Meet Springer Healthcare Training: Mark Menichini
Meet Mark Menichini, Springer Healthcare Training’s Director of Business Strategy, as he explains how a medical communications agency spawned a training department.
Q: How did Springer Healthcare get into the training arena?
MM: It actually started back in 2008. We already had several very well-established medical communication and education brands, and we began receiving requests from our pharmaceutical customers to lend our scientific credibility to their training content. So, in 2009 when the company was looking for ways to grow the business, we asked ourselves, “Why don’t we extend our medical education offerings to produce training content?”
During this time the marketplace was changing, so we surveyed Springer Healthcare’s customers to try and understand their most critical training needs. One of the questions we asked was “What do you feel is most important for the sales representatives?” Of the 150 or so survey responses received, the top three responses were “better selling techniques” followed very closely by “greater clinical and scientific knowledge” and “more quality engagements with physicians.” When we realized that customers were asking for better clinical scientific knowledge for representatives, we felt very qualified to provide it. In 2010 we brought an instructional designer on staff, supported by dedicated editorial and account services teams, and in-house medical writers, and started to produce quality training materials.
From there we’ve evolved into the operation that we are today, and I’m personally excited about the growth of
the organization.
We knew from the very beginning that quality scientific content was going to be our strength.
Q: Where does Springer Healthcare Training excel?
MM: For me that’s an easy question to answer. It really is the quality of our clinical content. We knew from the very beginning that quality scientific content was going to be our strength. We knew it before we even had one solution sold. Not only do we have a strong scientific heritage as a company overall, which provides us access to a huge catalog of the latest medical content, we are also experienced in developing custom scientific content and have over 100 medical writers and editors on staff.
And now, several years on, I will happily say that we could pick up the phone and call any one of our clients right now and ask them what they think of the quality of our product and, although they may mention things like innovation, creative ideas, and sustainability tools, somewhere in that conversation they’re going to talk about the strength of the content, and that’s what we hang our hat on.
Q: Are there any platforms or tools you rely on?
MM: We don’t go into any conversation talking about a tool as a solution. We just don’t. We go in and ask what the client is trying to accomplish. Usually from a training perspective, that first conversation focuses on clinical and medical learning gaps, and what content is needed to fill it. How that content is best delivered is a secondary conversation. One of the advantages we offer is not being bound by a technology platform or a solution that we’ve invested in. This makes it possible for us to remain flexible and allows us to go in different directions, delivering scalable solutions. We think that’s a real plus.
