Celebrating 2023 HITMC Marketing Team of the Year: What Makes a Great Team

Celebrating its tenth year in 2023, Xsolis’ Team First value has been apparent as the company has grown, pivoted, and excelled to become a market leader – creating a frictionless healthcare system as we help providers and payers solve for administrative waste and work more collaboratively. 

At the annual HIMSS 2023 conference in Chicago – arguably one of the largest and most influential healthcare conferences in the world – we were especially proud of our Marketing Team who took top honors as Marketing Team of the Year (Vendor). 

The HITMC award was accepted on behalf of the team by Marketing VP, Amanda Lomas, and Senior Marketing Communications Manager Stacey Lee, as part of the HITMC (Healthcare and IT Marketing) Awards. The initiative celebrates creative excellence, breakthrough concepts, flawless execution, and outstanding leadership in healthcare marketing, PR and communications. 

Also seen on stage accepting awards were leading national agencies, associations, healthcare provider organizations, nonprofit organizations, and individual contributors.   

Nominations for the awards were reviewed and judged by a panel of healthcare marketing, PR and communications professionals.

 

“Xsolis is a deserving winner of this 2023 Medigy HITMC Award” said John Lynn, Chief Editor and Founder at Healthcare Scene, the company behind HITMC. “It is so inspiring to see how resourceful and resilient marketing teams were last year – despite the lingering impact of the pandemic and the uncertain economic environment. We are honored to celebrate the outstanding 2023 Award winners.”

In revealing Xsolis as the category winner, Colin Hung, CMO at Healthcare Scene and community manager for HITMC, revealed some key stats as part of the company’s submission. 

In 2022, the Xsolis marketing team grew 167%, elevating the brand and generating a sales pipeline. With an average tenure of less than 11 months, the marketing team achieved outstanding results – a complete messaging refresh, implementing a product marketing discipline, resulting in significant MQL growth and significantly more national brand exposure. 

“Marketing, PR, and communications professionals are not often in the spotlight,” said Colin. “These Awards are a unique opportunity to showcase and celebrate the work of peers in the healthcare industry. The nominees and winners for the 2023 Medigy HITMC Awards were extremely high caliber – a reflection of the great work being done in healthcare marketing.”

“When you work at larger companies, we have the great fortune of working with some really great teams and really great people. This award is a testament to their work,” he added.

This got us thinking: what makes not just a great marketing team for a healthcare technology company, but also a great team in our industry, and in general? 

(1) Generous subject matter experts 

The healthcare industry is complex, and there is no silver bullet to solve the many challenges the industry is grappling with – from staffing shortages to revenue challenges for provider organizations and beyond. At health technology companies, subject matter experts are in great demand to foster deeper understanding of technical acumen, clinical expertise to non-clinical roles when required, and to translate complicated regulations, challenges, and trends. Specialized expertise can also be valuable to share how a message needs to connect with the many stakeholders across the continuum – from executives to clinicians and administrative roles, to eventually the patient. Having a deep, in-house knowledge base to share across the org is as important as those individuals being generous with their time, available and willing to offer constant learning opportunities to meet the workforce desire to learn and grow. Luckily for us at Xsolis, these attributes among our team are in abundant supply.  

(2) Strategic vision, with must-have creativity to stay nimble

A great marketing team, or any team for that matter, should be strategically aligned with other departments – sales and product especially for marketing – to analyze trends, interpret and adapt them to meet a company’s needs. This requires constant market research and competitive analysis for an ever-evolving industry. However, those complex findings need to then be conveyed via compelling, easy-to-understand stories. We find these are best told through the voice of the customer, as the most credible medium or means. Potential customers want to best understand the value you can bring to them through another similar company’s previous experiences. However, legal or compliance issues can sometimes be more abundant in healthcare. So while adherence to an overarching strategic vision is important, creativity is also a must-have additional skill to work through unanticipated delays and achieve optimal outcomes.  

(3) Data-driven mindset, with empowering leaders and contributors

A great marketing and sales org should be driven by a data-driven approach and mindset, utilizing the latest analytics and key performance indicators (KPIs) to not only drive effectiveness of their solutions to the market, but to also prove the effectiveness of their own campaigns. Ideally, these results are reported back in a consistent cadence, where leaders can leverage this information to empower their teams to success. When each individual contributor feels valued and supported, like they have the resources and autonomy to do their best work, it opens the door to more honest, transparent conversations about strengths vs weaknesses. In essence, how can you lean into the combined talents of the team to achieve better results for all? This has been a key driver for the Xsolis marketing team and an area where employees say they feel most supported in our annual engagement survey as well – managerial and organizational support. 

(4)    Continuous improvement for collaboration 

Finally, one of Xsolis’ most competitive differentiators – that we foster more collaboration between two historically opposed groups, payers and providers – is also a key attribute for any winning team: collaboration. When groups are united by common challenges, as in the case of the healthcare industry to-date, they are increasingly motivated to work better together. “Always Curious” is a core value at Xsolis, which can also present itself as “continuous learning.” We are intentional to build such learning opportunities into processes – including through annual learning stipends offered to each employee for learning resources, events, and memberships. Continuous learning has helped our teams improve processes. And similar to how our own CORTEX (now known as Dragonfly) technology automates less meaningful work to elevate employee roles and target critical thinking where it’s most needed, we look for the same with our own, internal technology solutions. Constantly learning and growing together brings not only more collaborative gains across the collective team, but also makes for more rewarding work experiences.

To learn more about Xsolis and check out our currently open roles or apply to join our team: https://xsolis.com/about/careers/.