December 3, 2024 • 37 mins
In this episode of HTM On The Line, we sit down with Mike Zimmer, a key leader at FSI Services, to explore his journey in the Healthcare Technology Management industry. Mike shares his wealth of experience, discussing how he has consistently pushed the boundaries of innovation and tackled challenges to advance the field. From his impactful contributions at FSI Services to his vision for the future of HTM, this conversation offers valuable insights and practical lessons for professionals at every level. Tune in to hear Mike’s inspiring story and his advice on driving success in a rapidly evolving industry.
We are immensely grateful to our partners— College of Biomedical Equipment Technology, A.M. BICKFORD, INC., UptimeServices, PM BIOMEDICAL, FSI and Talent Exclusive—for their support in making this podcast possible. Their dedication to advancing the Healthcare Technology Management industry is truly commendable. For more information about their contributions and services, please visit their websites.
For more podcast episodes, motivational videos, blogs, and newsletters, make sure to visit our website at htmontheline.com. We look forward to connecting with you.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to another episode of HTM on the Line, the
podcast that is for HTM by HTM.
I'm your host, bryant HawkinsSr.
And today we have a trulyexceptional guest joining us.
Mike Zimmer, a key leader atFSI Services, brings invaluable
experience and innovation to theHTM industry.
(00:22):
Today we'll discuss his journey, his work at FSI Services, his
vision for the future and thelessons we can all take from his
remarkable career.
But first we have a word fromour sponsor, whose generous
support helps make this podcastpossible.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Today's podcast is brought to you by FSI.
Optimize your hospitalfacilities and healthcare
technology management operationswith FSI's CMMS platform.
They're comprehensive,cloud-based maintenance
management software isstandardized, scalable and
designed to empower your teamwith accurate, practical and
(01:04):
impactful data.
Now let's jump into this week'spodcast All right.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
Welcome to another episode of HTM On the Line.
I have a special guest today,mr Mike Zimmer.
And I'm not talking about thecoach, mike, this is Mike Zimmer
from FSI Services.
How you doing, mike, I'm doingquite well, brian, how are you
doing?
Oh, great man, Glad to see wecan get together and talk a
little bit.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
First off, mike, before we get started, tell
everyone where you're from andwho you're working with.
Oh yeah, absolutely so.
I currently live in a veryquaint New England town of West
Hartford, connecticut.
You know I work with anorganization called FSI.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Services.
Before we get into FSI Services, let me just I know you're from
the Pennsylvania area, but notPennsylvania, the Boston area.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
New England area, connecticut, is where I call
home today.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Okay, so sales, what inspired you to pursue a career
in sales and how did you getstarted in this industry?
Speaker 3 (02:22):
Yeah, so it should be known that I am the technical
component of the sales team hereat FSI.
I'm what's known as thesolutions engineer.
At FSI, I'm the solutionsengineering manager.
So what that ultimately meansis that I am the person that you
talk to, or that our potentialcustomers talk to when they're
(02:45):
needing to understand thetechnical components of the
different software solutions weprovide to them.
You know I did not start off mycareer being what is known as an
SE.
I actually started off as kindof a pure account executive
working at software companybased out of Austin I'm not
(03:06):
going to name names, but theywere also a healthcare based
CMMS solutions providing company.
You know I was looking for achange.
I've always been rathertechnical.
I've got a degree in molecularbiology, I dig on technology and
it was always my favorite partof interacting with customers
and providing an actual solutionto the challenges that they had
(03:29):
.
So when the opportunitypresented itself, I raised my
hand and said, hey, I'd love tofill that kind of a role.
I did that and it's reallyworked out well for me.
You know, over the past it'sprobably close to a decade at
this point.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
It's probably close to a decade at this point.
Oh, wow, man, that's awesome.
Now this podcast is as I alwayssay it's for HTM, by HTM, and
it's a motivating and mentoringtype of podcast.
So I want to ask you have therebeen any mentors or pivotal
moments in your career that hassignificantly impacted your
growth as a sales professional?
Speaker 3 (04:03):
Yeah, so great question and this is going to
have a shout out to somebodythat may be listening to the
podcast.
But, um, you know, within thecontext of of being this, this
guy, uh, that is working with inan industry where I didn't have
a background in it, so, likethe needs of healthcare
technology managementprofessionals, you know, I
(04:23):
struggled with what is known asimposter syndrome If you've been
exposed to that term, I'm suremany of your listeners have been
where I thought that that wasjust going to be like discovered
as this phony and I didn't knowreally what I was talking about
.
But I had a mentor at thatpoint in my career, a gentleman
named Al Gresh.
A shout out to Al, or toanybody that knows Al I'm sure
(04:44):
he's given you similar guidancewhere he coached me up.
He was like, hey, listen, thisis what you need to know about
clinical engineering, biomedicalengineering, htm, et cetera.
And this is what your cohort,brian, really really care about
out of the kinds of solutionsthat we were positioning to them
, really really care about outof the kinds of solutions that
(05:06):
we were positioning to them.
You know, I've really taken thatto heart and you know, at this
point in my career.
I have a pretty deepunderstanding of the different
challenges that not just HTMprofessionals but also kind of
the facility engineering andplant operations professionals
really struggle with day to day,and it's really helped me out
in my career and ultimatelyproviding very valuable
(05:28):
solutions and I mean that I'mnot just, you know, using sales
buzzwords to the healthcareindustry, and so that is what
comes to mind.
Who comes to mind wheneversomebody asks me about a mentor.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Now are you and this mentor still close, or that's
what we indicate yes, weactually texted back and forth
earlier today.
Great right that's a greatmentor to have y'all continue I
mean you must be a great mentee,because I tell people, in order
to be a good mentor, you haveto have a great mentee.
I tell you two-way street 100.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
I tell this to my kids all the time that you know,
never be afraid to put on thewhite belt and just say hey, I
don't know how to do something,I don't know what you're talking
about.
Because that intellectualcuriosity when you really listen
to the people that want to tellyou about something it just
provides asymmetrical returns onyour growth as a human being
(06:22):
and then, of course, in yourprofessional life as well.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Let's get into this FSI services.
What innovative solutions doesFSI sorry about that bring to
the biomed and facility industrythat may set y'all apart from
other companies that do whaty'all did?
Speaker 3 (06:42):
So this is not necessarily a hot take but,
Brian, I have worked with abunch of these different
solutions and there are alwaysgoing to be new capabilities or
feature sets, stuff.
That is kind of a flash in thepan for the industry where it
might get a lot of attentioninitially.
The special thing about FSI iswe focus on what we're trying to
(07:10):
do with our solutions at adifferent level, if that makes
sense, and I always think aboutthings in terms of themes.
So in this case, you know,within FSI we focus around
really for at least in myopinion, four key areas that
really drive innovation in ourcorner of the healthcare
(07:34):
industry.
So our expertise it's importantto note that quite a few of the
resources that we have at FSIhave actually sat in clinical
engineering chairs, walked inHTM shoes, same thing on the
facilities engineering side ofthings, and so everything's been
designed, developed anddeployed with this kind of
(07:56):
practitioner-based approach interms of what the software is
capable of doing and thatexpertise really is peppered
throughout the entirety of theorganization as well as the
products.
