How Intellijoint Surgical Improved Contract Management to Grow Sales

Intellijoint Surgical partners with orthopaedic clinicians and surgical staff to develop versatile medical devices for hip and knee procedures. Since commercializing in 2016, this Kitchener, Ontario, Canada-based company has supported over 60,000 total joint replacements in Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan.

Intellijoint’s rapid growth brought operational challenges, with contract management becoming a rate-limiting step to growth. As they onboarded new customers, the process remained manual, with product and facility coverage details siloed and difficult to access across the organization. Adding complexity was the fact that the healthcare industry consolidation through acquisitions and mergers by integrated delivery networks (IDNs) made it difficult to both keep contract rosters up-to-date and communicate any changes widely.

The ultimate effect of Intellijoint’s challenges with contract management was that they were missing out on massive revenue opportunities. For example, Intellijoint had a contract in place at a particular IDN, but their sales team assumed the contract was for local site approval, not all facilities within the system. Despite spending a year securing the overall IDN contract, the silos of contract awareness meant the sales team members approached each additional facility as if a new, facility-specific agreement was needed, unnecessarily prolonging the sales cycle and causing confusion for both Intellijoint and the IDN.

Sales leaders at Intellijoint knew that for their growth-stage company, effective contract management isn’t just a part of sales operations. Instead, it is the fundamental center of sales velocity. It was critical to put a contracts strategy in place that would accelerate revenue growth, but with a lean sales team, they didn’t have the luxury of delegating improving that process to another team.

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“Contract management isn’t a part of sales operations - it IS sales.”

Alex McLachlan, US Director, Commercial

Intellijoint Surgical

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At the same time as they were considering a contracts strategy, Intellijoint had recently switched to AcuityMD’s Targeting solution from a previous data platform. This shift had already increased visibility into targeting and pipeline performance and revealed two issues to be addressed: deals were not moving fast enough for a growth-stage company, and sales reps were unnecessarily approaching each new facility as if it required a new contract.

Intellijoint knew that having a contract in place significantly cut their close time, and a key goal was shortening the length of time deals stayed in the pipeline stage. But they didn’t know how to put their contracts into action so sales reps could make the most of their opportunities. 

They considered multiple process improvements, and initially considered another manual solution, a simple spreadsheet visible across the entire company, which would only deliver a few degrees of improvement. But during a routine quarterly review with AcuityMD, a customer success representative mentioned that the company was developing a new Contracts solution but was still reviewing various use cases for it. Intellijoint had quickly grown comfortable working with AcuityMD, and with AcuityMD recognizing Intellijoint’s pressing need to accelerate revenue, the two companies saw an opportunity to solve this issue together from the ground up. 

Intellijoint dedicated a partnership manager to join regular meetings with the AcuityMD team in order to create a continuous cycle of review and refinement. The initial solution that was rolled out to the field did show which targets Intellijoint had a contract in place with, but it wasn’t intuitive enough for the sales reps. They were not taking the extra step to check for contracts separately from their existing workflow. The AcuityMD team took this feedback to the product team and soon thereafter rolled out a new iteration that embedded contract information directly into Intellijoint’s daily targeting workflows to clearly show where there was whitespace that sales reps could go after.

The ability to toggle this contract whitespace information on and off was a moment of delight for Intellijoint. Both the delight of how simple the functionality was and also the delight in being the voice of the customer helping to develop this powerful new feature. This one iteration immediately clicked everything into place for reps in the field. AcuityMD then observed the usage of the new feature over the ensuing weeks and months and, without any direct feedback from Intellijoint, continued to release iterations and refinements to increase the power and utility of the new solution.

As a direct result of the Contracts solution, Intellijoint’s sales cycle is now three times shorter at facilities that are under contract. In one extreme example, it took only four weeks from an initial cold email to that Intellijoint product being used in a surgery by the targeted provider.  

Sales reps are now focusing their efforts on facilities already under contract, making them much more efficient with their limited time and continuing to accelerate revenue growth. Additionally, sales reps know that if they don’t have to engage in a contract details discussion from the ground up, they can take a much consultative approach with providers, presenting themselves as experts in the area of joint replacement, and more attentive to the unique needs of individual surgeons. 

Organizationally, Intellijoint has continued to refine their contract management process, which has become significantly more simple thanks to AcuityMD’s Contracts solution. Having centralized all contract management under one full-time employee, they are refining their operations by improving contract hygiene and execution, as well as beginning to negotiate umbrella contract agreements with IDNs as opposed to focusing on individual sites of care. 

Partnering with AcuityMD on the new Contracts solution has allowed Intellijoint to streamline their contract management, accelerate revenue growth, and change their strategic outlook around contracts. With a lean team and limited resources available, reducing the contract process to a simple, repeatable playbook allows them to now focus the majority of their time on the most critical area for growth-stage companies, targeting high-value, high-volume opportunities.