)
• Improve the Patient's Experience (Less noise and more time with the caregiver)
• Improve the Hospital’s Quality Measures (More reimbursement to the hospital, more savings, improved caregiver tenure)
These brand promises will be what drive Lone Star Communications through the next few years. We can and will make a difference in hospitals by making the caregiver experience better by automating procedures, reducing the steps a caregiver takes by improving the workflow, and reducing the noise by reducing the alarms caregivers hear on a floor. This will lead to more time available to spend with the patient and less time dealing with nuisance alarms. This leads directly to a better patient experience with less noise, and more time with the caregiver, and all of that will lead to better reimbursements to the hospital. We are going to have a huge impact on health care by delivering on these brand promises. We are going to make the hospital better and we are excited to be part of the solution.
Polaris. One of the ways we are going to deliver on these promises is through project Polaris. Polaris is the working name for a product we are designing and building at Lone Star in partnership with Vizibli, Helpp.AI, CareSight, and employing our interface software, the Interop Wizard. This is going to be a solution that we can install into every hospital in our Rauland territory, outside of our normal area through other Rauland distributors, and even direct to hospitals where it does not create a conflict. This is mostly a software solution, but this will lead to additional hardware sales as each hospital builds out the solution to fit its initiatives.
As I have said many times, we are becoming a software company. But as I have been reminded lately, I always forget to say AND. We are still a hardware company selling Rauland and other hardware solutions AND that will not change. However, we are also a software company selling software solutions as well. Most of the software we will install will require additional hardware sales to fully utilize the value and features of the software. We cannot do one without the other anymore. Hardware only gets you so far. Software only goes part way. Together with the hardware we have available and the software solution we are creating, we can provide the total solution. That solution will Transform Health care Through Innovation!
The change in our BHAG, Brand Promises, and Tagline shows more focus on health care. We are a health care company, and we want that front and center for our customers and employees. We are not abandoning the education market; we are emphasizing the health care commitment.
That’s all for now and it’s a great way to start the new year. Let’s have a great year together! We need everyone here and will need to continue to build our team to deliver on our brand promises. Thank you for what you do.
Until next time,
Ray