Right Automation is also key.
You know, at the end of the day, a lot of CMMS and enterprise
asset management tools aresimply relational databases with
(08:17):
a UI laid over the top of itand maybe some you know
interesting relationships acrossthose different data elements.
We've taken it a step furtherand started to automate quite
well different activities thattake place within the CMMS, so
we can really help driveadditional time back to the
individual users so that theycan maximize the amount of
(08:39):
wrench time that they have outthere in the field, which is
ultimately the job that all ofour clinical engineers,
facilities engineers, were hiredto do.
You know the other two itemshere, so the third is going to
be analysis.
So CMMS solution and this isprobably pretty similar for any
kind of enterprise-basedsoftware solution is it's a
(09:01):
question of inputs and outputs.
So the input side of thingswe've made it super easy for
everybody to interact with thistool.
How do we then make use of thedata via some of the analytic
capabilities that we've gotthere, where we can really meet
organizations that might nothave a business intelligence
team to derive insights out oftheir CMMS data?
(09:23):
We instead have out-of-the-boxofferings with some additional
configurability, so if they'rewanting to ask other different,
more interesting questions oftheir data, they have the
ability of doing so.
And then, finally,interoperability, which is a fun
word to say.
It's also a very powerfulcapability of our overall
solution suite, because you know, we are very well aware that a
(09:48):
CMMS is just one aspect of thelet's call it the tapestry of
software solutions that clinicalengineering, HTM folks, as well
as anybody else within thehealthcare industry, are going
to be interacting with.
So how do we make it easy toincorporate other disparate
solutions, separate solutions,into the use of the CMMS?
(10:10):
So we make it that centralrepository of all asset related
information.
And then how do weoperationalize that information
once it's on board within thetool?
And so we do have, like, thefeature lists that are the
articulation of those four majorthemes.
So our binders, our electronicbinders product, which is an
(10:34):
inspection ready documentationcomponent of the tool that helps
automate compliance reporting,CMS flow, which is our
automation capability, Capitalplanning so how do we leverage
that total cost of ownershipdata to help support, repair
versus replace decisions,Analytics, as I had already
mentioned.
And then we have a very robustand capable API.
(10:54):
In addition to thesecapabilities, you've also got
this expertise of the peoplethat are built up around the
product, that are there tosolely focused on the healthcare
industry and the specific needsthat you all have.
I think I've been talking aboutfor four minutes or so straight
.
Sorry about that, but it's atopic that I'm super passionate
(11:16):
about.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
I know, man, I'm learning as you're talking.
Now let me ask you thisquestion here have you ever FSI,
rather, have they everimplemented a CMMS across both
HTM and facilities at the sametime?
Speaker 3 (11:33):
So at the same time probably, we absolutely have
customers that span bothfunctional groups and I think
what's super key there isappreciating the the different
needs across those two differentgroups of folks.
And you know, thankfully we wedo have the thought leadership
(11:55):
that that goes into successfullystanding up a what an HTM group
needs out of a CMMS versus whatfacilities needs.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
So my question would be if some challenges might
arise, if you can maybe sharewhat might arise, and if they
did arise, how did you guysaddress?
Speaker 3 (12:13):
the challenges.
You know, I think we try topreempt a lot of those
challenges like get ahead of thecurve a little bit, and that is
due in large part to the kindof architectural underpinnings
of our solution.
So it's it's highly segmented,meaning that you know you've got
(12:35):
this database, it's got thesedifferent capabilities, but
within that database there's asegmentation between different
groups that might be leveragingit.
So facilities would be in onesegment, clinical engineering
would be in the other.
Now they both have their kindof independent slices of the
tool where they can reallyconfigure the different screens
(12:57):
or the different objects, thedifferent tables, modules of the
tool to fit their specificneeds.
But they're still tying into acommon shared segment database.
So in that shared segment youmight disseminate or distribute
certain standard tables or dataconstructs within the CMMS.
(13:21):
What's jumping to mind rightnow is things like the location
hierarchy is going to beconsistent across the two user
groups.
In that case, same thing as ifyou know EVS or security or food
and nutrition were to beleveraging the tool as well.
So that does go a long way,that flexibility and autonomy,
while still tying into asingular standardization or
(13:45):
normalized nomenclature kind ofconstruct within the under the
hood portion of the CMMS tool.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
Oh man, great.
Now, with the rise of all thisAI and digital transformation
going on, how has FSI adaptedits offerings to have a more
seamless facility management?
Speaker 3 (14:08):
program or HTM, because I think that a lot of
the software vendors out there,particularly in the CMMS space,
they use AI as a buzzword,meaning that, okay, ai is a big
(14:31):
deal.
Let's see what kind of blogposts we can create where we
introduce at a very surfacelevel what an AI tool a chatbot,
whatever the case might be mayimprove the performance of a
CMMS.
But because of the expertisethat we have within the four
(14:59):
walls of FSI, we can leverage alarge language learning model to
assist our customers inanswering the questions that
they're asking of their CMMSdata.
And I'm not, you know,committing to anything on the
roadmap here, but the way we'rethinking about this is you know,
we have this analytics toolthat's part of our overall suite
(15:19):
tool.
That's part of our overallsuite.
What if we introduce an llminto that, where a user can be
like show me my, you know, pmpercent completion for this uh
modality or this category ofdevice for the month of december
?
They just type that in kind ofa plain text or everyday
language, kind of syntax, andthen have that tool, that
(15:41):
portion of our tool, providethem with the result that you
know they're.
They're immediately after,versus clicking through a
variety of different filters toget down to that level of detail
.
So that's, that's AI.
That's kind of how we'rethinking about it or approaching
it and, you know, reallyinteresting to to figure out the
(16:03):
thoughtful incorporation ofthat technology.
But from an overall digitaltransformation kind of strategy
perspective, in my opinion, andin the opinion of others that
are closer to the productroadmap, that's really where
process automation andinteroperability comes into play
, because I feel like theindustry finds itself in a
(16:24):
little bit of a quandary.
There are massive technologycompanies out there.
You and your audience arefamiliar with who these names
might be, but the thing is isthat the capabilities of these
massive platform as a servicecompanies are awesome, the
configurability or customizationcapability that their customers
(16:46):
have awesome.
However, it goes back to thatteam and that expertise around
the product offering where youknow if we're in a dialogue and
it's an evaluation of our toolsand you start quoting ECNEP or
DNV regulations, you know westart talking about AEM we can
(17:07):
have an informed discussionabout that versus these other
super awesome like technologiesthat you're interacting with.
They're going to be like oh, Idon't know what you're talking
about.
So you know it's.
It's all about walking that,that balance between what are
these amazing technologies andhow do we thoughtfully
incorporate them into what ahealthcare CMMS and EAM needs to
be doing for its customers?
Speaker 1 (17:30):
You mentioned about CMS flows and capital planning
analytics.
In what ways does FSI supportHTM teams, biomed teams and
managing complex equipment lifecycles, say from procurement to
end of life?
How do y'all go about managingthat for biomed teams?
Speaker 3 (17:51):
Yeah, so I you know when I'm posed with this kind of
question, it does.
