“H.I.S.-tory”by Vince Ciotti

© 2011 H.I.S. Professionals, LLC

Episode # 31:

HIS, Inc.

Part 2 DIES!

Now Where Were We…

• We left off last week with HIS Inc. in Brooklyn, NY, searching for a Director of Marketing who could lead them into the huge IBM mainframe market. Someone:– well-connected, – technically savvy,– with lots of street smarts, – tons of sales & marketing

experience, – well-spoken and – highly intelligent.

• Unable to find anyone that fit the bill, they hired this idiot instead:

Actually…• I had one great advantage: I had worked with the best sales and

marketing guys in the business at both SMS and McAuto, so I recruited them to HIS, and matched them to their “native” territory

Bert HochsteinHIS Inc’s own NY native, for the Northeast region

Brain FitzpatrickOne of SMS’s best reps ever, for the Rocky Mtn states

Jud ForemanAn IBM & SMS superstar, for the Western region

Roland ThibaultAn SMS & McAuto vet & ex-CFO, for the Mid-Atlantic

Dick SchoppA old McAuto pro & sales superstar, for the Midwest

Mike CrabtreeEx-Mac sales support maven

Larry EvansEx-McAuto sales support guru, also designed HIS’ clinical apps.

Don TrammellEx-SMS and McAuto sales superstar, for his native South.

Some jerk from Philly who got off the wrong subway stop in Brooklyn…

Fly In The Ointment• There was one minor challenge to selling HIS Inc:

– The system didn’t exist!• Although Heshy’s team were programming their proverbial pants

off, there would be no demonstrable code for some time until the translation program was done and Basic code morphed into PL/1.

• Actually, a minor problem! I had seen how SMS, McAuto and many other vendors were able to “sell systems before their time”– (a practice that happily has ceased in this modern age…)

• But just in case you moderns wonder how we ancients were ever so dumb (should I add - immoral?) as to sell a system before it was ready, here’s the recipe, just in case this terrible practice ever sees the light of day in these technologically advanced & far more enlightened times:

How To Sell “Vision-ware”1. Super Sales Team – a team of elite sales pros who:

A. Sell themselves with total credibility, evangelizing their strong internal belief in their company & its product vision.

B. “Closers” – able to make businessmen commit with pen in hand both their personal and their organization’s future.

C. Proven track record – having made quota for many years and closed numerous deals in the past – no room for rookies!

2. Marketing Mavens – Backed up by an HQ team of:A. Media gurus for ads, brochures, & presentations (foils

back then, ppt today) that refine the vision.B. Sales support pros who can blow prospects minds

either in 1-on-1 demos or in group presentations.C. Proposal team that does not know the meaning of the

word “no” when answering RFP feature checklists.

Selling “Vision-ware,” cont’d3. Executive Commitment – the entire C-Suite willing to:

A. Wine and dine with prospects’ executives & Boards making HQ visits, often involving weekday nights & weekends…

B. Willing to order everyone in the company to drop whatever they’re doing and help in a sale, demo, site visit, RFP, etc.

C. Willing to invest heavily in sales commissions and marketing budgets for ads, booths, T & E, and give-aways.

4. Technical “Breakthrough” – the latest techie fad:A. Far more modern than established “legacy” systems,

which were mainly shared batch-processed systems.B. With hot buzzwords that caught the ear like: 4GL, on-

line, real-time, Open, C/S, Cloud, thin client, SaaS, etc.5. Timing – to match your product vision with an intense

market need (– like launching an E.H.R. in 2008!)

We Had It All!• Whether luck or hard work, we filled all 5 criteria:

– Sales superstars Schopp, Foreman, Trammell, Hochstein & Fitzpatrick brought in 1-2 deals each, all large medical centers who wanted modern IBM mainframe software badly.

– Lured in by a blizzard of marketing hype, sample of which follow, with absolutely brilliant images courtesy of Izzie Lifshutz, and demo’d into submission by Gershon & Dale Finklestein.

– Wined & dined by me and the reps all over NYC – was there ever a better place to lure prospects to? I think I saw Cats 12 times that year, and had a table in my name at Mama Leone’s!

– Convinced by Heshie & his technical geniuses that a translation program would work, and yield an instant modern HIS for IBM mainframes, on-line, real-time, db, programmed in a 4GL!

– And all at a time when mainframe COBOL code and VSAM files were seeming hopelessly obsolete – time for change!

Samples of Our “Shtick”• Stunning 2-page ad in HFMA’s

Journal, which got me an interesting letter from IBM’s attorneys for using their logo without permission…– (sad to see the World Trade Center –

we took countless prospects to dine at the Windows on the World…)

• Some of the many give-aways from our booths at the AHA, HFMA, NEHA, Mid-Atlantic and IBM’s ECHO conventions - no HIMSS back then in 1982 – 1984, the years of our launch.

– And on the following page, some great text from this brochure:

Brochure Text• Summed up our whole

story in 2 concise pages:

So What Went Wrong?• Why didn’t HIS Inc. become as successful as Epic is today? Two

things conspired circa 1984 (and not George Orwell!) – Late Programming – as brilliant and hard-working as they

were, the programmers just kept taking longer and longer to finish and de-bug the translator code and resulting PL/1.

– Competition – a number of other firms saw the need for modern software for IBM mainframes, and jumped in too:

• IBM announced their PCS/ADS/Patient Accounting at their ECHO conference, and the lemmings rushed to them…

• SMS announced “SURPAS” (SMS’ Ultimate Patient Accounting Package), which never saw the light of day…

• Medicus spun off Medipac into a separate company named MediFlex, which started selling mainframes aggressively…

• Stay tuned next week for HIS Inc’s denouement, rebirth, and survival to this day in dozens of large NYC medical centers!