Sana Kliniken AG Boosts Effectiveness with Streamlined Tech Stack

Sana Kliniken AG is the leading integrated healthcare provider in the German speaking region. Its integrated healthcare services include preventive concepts, outpatient and inpatient care, aftercare, rehabilitation, and the supply of remedies and assistive devices. Sana is made up of more than 120 healthcare facilities, including various outpatient medical centers and 44 hospitals as well as over 50 medical supply stores. Sana Kliniken AG was founded in 1976 and is owned by 24 private health insurance providers. 

External communications play a key role in maintaining strong relationships with a variety of stakeholders, from patients to local and national media outlets and beyond. When Volker Knauer joined Sana Kliniken as Head of External Relations in 2022, he took on the task of simplifying his department’s complex landscape of workflows and tools. Volker and his team turned to Presspage to eliminate gaps in their tech stack and create an efficient, streamlined external communications process.

Like many established organisations, Sana Kliniken had gradually built a complex system of workflows to manage its constant outflow of external communications. Each press release went through up to 20 steps before it is ready for distribution, including planning, content creation, approvals and more. As a healthcare provider, the company is subject to strict legal requirements, which means its communications must be carefully documented and cross-checked for compliance.

“Workflows are a necessary evil in every communications department. Nobody really likes them, but they’re still crucial to our success. So, the question is: how can we make them less complex? In the past, we relied on a different tool to handle nearly each step in a workflow. At Sana Kliniken, we had taken a ‘best-of-breed’ approach to building our tech stack. That means we had chosen the best tool for each task, but the result was a complex, fragmented landscape, with lots of gaps between tools,” explains Volker Knauer.

Like many comms teams working with legacy tech stacks, the external relations team at Sana Kliniken was dealing with inefficiencies that slowed down their communications process: 

• The team had to alternate between multiple tools, leading to a fragmented workflow.
• Copy-pasting text from one interface to another was necessary, causing unnecessary duplication of effort and potential errors.
• They were at risk of working with outdated document versions sent via email, leading to confusion and potential mistakes.
• The use of multiple tools to distribute content via different channels created additional complexity and inefficiency.
• The team had to rely on multiple analytics tools, which resulted in a lack of a centralized and comprehensive overview for analyzing key data.
• The absence of a one-stop overview for analyzing data made it challenging to gain insights and make informed decisions.

Overall, these inefficiencies hindered productivity, collaboration, and the ability to effectively manage and analyze data within Sana Kliniken.

Volker says, “To streamline our external communications we wanted to move towards a tech landscape that would be more open and more connected, and would allow us to map out legally compliant, fast, efficient workflows for all our different channels. Presspage was the missing piece of the puzzle that made this possible for us.”

After switching to Presspage, Sana Kliniken now has a single best-in-class platform for creating and publishing external communications via their website and distributing them to predefined contacts. Instead of having to use separate tools for each stage of distribution, now they have a one-stop platform for contact management, customer relations management (CRM), digital asset management (DAM), data analytics and more.

Volker and his team use Presspage to easily distribute and monitor entire external communications campaigns, consisting of different content formats, released at different times to different contacts and audiences. 

“Working with Presspage enables us to distribute external communications that are much more targeted and audience-specific, while also handling our workflows more efficiently than before. By spending less time alternating between multiple applications and systems, we can put more time into engaging with our audiences, enriching their experience and building an authentic brand narrative,” says Volker.

Sana Kliniken now benefits from richer data insights about who is engaging with their content. Now, whenever they receive a press inquiry from a contact, for example, the analytics features in Presspage enable them to understand which content the contact has previously viewed, so they have a fuller view of the contact’s interests and needs.

This data-driven, user-focused approach helps Sana Kliniken to add an even more personalised human touch to its external communications. For Volker and his team, it also means a smarter, more effective way of handling their workflows every day. They are living up to the Presspage adage of ‘Less Tech, More Touch’!