How do we provide theinstrumentation layer to an
organization, to an HTMorganization that is trying to
work up like a maturity curve,Meaning, you know, can we, or
(18:15):
rather instead of, can we, wecan, you know, technologically
support an organization's dataintegrity policy, meaning that
when you onboard a new device ornew fleet of equipment, we are
going to be able to check thebox or enforce the various
permissions and role settings tomake sure that the data, when
(18:36):
it first enters into the system,is top-notch and has a high
degree of integrity, which iskind of an odd place to start.
But that's the very beginning,that's the cradle part of the
lifecycle process with a medicaldevice.
And then, of course, you know,how do we automate things like
the procedures that need to bedone, the checklist of items
(18:56):
that need to be done from anincoming inspection perspective?
How do we gather or we cangather, excuse me the total cost
of ownership from both anin-house as well as third-party
perspective against the fleet ofmedical equipment, to inform
the ongoing analysis that goesinto?
Hey, do we need a budget for thereplacement of this particular
model or whatever the case mightbe, we provide the ability of
(19:20):
capturing condition assessmentdata on the medical device.
Hey, it looks like we're comingup against, you know,
technological obsolescence forthis model.
We're approaching the end oflife.
You know we've captured the endof service letter on the device
or at the model level of theinventory.
And then, ultimately, when thedecision is made to retire that
(19:41):
piece of equipment, to disposeof it, the CMS flows, I think,
come back into play so that wecan then start automating the
different processes that go intoensuring that you dispose of
those assets in the appropriateway be wiping the storage
components of a network medicalpiece of equipment prior to
(20:05):
giving it to a reseller orsending it off to be recycled.
That's how I'm thinking aboutit, anyway.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
My questions are going to be all over the place,
man, so just bear with me.
Cool, it's popped in my headwhile you were talking.
Go back to your CMMS system.
How?
Speaker 3 (20:32):
can FSI system improve communication and
workflow between HTM techniciansand other hospital departments?
Now, that can take place in avariety of different ways.
Let's see.
So actually, let's do this.
Brian, uh, which twodepartments are like?
What collection of departmentsor areas of a healthcare
organization are you thinkingabout?
Speaker 1 (20:49):
all right, yeah, let's just take, for example,
x-ray.
They call up biomed team.
Is there a way you can tell mewhat pieces of equipment are
close to end of life in mydepartment?
Speaker 3 (21:05):
Yeah.
So how do you answer thatquestion with the data and the
CMMS?
Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So you know in, in thatparticular scenario, you know I
would put a lot, pull up theassets, the x-ray assets, and
you know, based on the, thein-service date of that
particular device and theestimated excuse me the life
(21:28):
expectancy for that particularpiece of equipment, the, the
tool is going to automaticallycalculate what that retirement
date is going to be, just from apure installation versus life
expectancy perspective.
Now, you're you're going towant to include some other
factors in that, but you know,when you get that, you know
onesie, twosie question fromthat other group that's going to
(21:50):
be able to provide you withvisibility into.
Yep, you're right, you knowthis has got you know, six
months left prior to it reachingits scheduled retirement date,
just as one example.
Yes, yes.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Level of support and training does FSR provide to
ensure that that HTM techniciancan utilize your system?
So, that they know what they'redoing.
Yeah, in the tool.
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
So of course we have in-house training resources so
that when our customers, when weacquire a new customer, they
will go on site or remote, andthat's a pretty standard
offering of any CMMS company.
Of course, there arequalitative differences in terms
(22:39):
of the resources that we candeploy out into the field to
train our customers up, versusothers that I've experienced
with in the past.
But after implementation, aftergo live, is really when you're
going to need to have resourcesavailable for you know, in the
event that there's turnover orsomebody needs a refresher,
(23:05):
refresher Thankfully, we have avariety of different channels to
get continually trained up onthe current capability of the
tool and then future, updated,upgraded capabilities of the
solution.
So of course there are monthlywebinars and these aren't sales
driven webinars, these areactually customer success driven
, where we'll have it'stypically one of our customer
success managers and a supportservice person taking our
(23:26):
customers through typicalworkflows or something new and
exciting that's come out.
So that's that's nice.
In in the product itself, wehave something called resource
centers and there you're goingto have access to our user
community, which is called theneighborhood.
That was my shameless plug forthe neighborhood and that's
where it's all the customersthat want to engage in an open
(23:49):
forum discussion over what arethey loving about the tool and
then, probably moreinterestingly for our product
team, what isn't going so great,and they kind of work together
to understand how how differentyou know different healthcare
organizations are workingthrough it.
Within that resource center,there are also training modules
too.
So that is a training modulewhere you actually click through
(24:14):
screens.
It shows you how to do thingsand at the end of it, you take a
quiz and there's acertification.
You can get that certificationand use it as part of your.
You can have it associated toyour user record within the tool
and then, finally, leveraging asolution called Pendo.
We have in-product walkthroughs, so if I'm brand new to the
(24:35):
CMMS, I can select that and it'sgoing to tell me how to do with
on-screen guidance, how to dosomething like creating a new
asset or, you know, closing outa work order, and so there's a
variety of different supportservices and training resources
available following GoLive, andthen, of course, our support
services team is standing bywaiting to help our customers
(24:56):
when they have questions.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
I noticed that this I don't know it wasn't just
recently, but I noticed I wenton your page and did a little
stalking not your page, butFSI's page yeah, bring it on.
And I noticed FSI recently heldlike a I don't know if it was a
training session or customerappreciation.
Well, you had a bunch of yourcustomers there, I guess at your
(25:18):
facility or somewhere.
Yep, can you share more aboutthe purpose and focus of that
event?
Speaker 3 (25:23):
Yeah, so you may have come across one of two things,
or maybe both things.
The first thing is our annualuser conference, and so we pick
a place to drive attendancetowards, and that is I'm trying
to remember what the attendeenumbers were from the most
recent one in Charleston.
It's probably over 150 of ourcustomers.
(25:47):
They send representation to theuser conference where we, you
know, do things like lists.
We'll have thought leaderswithin the industry come and
present about things likecompliance.
Present about things likecompliance.
We'll have our productleadership take them through
soon-to-be-offered capabilitieswithin the tool.
(26:08):
It's very, very similar to thevibe of an Apple kind of
worldwide developer conference,without the black turtlenecks
and sneakers and then it's alsojust a really good time for our
customers to meet each other totalk about the struggles that
they're having, you know, withintheir day-to-day jobs how they
use our tools in order to makethat a little bit easier.
So that's the user conference,and that's a lot of fun.
(26:30):
The other kind of frequentlyfrequent gathering of some of
our kind of top end customers interms of their utilization of
the tools are our customeradvisory board meetings, and
that is like I don't want to saythey go to a mountain lair or
anything like that, but they,they it's a, it's a select group
(26:52):
of customers from both clinicalengineering as well as
facilities and they gatheraround a conference table and
they really get into it and theyhelp define what our roadmap is
going to be over the the mediumand long term.
Um, you know, uh, you know, outto things like like two or
three year projections on whatwe're going to or where we're
(27:13):
going to take our products nextyep, I was thinking about the
one in charleston.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
So yeah, that was the one that was real cool.
