Being customer oriented never goes out of fashion
A CEO’s perspective on building a resilient and purpose-driven organisation
RED LEADERSHIP PERSPECTIVES
A conversation between Britt Meelby Jensen, CEO of AMBU A/S & Mads Holme, Managing Partner at ReD Associates
ABOUT
In May 2022, Britt Meelby Jensen joined AMBU A/S as its new CEO. She was brought in to drive a company turn-around following three years as CEO of Atos Medical where she led the company through a successful growth journey. In this interview, Britt reflects on her time at Atos and talks about how being customer oriented made Atos a more resilient organisation during the pandemic, what other organisations can learn and her perspective on innovation in a changing healthcare market. As a recession draws ever closer, Britt offers an urgent reminder on the value of business preparedness in times of economic uncertainty.
ATOS MEDICAL
Atos Medical develops and sells medical devices that improve quality of life for people living with a neck stoma. The company operates in over 90 countries and has around 1.200 employees. Atos Medical was founded in Sweden in 1986 and in 2022 was acquired by Coloplast from French private equity firm PAI Partners.
Part 1
The CEO agenda
ReD: You were CEO of Atos Medical for three years. What have been your key focus areas and learnings?
BRITT: My focus areas when I joined Atos was first looking at whether we had the right team and how we should govern to deliver. I quickly saw that we needed to strengthen our customer focus and in particular that we lacked a unified understanding on who the customer really is. We had a lot of knowledge internally but lacked an aligned view of the customer journey, what customers’ everyday looks like, what they go through and what they need help with. Secondly, I saw an organisation and culture with a need for increasing employee engagement and a need for making people feel prouder of what they do – in other words, creating a more collaborative organisation. I wanted us to be clearer about our values and the expectations on how we deliver on them. Lastly, I came into an organisation that was already quite successful. We delivered good results and strong growth. It was naturally important to continue the growth journey and focus on helping customers who do not have access to products or do not use the products in the right way.
“ We built our new five-year strategy with the ambition of delivering quality care to all our customers – when and where they need it.”
ReD: How was the role different compared to your previous leadership roles? Did you want to set a different growth agenda?
BRITT: In my past roles I worked in pharma, biotech and diagnostics – less in medtech. The business models are different although some elements are the same. The way to create value by being so close to end users was new for me. I came into a fast-growing organisation that had built up a model and set-up to engage directly with end users and generate sales through this channel, but we lacked systems and processes and a solid understanding of the qualities – not just the quantities – of our work. We also lacked understanding on what people and capabilities we needed to deliver excellence.
Atos is and was in a unique situation. There was little competition in the traditional laryngectomy market – with a global market share above eighty percent and in some markets, Atos was the only provider. So, the way Atos looked at the competition was what we called the “non-usage market”. This gave us a different starting point compared to most other companies. We built our new five-year strategy with the ambition of delivering quality care to all our customers – when and where they need it. We used a customer journey framework developed with ReD, which was incredibly valuable to identify where and how we interact with our customers. We later built the systems and digital processes to deliver on the journey.
ReD: What are some of the achievements you are most proud during your time with Atos?
BRITT: I’ve always been ambitious and want to do things better – that will never stop. Thinking customer first in all our interactions is something I was really proud of during my time with Atos. I’m also extremely proud of how we in two years were able to significantly improve employee engagement, coming from far behind to be at the same level as some of the best benchmarks.
Part 2
Building resilience and learnings from Covid-19
ReD: What did you learn from the Covid-19 pandemic?
BRITT: Atos managed it well when looking at the results of the business. We of course had to change and adapt to a situation where we couldn’t visit our customers and interact with healthcare professionals in the hospitals. Being challenged on some of our core assumptions was a big learning experience. For instance, do we really need to meet our customer face-to-face as often? Because we had already built up a direct-to-customer (DTC) team, who engaged with the end users, it gave us several opportunities. Luckily, we had already started – before Covid-19 – to implement different systems, our CRM systems for example, that enabled us to move fast and accelerate the digital implementation, but it took time and effort to get everybody trained and comfortable using then new engagement channels. Just to give one example: it is much easier and better to do a product demonstration on video than over the phone.
Because Atos is so close to end users, it was easier for employees to continue delivering value. In all of the key markets we received positive feedback from our customers for being close to them during difficult times and to be able to deliver products without interruption. I guess this is the responsibility of being a market leader. We had strong relationships both with patients and the healthcare professionals. These relationships were in many ways strengthened during the pandemic.
Part 3
Perspective on future value in healthcare
ReD: What are your thoughts on the future of the healthcare space?
BRITT: Covid-19 proved the organisation was resilient and that it can handle a crisis well – and this gave more ambition and appetite for serving opportunities in the adjacent areas connected to the customers served today. There’s a lot of discussion of public-private collaborations – I think they will see a revitalizing and increased investments. And I’m optimistic about it – but it still requires better regulation and investments.
Being customer oriented never goes out of fashion. Atos has been on this journey of building deeper customer understanding and delivering on it in all interactions – and it is very difficult to copy for others. It relies on having the right combination of mindset, skills, resources and values. The core thing for me is this: the more value you generate for your customers the better your business results are.
ReD: What has been your experience of working with ReD?
BRITT: In most companies we think we know what customers want but the reality is we often don’t. It sounds simple but you can’t deliver value to your customers if you don’t know them. ReD is unique in their ability to understand customers. It is the way ReD works to activate customer understanding and turn it into concrete opportunities that can be executed. This is a thing that often goes wrong. You end up with a long and beautifully written report that nobody understands or feels ownership towards. ReD helps to ensure that customer understanding becomes an integrated part of the organisation. The innovations Atos has developed over the years with ReD have had a significant impact on Atos’ top-line.
“It is the way ReD works to activate customer understanding and turn it into concrete opportunities that can be executed.”
Three recommendations for future leaders looking for growth
Set an ambitious strategy and plan that makes you a bit uncomfortable – where you know that you don’t have all the answers. Focus continuously on your method and execution during implementation, so you never lose sight of how you will get there.
Always put customers and employees first (no matter what ownership model you have). This is the best recipe for delivering strong business results.
Be open and transparent, both in relation to your employees and owners. Taking responsibility for your actions – both the easy and hard things. Transparency creates trust which is critical – especially in an equity-ownership model.
[Banner image by Priscilla Du Preez, via Unsplash]