One-on-One with Customer Director Jeff Burpo
Jeff partners with payer organizations, helping them grow and evolve in a changing market.
From strengthening the member experience to building adaptability and agility for today’s rapidly evolving environment, Jeff partners with customers to help them move successfully and sustainably from transaction to health. We caught up with Jeff to learn more about what’s on his mind as payer organizations increasingly invest in ways to grow and retain their members through all stages of their lives.
A strategic focus on marketing is becoming increasingly critical for payer organizations. Can you share a little bit about why?
Marketing has always been an important function for payers, but the changing dynamics in the marketplace are quickly elevating its strategic value and potential for impact. And product competitiveness and quality measures (which have always been important) are now table stakes. Success today in growing business and retaining members ultimately comes from being able to effectively connect with a member as a human being. This requires a different type of approach and skills across payer organizations – one where marketing plays a leading role in architecting and delivering these experiences.
What advice would you share for these organizations and their leaders?
Move forward with a capability-building mindset. One that goes beyond individual marketing efforts and campaigns and takes a more foundational approach to raising the underlying capabilities of marketing to drive outcomes across your organization. This changes the nature of the relationship that marketing has with lines of business and other parts of the organization to be a more of a strategic partner in leading the changes required.
How is Point B helping payers navigate this challenge? What makes our approach unique?
We focus on the specific building blocks needed to create a market-leading, high-performing marketing function. Our approach spans the required functional skills, tools, and data and analytics to ultimately empower the people in the marketing organization with the resources they need to be that strategic leader and partner to the overall organization. While we find many commonalities across our customers, we also know that every organization is different and ensure the path forward for each is unique.
For example, we recently worked with a large payer’s marketing organization to help them create the business case and roadmap they needed to achieve aggressive growth in Medicare. We found that they were being held back by significant gaps in their Mar-tech stack and their access to data limited their ability to create integrated and personalized experiences. Working closely with their team, we laid out the path for them to become a true omni-channel marketer. We also included the financial modeling to identify the revenue currently at risk, the operational metrics to achieve for growth, and the payback from making the identified investments to build the case for change.
Anything else to share?
Personally, I find this to be one of the more impactful areas of Point B’s work with payer organizations. We are getting at the heart of consumers’ perceptions of their health insurance carrier and changing the dynamic of the relationship to one that connects with the human at the center of the healthcare experience. We’re doing more than just delivering a better experience: at the core we’re creating more trusting relationships. This is one of the key ways we can support the overall health of both the individual member and our communities. We need to get this right.
Chunky or smooth peanut butter?
Definitely smooth, and all natural – just peanuts and salt.
What’s something we can’t learn about you by reading your LinkedIn profile?
It is important to me to have fun – including at work. My first job in high school was at a kite store in the mall, which allowed me to play with toys and amaze kids with my “skills.” For my grad school internship, I chose a job that allowed me to work overseas for the summer and immerse in local culture and experiences. And now at Point B, I work with the most fun group of people I have ever been around. It might sound like a cliché, but it is true.
Where can we find you outside of work?
During the day, at my kids’ baseball/softball/soccer games. In the evenings, in the kitchen cooking for the family.
Go-to podcast, tv show or book?
I play a lot of fantasy sports, so when I exercise, I typically listen to fantasy sports podcasts and watch sporting events on TV. In the evenings, I read non-fiction because I love to learn, particularly science. I just finished The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams by Chandra Prescod-Weinstein, and up next is Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions.