Speaker 3 (27:19):
I should have paused and asked you is that the the
one you were taking a look at?
Speaker 1 (27:23):
I just got excited.
Now how does FSI approach datasecurity?
That's a big thing now inhospitals with the cybersecurity
issues.
So how does FSI approach datasecurity and how do you guys go
about that?
Speaker 3 (27:41):
Yeah for sure, so that that, let's say, problem or
challenge is twofold.
Because as an organization, weneed to be as secure as possible
with the way that we handle ourcustomers data and to that end,
we are a SOC 2 Type 2 compliant, which is a certification
(28:04):
around the organization as wellas the software to make sure
that the different controls arein place to protect our customer
data within the cloud that wehost their information in.
And then, when we're looking toprovide solutions from a
security perspective orcybersecurity perspective on the
(28:24):
part of our customers, that iswhere we get back into being
that centralized repository forall the information having to do
with your clinical devices, soup to and including the medical
(28:47):
device metadata, networkmetadata for things like your
networked clinical devices.
So what I'm talking about hereis building those integrations
to those medical device IoTsolutions like Medigate,
assimile, zingbox and others, sowe can consume those events,
that anomalous behavior, whenit's detected by those agentless
discovery tools, and ultimatelyoperationalize those alerts
(29:08):
into something like a work orderthat gets automatically sent
out to a technician so that theyknow they need to do something
to that device because there'ssomething wonky going on with it
.
Maybe somebody plugged theirphone into an open USB port on
the side of an infusion pump orwhatever the case might be Not
that that ever happens.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
It doesn't.
Can you possibly describe arecent project where FSI's
technology or services directlyimproved operation for a
facility?
Speaker 3 (29:41):
There are a lot to choose from.
Um, okay, so I have.
I have two different, twodifferent stories to tell
they're.
They're pretty quick I say that, but I'll probably prattle on
for another 10 minutes.
But, um, one has to do withanalytics.
So you know, I started thisconversation off with talking
(30:02):
about how do we make use of thedata being tracked in the tool.
I'm not going to name drop anyspecific customers.
However, we had an organizationthat's new and this is on the
facility side, but I think theunderlying capability kind of
holds true for HTM groups aswell.
But I think the underlyingcapability kind of holds true
for HTM groups as well.
They knew they had a backlog ofrequests.
(30:25):
There is never enough time ofthe day, nor are there enough
resources on staff to handleevery single piece of work that
gets thrown at them.
They knew they had a backlog.
They knew they had a ton ofdeferred maintenance, but they
had no idea exactly how much orwhat location that made up this
idea was really driving that.
Nor did they have any way ofmeasuring.
(30:49):
You know, if we were to developa strategy to mitigate the
growth of that backlog or toreduce it, are we even having an
effect, are we throwing sandinto a wave?
With CMS analytics, we wereable to visualize that
information so that they, youknow, knew what the measurables
were and then they could startworking towards managing it.
And I am happy to report that,you know, through just the pure
(31:12):
analytic, analyticalcapabilities of our tools, they
were able to, you know, measurethe efficacy of the strategy
they deployed and, taking onthat backlog, they've capped the
growth of it and now they havestarted to decrease it, given
the same amount of resourcingthat they had available to them.
There are a bunch of differentinteresting stories to talk
(31:38):
about using the data in a CMMSto also justify increasing FTE
or headcount, but maybe we cantalk about that some other time
when we're at a conference orsomething you know.
Additionally, there was a verylarge health system that had a
let's call it a poor experiencein the implementation of the
product that they were using,and so they they went to market
(32:01):
to look for a new tool.
Uh, we had originally, you know, uh proposed to them to to move
to our, our solutions, part ofthem choosing this other
solutions provider.
But, given the uh, the, frankly, the the really poor experience
that they were having, uh, theywere.
They were struggling, they wereyou know it was becoming an
(32:22):
emergent issue they couldn't gettheir, the PMs generated, etc.
But this is where our expertisecame into play because we were
able to effectively jump intothe middle of that
implementation.
You know shape the data.
You know make sure that, priorto importing it into our tools,
everything was good to go andbuttoned up so that ultimately
(32:44):
we were able to finish theimplementation but into our
solutions and so that they wereable to recognize a reasonable
time to value.
On the CMMS, it just happenedto be a different CMMS at that
point.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
Wow, that's two very interesting stories and it's
like you made some folks happy.
Speaker 3 (33:05):
We try to make more than some folks happy, but we
are human.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
Mike, as we wrap up, what's one key takeaway or piece
of advice you'd like to sharewith our listeners about how FSI
services can make a differencein their operations?
Speaker 3 (33:24):
Key takeaway or a piece of advice, and I'm going
to put this into kind of acompetitive context just because
that's where I spend most of mydays.
You know, if anybody listeningto this is thinking about
evaluating alternatives to whatthey're currently using, or
they're currently doing thatright now one pick up the phone
and give me a call.
I would love to have aconversation.
(33:45):
But secondly, you know, I wouldreally encourage everyone to
find not so much a solutionsvendor, but really do your due
diligence and find anorganization that you could
consider a partner.
Really do your due diligenceand find an organization that
you could consider a partner.
And I know that might seem kindof cliche, but at the end of
(34:07):
the day you're you're going towant somebody that listens twice
as much as they talk, so thatwhen you articulate what are the
challenges, the processes, youwant to be supported by a piece
of software, a CMMS.
You want somebody that reallyunderstands it, asks great
questions and, frankly, iscandid or honest when you know
(34:29):
maybe that's not a capability oftheir tool or they have a
suggestion for another way ofdoing it.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
Now looking ahead what excites you most about the
future of FSI services?
Speaker 3 (34:45):
So you know, as I mentioned before, I've worked
with a handful of companies thatdone something similar ish to
what fsi is doing and I thinkwhat gets me the most excited
about it is, or are the expertsthat we employ our ability to
actually listen to the feedbackof our customers and do
(35:06):
something with that in a veryquick fashion.
We'll get feedback, we'lldesign something great and then
we'll just put it into theproduct.
That is super exciting day today.
That's what gets me out of bedin the morning and to my
computer here in Connecticut.
I think long-term, oroverarching, the fact that we
(35:29):
have taken, or are going tocontinue to take, our tools and
make them the operational hubfor all things HTM, asset and
facilities, you know, managementrelated with that focus on
interoperability and really justdriving towards just really
(35:50):
strong outcomes for ourcustomers, I think that's that's
really what I think makes thefuture hold quite a bit of
promise here at FSI.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
Well, mike, I appreciate you coming on HTML
Online man.
Speaker 3 (36:05):
My pleasure, brian, it's been a pleasure.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
It's great talking with you.
You definitely have a passionfor what you do and for this
industry as a whole and Iappreciate your time.
And man, if you ever get backinto coaching, man, I want some
tickets All right Sounds good.
All right, brother, I want sometickets.
All right, sounds good.
All right, brother, take care.
Thank you very much.
That concludes our conversationwith Mike Zimmer.
(36:28):
Mike, thank you for sharingyour expertise, your journey and
your inspiring vision with us.
Your work at FSI Serviceshighlights the profound impact
HTM professionals have on healthcare.
