What Surgical Robotics Companies Want From Critical Component Suppliers
Having the right technical capabilities, talented people, compelling products with high quality and reliability, and competitive commercial terms are of course important and necessary to win new business in the surgical robotics market.
This article considers these critical things as table stakes and instead will focus on 7 actions and organizational strategies that, if well executed and intentionally deployed, will put suppliers of critical components and sub-systems in a more favorable position to be selected as a preferred long-term partner for surgical robotics companies. There is a degree of order, staging and flow to them and you’ll see clearly there are iterative and repeated steps. Each iteration/repeat is an opportunity to strengthen or weaken your position with the customer.
1. Be curious, ask good questions, and listen.
Ask technical and commercial people the right questions. