How a company transformed from a product supplier to a leader in innovative services.
A strategic business change is extremely disruptive, not only to employees but also to partners and customers. It’s even more challenging when the starting point is an underinvested IT environment mostly just surviving in maintenance mode compared to the future-state goal to be a company providing technology-enabled innovative services. That kind of situation has me thinking about what happened at H. D. Smith.
Based in Springfield, Ill., the company had been a pharmaceutical distributor since its founding in 1954; but a few years ago, the Smith family decided to branch out beyond their traditional business. They wanted to supply not only healthcare products but also technology-enabled services and business solutions integrated around the products. It fit with their strategic intent of controlling healthcare costs, safety and quality while maximizing patient outcomes. They could see the that the digital world was beginning to transform business and present new opportunities – or threats to businesses not moving to digital technologies.