The profound impact HTMprofessionals have on healthcare
and your insights today are apowerful reminder of the
critical role we all play inshaping this industry To all our
(36:51):
listeners.
Thank you for tuning in.
If you enjoyed today's episode,don't forget to subscribe,
leave a review and share it withyour colleagues.
Together, we're building astronger and share it with your
colleagues.
Together, we're building astronger, more innovative HTM
community.
Until next time, keep pushingthe boundaries, stay passionate
(37:13):
and always strive to make animpact.
See you in the next episode ofHTM Online.
Y'all be safe out there.
Welcome to another episode of HTM on the Line, the
podcast that is for HTM by HTM.
I'm your host, bryant HawkinsSr.
And today we have a trulyexceptional guest joining us.
Mike Zimmer, a key leader atFSI Services, brings invaluable
experience and innovation to theHTM industry.
(00:22):
Today we'll discuss his journey, his work at FSI Services, his
vision for the future and thelessons we can all take from his
remarkable career.
But first we have a word fromour sponsor, whose generous
support helps make this podcastpossible.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Today's podcast is brought to you by FSI.
Optimize your hospitalfacilities and healthcare
technology management operationswith FSI's CMMS platform.
They're comprehensive,cloud-based maintenance
management software isstandardized, scalable and
designed to empower your teamwith accurate, practical and
(01:04):
impactful data.
Now let's jump into this week'spodcast All right.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
Welcome to another episode of HTM On the Line.
I have a special guest today,mr Mike Zimmer.
And I'm not talking about thecoach, mike, this is Mike Zimmer
from FSI Services.
How you doing, mike, I'm doingquite well, brian, how are you
doing?
Oh, great man, Glad to see wecan get together and talk a
little bit.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
First off, mike, before we get started, tell
everyone where you're from andwho you're working with.
Oh yeah, absolutely so.
I currently live in a veryquaint New England town of West
Hartford, connecticut.
You know I work with anorganization called FSI.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Services.
Before we get into FSI Services, let me just I know you're from
the Pennsylvania area, but notPennsylvania, the Boston area.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
New England area, connecticut, is where I call
home today.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Okay, so sales, what inspired you to pursue a career
in sales and how did you getstarted in this industry?
Speaker 3 (02:22):
Yeah, so it should be known that I am the technical
component of the sales team hereat FSI.
I'm what's known as thesolutions engineer.
At FSI, I'm the solutionsengineering manager.
So what that ultimately meansis that I am the person that you
talk to, or that our potentialcustomers talk to when they're
(02:45):
needing to understand thetechnical components of the
different software solutions weprovide to them.
You know I did not start off mycareer being what is known as an
SE.
I actually started off as kindof a pure account executive
working at software companybased out of Austin I'm not
(03:06):
going to name names, but theywere also a healthcare based
CMMS solutions providing company.
You know I was looking for achange.
I've always been rathertechnical.
I've got a degree in molecularbiology, I dig on technology and
it was always my favorite partof interacting with customers
and providing an actual solutionto the challenges that they had
(03:29):
.
So when the opportunitypresented itself, I raised my
hand and said, hey, I'd love tofill that kind of a role.
I did that and it's reallyworked out well for me.
You know, over the past it'sprobably close to a decade at
this point.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
It's probably close to a decade at this point.
Oh, wow, man, that's awesome.
Now this podcast is as I alwayssay it's for HTM, by HTM, and
it's a motivating and mentoringtype of podcast.
So I want to ask you have therebeen any mentors or pivotal
moments in your career that hassignificantly impacted your
growth as a sales professional?
Speaker 3 (04:03):
Yeah, so great question and this is going to
have a shout out to somebodythat may be listening to the
podcast.
But, um, you know, within thecontext of of being this, this
guy, uh, that is working with inan industry where I didn't have
a background in it, so, likethe needs of healthcare
technology managementprofessionals, you know, I
(04:23):
struggled with what is known asimposter syndrome If you've been
exposed to that term, I'm suremany of your listeners have been
where I thought that that wasjust going to be like discovered
as this phony and I didn't knowreally what I was talking about
.
But I had a mentor at thatpoint in my career, a gentleman
named Al Gresh.
A shout out to Al, or toanybody that knows Al I'm sure
(04:44):
he's given you similar guidancewhere he coached me up.
He was like, hey, listen, thisis what you need to know about
clinical engineering, biomedicalengineering, htm, et cetera.
And this is what your cohort,brian, really really care about
out of the kinds of solutionsthat we were positioning to them
, really really care about outof the kinds of solutions that
(05:06):
we were positioning to them.
You know, I've really taken thatto heart and you know, at this
point in my career.
I have a pretty deepunderstanding of the different
challenges that not just HTMprofessionals but also kind of
the facility engineering andplant operations professionals
really struggle with day to day,and it's really helped me out
in my career and ultimatelyproviding very valuable
(05:28):
solutions and I mean that I'mnot just, you know, using sales
buzzwords to the healthcareindustry, and so that is what
comes to mind.
Who comes to mind wheneversomebody asks me about a mentor.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Now are you and this mentor still close, or that's
what we indicate yes, weactually texted back and forth
earlier today.
Great right that's a greatmentor to have y'all continue I
mean you must be a great mentee,because I tell people, in order
to be a good mentor, you haveto have a great mentee.
I tell you two-way street 100.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
I tell this to my kids all the time that you know,
never be afraid to put on thewhite belt and just say hey, I
don't know how to do something,I don't know what you're talking
about.
Because that intellectualcuriosity when you really listen
to the people that want to tellyou about something it just
provides asymmetrical returns onyour growth as a human being
(06:22):
and then, of course, in yourprofessional life as well.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Let's get into this FSI services.
What innovative solutions doesFSI sorry about that bring to
the biomed and facility industrythat may set y'all apart from
other companies that do whaty'all did?
Speaker 3 (06:42):
So this is not necessarily a hot take but,
Brian, I have worked with abunch of these different
solutions and there are alwaysgoing to be new capabilities or
feature sets, stuff.
That is kind of a flash in thepan for the industry where it
might get a lot of attentioninitially.
The special thing about FSI iswe focus on what we're trying to
(07:10):
do with our solutions at adifferent level, if that makes
sense, and I always think aboutthings in terms of themes.
So in this case, you know,within FSI we focus around
really for at least in myopinion, four key areas that
really drive innovation in ourcorner of the healthcare
(07:34):
industry.
So our expertise it's importantto note that quite a few of the
resources that we have at FSIhave actually sat in clinical
engineering chairs, walked inHTM shoes, same thing on the
facilities engineering side ofthings, and so everything's been
designed, developed anddeployed with this kind of
(07:56):
practitioner-based approach interms of what the software is
capable of doing and thatexpertise really is peppered
throughout the entirety of theorganization as well as the
products.
Right Automation is also key.
You know, at the end of the day, a lot of CMMS and enterprise
asset management tools aresimply relational databases with
(08:17):
a UI laid over the top of itand maybe some you know
interesting relationships acrossthose different data elements.
We've taken it a step furtherand started to automate quite
well different activities thattake place within the CMMS, so
we can really help driveadditional time back to the
individual users so that theycan maximize the amount of
(08:39):
wrench time that they have outthere in the field, which is
ultimately the job that all ofour clinical engineers,
facilities engineers, were hiredto do.
