Highland works with many US companies looking to make an impact in UK healthcare. When ANCILE Solutions wanted to launch its pioneering electronic learning and support solution, uPerform to the market, it turned to Highland.

uPerform is already being used to support electronic patient record adoption in hospitals across the US. The company needed help to rapidly raise awareness and generate leads for its training platform in the UK. Johnathan Pascall, EMEA sales director for ANCILE Solutions explains.

Tell us something about ANCILE Solutions and uPerform

uPerform from ANCILE Solutions is an ‘electronic performance support solution’; it is software that can improve the user adoption and performance of major IT systems. It does that by integrating with software, including electronic patient records, to deliver in-app learning support to people when they need it.

uPerform is used by more than 4,600 global customers, including half of the Fortune 100. It is helping to drive user adoption in more than 200 of the world’s leading business and healthcare applications, through support for onboarding, continuous learning, process compliance and change management.

What did ANCILE want to do with uPerform?

ANCILE had already seen a positive response to uPerform in the US healthcare market, so we wanted to bring the solution to Europe. That meant we were introducing a new concept and new way of doing things, which is always a challenge, but particularly difficult in healthcare where customers, understandably, want to be sure that new solutions are safe and effective before adopting them.

So, our challenge was to raise awareness, starting in the UK market initially. We wanted to get ANCILE, its solutions, and the business case known in the market as quickly as possible. On a more granular level, we wanted to generate some leads as soon as possible. We turned to Highland for support.

Why did you turn to Highland?

I had heard of Highland from previous experience working in this sector. I had seen their work for other, well-known healthcare IT companies, and it seemed to be of very high quality. When I realised I would need marketing agency support to amplify my efforts, I had no hesitation in going straight to Highland.

What services did Highland deliver for you?

In three months, Highland has delivered an awareness and lead generation programme for the UK healthcare market through PR, content and sales acceleration. This has involved: creating a set of market-specific messages; content for a UK healthcare-specific landing page; PR activity through a press release, media engagement, and two pieces of content; social media strategy and management; and sales acceleration to generate interest and leads.

What has been the outcome?

The sales acceleration has been a huge time saver for me. It has been very effective and has helped ANCILE get in front of the right people at the right time. Highland has experienced people doing the work; its sales acceleration team has good contacts and the people working on this project understand the solution and the business case.

Most importantly, it has led to several leads, including a conversation with a prospect that is massively enthusiastic about the solution. The chief information officer we are talking to had already recognised that his organisation has issues around training and user proficiency with its EPR. He had visualised a solution: but did not know it existed until the sales acceleration team got in touch.

The press release and articles have also been very good, and I know people are reading them because I get phone calls and emails from people who are referencing them. The messaging has been very useful in helping to inform those articles. It has also helped to support our internal work, enabling us to add market perspective and use the right form of words for the brochures, collateral and presentations we have developed.

What has it been like to work with Highland?

Highland know the UK healthcare market better than any other agency. I don’t think there is anyone else that does what Highland does when it comes to healthcare IT.

Your NHS knowledge is huge and working with Highland is really pleasant. You are real people that my team and I can talk to, and you are easy to work with. We have the same feedback from my colleagues from the US; we all enjoy working with the team.

Highland is very responsive to what we have asked for, and it goes to great pains to work out what it is that we think we want, and to turning it into reality. From start to finish, the quality of the work has been exceptionally high.

What comes next with Highland?

We are planning to expand a similar campaign across parts of continental Europe, and possibly in the Middle East following that.

What would you say to others considering using an agency to support their PR and marketing?

If you work in healthcare IT, and you need some marketing support, as far as I am concerned, there’s only one option and that’s to work with Highland.