Kevin Price, Host of the Price of Business on Business Talk 1110 AM KTEK (on Bloomberg’s home in Houston) recently interviewed Herbert Ong, CEO, of Healthentic.
Ong, an experienced executive leader guides Healthentic with over 14 years of experience in the technology industry, and 20 years in health care. Herbert is driven and energetic, with a track record of creating sustainable value and deriving bottom-line results.
He is equipped with experience in product management, strategic partnerships, strategic marketing, and sales with an entire suite of technology solutions including physician offices and enterprise provider software.
After working for companies such as Thomson Reuters and Philips Medical, Ong discovered an unmet need in wellness informatics and co-founded Healthentic. Herbert attended the University of British Columbia where he earned his B.Sc in Pharmacology, and Simon Frasier University where he obtained his MBA.
Herbert enjoys researching breaking-edge technology, spending time with his wife and two daughters, and watching Vancouver Canucks hockey.
Tell me about your firm (number of employees, location, type of companies you work with, etc.).
Healthentic currently has 32 employees in its fourth year of operation. We are headquartered in Seattle, Washington, but we have many employees who work remotely in areas such as Denver, Louisville, Akron, and Phoenix.
We have business relationships with various verticals in the health benefits marketplace, including 30 health insurance broker/consultants, 35 employer groups, and 12 dental partners. We also have a signed letter of intent with a large medical carrier. We partner with corporations who recognize the value of workplace wellness programs for both the employee’s waistline and the company’s financial bottom-line.
Tell us your story about reaching C-Level executives to do business?
Within our main platform, the Wellness Decision Engine, an employer or insurance broker has the opportunity to create personalized sales presentations that will show real dollars (and common sense) pertaining to cost-saving strategies that the particular employer can implement. We do this with by modeling health care data prior to obtaining their actual insurance claim files.
The benefits to selling to the C-suite via the human resources team is two-fold: we prove to the benefit managers who will ultimately work with our tools that strategically implemented wellness programs can create a healthy workplace culture, and in turn we give them the opportunity to present these findings (along with projected cost savings analysis reports) to their C-suite, making them look like health care heroes!
Do you know of other examples of businesses being creative in this endeavor?
Many companies have creative ways to bypass the gatekeeper when trying to reach busy executives, but we do not believe in this philosophy. We want to educate everyone involved in their company’s benefit plans, budgets, and wellness programs on the value of our services. We want to let everyone know, from the top down, how wellness works in the office place. We are not trying to get past a gatekeeper by going to an employee in human resources instead of directly to the C-suite. We simply want every decision-maker involved in wellness initiatives to understand the value of Healthentic’s Wellness Decision Engine.
What lessons, if any, do you derive from these stories?
From our experience contacting C-suite executives through their human resource staff, we have learned that executives will be more likely to listen to the advise of their peers instead of input received from outside sales representatives. We find satisfaction in being able to provide those in HR with reports and tools that can help them succeed in their endeavor to manage benefits costs, while gaining the support of upper-level management.
We are in the business of helping people, and it really begins from the first conversation that we have with a company’s benefit manager. We truly want employers to have the power to help their populations become healthier, and by helping the benefit manager eliminate the time spent on creating tedious reports by providing them with our technology, we are confident that more employers will start using our services and reap the benefits of being able to understand – and manage – their staff’s whole health.
Contact information
Our website is a valuable resource for any business leader. You can find a two-minute video that demonstrates the Wellness Decision Engine, learn more about our products, and see our most recent press releases at: www.healthentic.com
You may contact Herbert Ong directly at 206-729-5580, or hong@healthentic.com.