You know the other two itemshere, so the third is going to
be analysis.
So CMMS solution and this isprobably pretty similar for any
kind of enterprise-basedsoftware solution is it's a
(09:01):
question of inputs and outputs.
So the input side of thingswe've made it super easy for
everybody to interact with thistool.
How do we then make use of thedata via some of the analytic
capabilities that we've gotthere, where we can really meet
organizations that might nothave a business intelligence
team to derive insights out oftheir CMMS data?
(09:23):
We instead have out-of-the-boxofferings with some additional
configurability, so if they'rewanting to ask other different,
more interesting questions oftheir data, they have the
ability of doing so.
And then, finally,interoperability, which is a fun
word to say.
It's also a very powerfulcapability of our overall
solution suite, because you know, we are very well aware that a
(09:48):
CMMS is just one aspect of thelet's call it the tapestry of
software solutions that clinicalengineering, HTM folks, as well
as anybody else within thehealthcare industry, are going
to be interacting with.
So how do we make it easy toincorporate other disparate
solutions, separate solutions,into the use of the CMMS?
(10:10):
So we make it that centralrepository of all asset related
information.
And then how do weoperationalize that information
once it's on board within thetool?
And so we do have, like, thefeature lists that are the
articulation of those four majorthemes.
So our binders, our electronicbinders product, which is an
(10:34):
inspection ready documentationcomponent of the tool that helps
automate compliance reporting,CMS flow, which is our
automation capability, Capitalplanning so how do we leverage
that total cost of ownershipdata to help support, repair
versus replace decisions,Analytics, as I had already
mentioned.
And then we have a very robustand capable API.
(10:54):
In addition to thesecapabilities, you've also got
this expertise of the peoplethat are built up around the
product, that are there tosolely focused on the healthcare
industry and the specific needsthat you all have.
I think I've been talking aboutfor four minutes or so straight
.
Sorry about that, but it's atopic that I'm super passionate
(11:16):
about.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
I know, man, I'm learning as you're talking.
Now let me ask you thisquestion here have you ever FSI,
rather, have they everimplemented a CMMS across both
HTM and facilities at the sametime?
Speaker 3 (11:33):
So at the same time probably, we absolutely have
customers that span bothfunctional groups and I think
what's super key there isappreciating the the different
needs across those two differentgroups of folks.
And you know, thankfully we wedo have the thought leadership
(11:55):
that that goes into successfullystanding up a what an HTM group
needs out of a CMMS versus whatfacilities needs.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
So my question would be if some challenges might
arise, if you can maybe sharewhat might arise, and if they
did arise, how did you guysaddress?
Speaker 3 (12:13):
the challenges.
You know, I think we try topreempt a lot of those
challenges like get ahead of thecurve a little bit, and that is
due in large part to the kindof architectural underpinnings
of our solution.
So it's it's highly segmented,meaning that you know you've got
(12:35):
this database, it's got thesedifferent capabilities, but
within that database there's asegmentation between different
groups that might be leveragingit.
So facilities would be in onesegment, clinical engineering
would be in the other.
Now they both have their kindof independent slices of the
tool where they can reallyconfigure the different screens
(12:57):
or the different objects, thedifferent tables, modules of the
tool to fit their specificneeds.
But they're still tying into acommon shared segment database.
So in that shared segment youmight disseminate or distribute
certain standard tables or dataconstructs within the CMMS.
(13:21):
What's jumping to mind rightnow is things like the location
hierarchy is going to beconsistent across the two user
groups.
In that case, same thing as ifyou know EVS or security or food
and nutrition were to beleveraging the tool as well.
So that does go a long way,that flexibility and autonomy,
while still tying into asingular standardization or
(13:45):
normalized nomenclature kind ofconstruct within the under the
hood portion of the CMMS tool.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
Oh man, great.
Now, with the rise of all thisAI and digital transformation
going on, how has FSI adaptedits offerings to have a more
seamless facility management?
Speaker 3 (14:08):
program or HTM, because I think that a lot of
the software vendors out there,particularly in the CMMS space,
they use AI as a buzzword,meaning that, okay, ai is a big
(14:31):
deal.
Let's see what kind of blogposts we can create where we
introduce at a very surfacelevel what an AI tool a chatbot,
whatever the case might be mayimprove the performance of a
CMMS.
But because of the expertisethat we have within the four
(14:59):
walls of FSI, we can leverage alarge language learning model to
assist our customers inanswering the questions that
they're asking of their CMMSdata.
And I'm not, you know,committing to anything on the
roadmap here, but the way we'rethinking about this is you know,
we have this analytics toolthat's part of our overall suite
(15:19):
tool.
That's part of our overallsuite.
What if we introduce an llminto that, where a user can be
like show me my, you know, pmpercent completion for this uh
modality or this category ofdevice for the month of december
?
They just type that in kind ofa plain text or everyday
language, kind of syntax, andthen have that tool, that
(15:41):
portion of our tool, providethem with the result that you
know they're.
They're immediately after,versus clicking through a
variety of different filters toget down to that level of detail
.
So that's, that's AI.
That's kind of how we'rethinking about it or approaching
it and, you know, reallyinteresting to to figure out the
(16:03):
thoughtful incorporation ofthat technology.
But from an overall digitaltransformation kind of strategy
perspective, in my opinion, andin the opinion of others that
are closer to the productroadmap, that's really where
process automation andinteroperability comes into play
, because I feel like theindustry finds itself in a
(16:24):
little bit of a quandary.
There are massive technologycompanies out there.
You and your audience arefamiliar with who these names
might be, but the thing is isthat the capabilities of these
massive platform as a servicecompanies are awesome, the
configurability or customizationcapability that their customers
(16:46):
have awesome.
However, it goes back to thatteam and that expertise around
the product offering where youknow if we're in a dialogue and
it's an evaluation of our toolsand you start quoting ECNEP or
DNV regulations, you know westart talking about AEM we can
(17:07):
have an informed discussionabout that versus these other
super awesome like technologiesthat you're interacting with.
They're going to be like oh, Idon't know what you're talking
about.
So you know it's.
It's all about walking that,that balance between what are
these amazing technologies andhow do we thoughtfully
incorporate them into what ahealthcare CMMS and EAM needs to
be doing for its customers?
Speaker 1 (17:30):
You mentioned about CMS flows and capital planning
analytics.
In what ways does FSI supportHTM teams, biomed teams and
managing complex equipment lifecycles, say from procurement to
end of life?
How do y'all go about managingthat for biomed teams?
Speaker 3 (17:51):
Yeah, so I you know when I'm posed with this kind of
question, it does.
How do we provide theinstrumentation layer to an
organization, to an HTMorganization that is trying to
work up like a maturity curve,Meaning, you know, can we, or
(18:15):
rather instead of, can we, wecan, you know, technologically
support an organization's dataintegrity policy, meaning that
when you onboard a new device ornew fleet of equipment, we are
going to be able to check thebox or enforce the various
permissions and role settings tomake sure that the data, when
(18:36):
it first enters into the system,is top-notch and has a high
degree of integrity, which iskind of an odd place to start.
