SCHENECTADY, NY – MVP Health Care will roll out in October the small group and new business market phase of its large-scale sales and marketing portal implementation.
When the portal is completed by first quarter 2010, the regional health plan will be able to sell a full range of ancillary products and services, such as legal, life and disability, through a wider distribution channel akin to the retail model of Amazon.com, said Dave Henderson, executive vice president of marketing and chief marketing officer.
The portal tool will help MVP reduce distribution costs by eliminating manual processes, reduce administrative cost through sales, expand distribution channel beyond the 20 percent of brokers that sell 80 percent of its business into other avenues of selling its products, such as banks, associations and online, Henderson said.
“Technology will allow us to be where customers make their decisions and engage them at the right time,” he said, referring to the individual market.
The tool will help brokers manage a bigger share of their business and close deals more quickly, which would incentivize brokers to sell more of MVP’s products.
The tool will also level the playing field for the smaller broker agencies by giving them new functionalities and delivering greater competition to the marketplace, said Henderson.
The base technology will position MVP to target students in the individual market by marketing through PDAs and cell phones.
MVP’s extensive ROI study estimates that two years of use will pay off MVP’s initial investment and four years of use will provide a 4-to-1 return, Henderson said.
William Wetmore, vice president of relationship management for ikaSystems and project manager for MVP Health Care, said MVP Health Care is trying to create a retail healthcare distribution site with a one-stop shop for financial and healthcare products and services.
“MVP is a role model for the rest of the industry with this vision to diversify and have all the information and better intelligence in one place,” he said.
In today’s competitive environment, payers are trying to differentiate themselves by using portals to expand their product line and marketing, said Janice Young, program manager for Health Industry Insights.
Using flexible and innovative tools are critically important to targeting the right products to the right population to ensure profitability, she said.
“MVP’s strategy is to deliver proof of concept, Young said.