Some months back we had an opportunity to work with Sankara Eye Hospital, (SEH) a not-for-profit Eye Care Hospital in Bangalore to design an end-to-end delightful experience to their out-patients with highly motivated staff. Their business model is to levy a modest fee for their services from people who can pay (like us) and use the proceeds for eye care treatments to the rural poor community. They ratio is 20:80 which is Payment : Free. On their rolls they have some of the finest specialists in the country and also specialised areas of eye care treatment which are a few in this country.
As soon as we finalized the approach and project for SEH, we looked for volunteers with DT project experience and enrolled them in teams. The project ran for 10 days over 8 weeks.
We had three teams and in each team we had a mix of SEH members (Doctors, Optometrists, Operations, Front Office and Back-Office staff) and SAP colleagues addressing three different design challenges - (1) out-patients, (2) doctors and (3) management.
The SEH members were highly motivated and had never seen something like this as a team workshop to solve their own operational and strategic issues. They praised highly about our SAP colleagues for their spontaniety and involvement. We learnt more of 'Empathy' from them, as well as their complex people, process, economic, stakeholders expectations management issues and what it takes to run such an establishment to handle 450-500 outpatients and 200 inpatients on any day!
More about the project, teams and the outcomes can be found in this link -
I like to thank our SAP colleagues without whose time and involvement this project would not have seen its light of the day. We will be very happy to receive your comments and feedback that will help us improve in or next social project.