But that's the very beginning,that's the cradle part of the
lifecycle process with a medicaldevice.
And then, of course, you know,how do we automate things like
the procedures that need to bedone, the checklist of items
(18:56):
that need to be done from anincoming inspection perspective?
How do we gather or we cangather, excuse me the total cost
of ownership from both anin-house as well as third-party
perspective against the fleet ofmedical equipment, to inform
the ongoing analysis that goesinto?
Hey, do we need a budget for thereplacement of this particular
model or whatever the case mightbe, we provide the ability of
(19:20):
capturing condition assessmentdata on the medical device.
Hey, it looks like we're comingup against, you know,
technological obsolescence forthis model.
We're approaching the end oflife.
You know we've captured the endof service letter on the device
or at the model level of theinventory.
And then, ultimately, when thedecision is made to retire that
(19:41):
piece of equipment, to disposeof it, the CMS flows, I think,
come back into play so that wecan then start automating the
different processes that go intoensuring that you dispose of
those assets in the appropriateway be wiping the storage
components of a network medicalpiece of equipment prior to
(20:05):
giving it to a reseller orsending it off to be recycled.
That's how I'm thinking aboutit, anyway.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
My questions are going to be all over the place,
man, so just bear with me.
Cool, it's popped in my headwhile you were talking.
Go back to your CMMS system.
How?
Speaker 3 (20:32):
can FSI system improve communication and
workflow between HTM techniciansand other hospital departments?
Now, that can take place in avariety of different ways.
Let's see.
So actually, let's do this.
Brian, uh, which twodepartments are like?
What collection of departmentsor areas of a healthcare
organization are you thinkingabout?
Speaker 1 (20:49):
all right, yeah, let's just take, for example,
x-ray.
They call up biomed team.
Is there a way you can tell mewhat pieces of equipment are
close to end of life in mydepartment?
Speaker 3 (21:05):
Yeah.
So how do you answer thatquestion with the data and the
CMMS?
Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So you know in, in thatparticular scenario, you know I
would put a lot, pull up theassets, the x-ray assets, and
you know, based on the, thein-service date of that
particular device and theestimated excuse me the life
(21:28):
expectancy for that particularpiece of equipment, the, the
tool is going to automaticallycalculate what that retirement
date is going to be, just from apure installation versus life
expectancy perspective.
Now, you're you're going towant to include some other
factors in that, but you know,when you get that, you know
onesie, twosie question fromthat other group that's going to
(21:50):
be able to provide you withvisibility into.
Yep, you're right, you knowthis has got you know, six
months left prior to it reachingits scheduled retirement date,
just as one example.
Yes, yes.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Level of support and training does FSR provide to
ensure that that HTM techniciancan utilize your system?
So, that they know what they'redoing.
Yeah, in the tool.
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
So of course we have in-house training resources so
that when our customers, when weacquire a new customer, they
will go on site or remote, andthat's a pretty standard
offering of any CMMS company.
Of course, there arequalitative differences in terms
(22:39):
of the resources that we candeploy out into the field to
train our customers up, versusothers that I've experienced
with in the past.
But after implementation, aftergo live, is really when you're
going to need to have resourcesavailable for you know, in the
event that there's turnover orsomebody needs a refresher,
(23:05):
refresher Thankfully, we have avariety of different channels to
get continually trained up onthe current capability of the
tool and then future, updated,upgraded capabilities of the
solution.
So of course there are monthlywebinars and these aren't sales
driven webinars, these areactually customer success driven
, where we'll have it'stypically one of our customer
success managers and a supportservice person taking our
(23:26):
customers through typicalworkflows or something new and
exciting that's come out.
So that's that's nice.
In in the product itself, wehave something called resource
centers and there you're goingto have access to our user
community, which is called theneighborhood.
That was my shameless plug forthe neighborhood and that's
where it's all the customersthat want to engage in an open
(23:49):
forum discussion over what arethey loving about the tool and
then, probably moreinterestingly for our product
team, what isn't going so great,and they kind of work together
to understand how how differentyou know different healthcare
organizations are workingthrough it.
Within that resource center,there are also training modules
too.
So that is a training modulewhere you actually click through
(24:14):
screens.
It shows you how to do thingsand at the end of it, you take a
quiz and there's acertification.
You can get that certificationand use it as part of your.
You can have it associated toyour user record within the tool
and then, finally, leveraging asolution called Pendo.
We have in-product walkthroughs, so if I'm brand new to the
(24:35):
CMMS, I can select that and it'sgoing to tell me how to do with
on-screen guidance, how to dosomething like creating a new
asset or, you know, closing outa work order, and so there's a
variety of different supportservices and training resources
available following GoLive, andthen, of course, our support
services team is standing bywaiting to help our customers
(24:56):
when they have questions.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
I noticed that this I don't know it wasn't just
recently, but I noticed I wenton your page and did a little
stalking not your page, butFSI's page yeah, bring it on.
And I noticed FSI recently heldlike a I don't know if it was a
training session or customerappreciation.
Well, you had a bunch of yourcustomers there, I guess at your
(25:18):
facility or somewhere.
Yep, can you share more aboutthe purpose and focus of that
event?
Speaker 3 (25:23):
Yeah, so you may have come across one of two things,
or maybe both things.
The first thing is our annualuser conference, and so we pick
a place to drive attendancetowards, and that is I'm trying
to remember what the attendeenumbers were from the most
recent one in Charleston.
It's probably over 150 of ourcustomers.
(25:47):
They send representation to theuser conference where we, you
know, do things like lists.
We'll have thought leaderswithin the industry come and
present about things likecompliance.
Present about things likecompliance.
We'll have our productleadership take them through
soon-to-be-offered capabilitieswithin the tool.
(26:08):
It's very, very similar to thevibe of an Apple kind of
worldwide developer conference,without the black turtlenecks
and sneakers and then it's alsojust a really good time for our
customers to meet each other totalk about the struggles that
they're having, you know, withintheir day-to-day jobs how they
use our tools in order to makethat a little bit easier.
So that's the user conference,and that's a lot of fun.
(26:30):
The other kind of frequentlyfrequent gathering of some of
our kind of top end customers interms of their utilization of
the tools are our customeradvisory board meetings, and
that is like I don't want to saythey go to a mountain lair or
anything like that, but they,they it's a, it's a select group
(26:52):
of customers from both clinicalengineering as well as
facilities and they gatheraround a conference table and
they really get into it and theyhelp define what our roadmap is
going to be over the the mediumand long term.
Um, you know, uh, you know, outto things like like two or
three year projections on whatwe're going to or where we're
(27:13):
going to take our products nextyep, I was thinking about the
one in charleston.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
So yeah, that was the one that was real cool.
Speaker 3 (27:19):
I should have paused and asked you is that the the
one you were taking a look at?
Speaker 1 (27:23):
I just got excited.
Now how does FSI approach datasecurity?
That's a big thing now inhospitals with the cybersecurity
issues.
So how does FSI approach datasecurity and how do you guys go
about that?
Speaker 3 (27:41):
Yeah for sure, so that that, let's say, problem or
challenge is twofold.
Because as an organization, weneed to be as secure as possible
with the way that we handle ourcustomers data and to that end,
we are a SOC 2 Type 2 compliant, which is a certification
(28:04):
around the organization as wellas the software to make sure
that the different controls arein place to protect our customer
data within the cloud that wehost their information in.
And then, when we're looking toprovide solutions from a
security perspective orcybersecurity perspective on the
(28:24):
part of our customers, that iswhere we get back into being
that centralized repository forall the information having to do
with your clinical devices, soup to and including the medical
(28:47):
device metadata, networkmetadata for things like your
networked clinical devices.
So what I'm talking about hereis building those integrations
to those medical device IoTsolutions like Medigate,
assimile, zingbox and others, sowe can consume those events,
that anomalous behavior, whenit's detected by those agentless
discovery tools, and ultimatelyoperationalize those alerts
(29:08):
into something like a work orderthat gets automatically sent
out to a technician so that theyknow they need to do something
to that device because there'ssomething wonky going on with it
.
Maybe somebody plugged theirphone into an open USB port on
the side of an infusion pump orwhatever the case might be Not
that that ever happens.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
It doesn't.
Can you possibly describe arecent project where FSI's
technology or services directlyimproved operation for a
facility?
Speaker 3 (29:41):
There are a lot to choose from.
Um, okay, so I have.
I have two different, twodifferent stories to tell
they're.
They're pretty quick I say that, but I'll probably prattle on
for another 10 minutes.
But, um, one has to do withanalytics.
So you know, I started thisconversation off with talking
(30:02):
about how do we make use of thedata being tracked in the tool.
I'm not going to name drop anyspecific customers.
However, we had an organizationthat's new and this is on the
facility side, but I think theunderlying capability kind of
holds true for HTM groups aswell.
But I think the underlyingcapability kind of holds true
for HTM groups as well.
They knew they had a backlog ofrequests.
(30:25):
There is never enough time ofthe day, nor are there enough
resources on staff to handleevery single piece of work that
gets thrown at them.
They knew they had a backlog.
They knew they had a ton ofdeferred maintenance, but they
had no idea exactly how much orwhat location that made up this
idea was really driving that.
Nor did they have any way ofmeasuring.
(30:49):
You know, if we were to developa strategy to mitigate the
growth of that backlog or toreduce it, are we even having an
effect, are we throwing sandinto a wave?
With CMS analytics, we wereable to visualize that
information so that they, youknow, knew what the measurables
were and then they could startworking towards managing it.
And I am happy to report that,you know, through just the pure
(31:12):
analytic, analyticalcapabilities of our tools, they
were able to, you know, measurethe efficacy of the strategy
they deployed and, taking onthat backlog, they've capped the
growth of it and now they havestarted to decrease it, given
the same amount of resourcingthat they had available to them.
There are a bunch of differentinteresting stories to talk
(31:38):
about using the data in a CMMSto also justify increasing FTE
or headcount, but maybe we cantalk about that some other time
when we're at a conference orsomething you know.
Additionally, there was a verylarge health system that had a
let's call it a poor experiencein the implementation of the
product that they were using,and so they they went to market
(32:01):
to look for a new tool.
Uh, we had originally, you know, uh proposed to them to to move
to our, our solutions, part ofthem choosing this other
solutions provider.
But, given the uh, the, frankly, the the really poor experience
that they were having, uh, theywere.
They were struggling, they wereyou know it was becoming an
(32:22):
emergent issue they couldn't gettheir, the PMs generated, etc.
But this is where our expertisecame into play because we were
able to effectively jump intothe middle of that
implementation.
You know shape the data.
You know make sure that, priorto importing it into our tools,
everything was good to go andbuttoned up so that ultimately
(32:44):
we were able to finish theimplementation but into our
solutions and so that they wereable to recognize a reasonable
time to value.
On the CMMS, it just happenedto be a different CMMS at that
point.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
Wow, that's two very interesting stories and it's
like you made some folks happy.
Speaker 3 (33:05):
We try to make more than some folks happy, but we
are human.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
Mike, as we wrap up, what's one key takeaway or piece
of advice you'd like to sharewith our listeners about how FSI
services can make a differencein their operations?
Speaker 3 (33:24):
Key takeaway or a piece of advice, and I'm going
to put this into kind of acompetitive context just because
that's where I spend most of mydays.
You know, if anybody listeningto this is thinking about
evaluating alternatives to whatthey're currently using, or
they're currently doing thatright now one pick up the phone
and give me a call.
I would love to have aconversation.
(33:45):
But secondly, you know, I wouldreally encourage everyone to
find not so much a solutionsvendor, but really do your due
diligence and find anorganization that you could
consider a partner.
Really do your due diligenceand find an organization that
you could consider a partner.
And I know that might seem kindof cliche, but at the end of
(34:07):
the day you're you're going towant somebody that listens twice
as much as they talk, so thatwhen you articulate what are the
challenges, the processes, youwant to be supported by a piece
of software, a CMMS.
You want somebody that reallyunderstands it, asks great
questions and, frankly, iscandid or honest when you know
(34:29):
maybe that's not a capability oftheir tool or they have a
suggestion for another way ofdoing it.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
Now looking ahead what excites you most about the
future of FSI services?
Speaker 3 (34:45):
So you know, as I mentioned before, I've worked
with a handful of companies thatdone something similar ish to
what fsi is doing and I thinkwhat gets me the most excited
about it is, or are the expertsthat we employ our ability to
actually listen to the feedbackof our customers and do
(35:06):
something with that in a veryquick fashion.
We'll get feedback, we'lldesign something great and then
we'll just put it into theproduct.
That is super exciting day today.
That's what gets me out of bedin the morning and to my
computer here in Connecticut.
I think long-term, oroverarching, the fact that we
(35:29):
have taken, or are going tocontinue to take, our tools and
make them the operational hubfor all things HTM, asset and
facilities, you know, managementrelated with that focus on
interoperability and really justdriving towards just really
(35:50):
strong outcomes for ourcustomers, I think that's that's
really what I think makes thefuture hold quite a bit of
promise here at FSI.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
Well, mike, I appreciate you coming on HTML
Online man.
Speaker 3 (36:05):
My pleasure, brian, it's been a pleasure.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
It's great talking with you.
You definitely have a passionfor what you do and for this
industry as a whole and Iappreciate your time.
And man, if you ever get backinto coaching, man, I want some
tickets All right Sounds good.
All right, brother, I want sometickets.
All right, sounds good.
All right, brother, take care.
Thank you very much.
That concludes our conversationwith Mike Zimmer.
(36:28):
Mike, thank you for sharingyour expertise, your journey and
your inspiring vision with us.
Your work at FSI Serviceshighlights the profound impact
HTM professionals have on healthcare.
The profound impact HTMprofessionals have on healthcare
and your insights today are apowerful reminder of the
critical role we all play inshaping this industry To all our
(36:51):
listeners.
Thank you for tuning in.
If you enjoyed today's episode,don't forget to subscribe,
leave a review and share it withyour colleagues.
Together, we're building astronger and share it with your
colleagues.
Together, we're building astronger, more innovative HTM
community.
Until next time, keep pushingthe boundaries, stay passionate
(37:13):
and always strive to make animpact.
See you in the next episode ofHTM Online.
Y'all be safe out there.
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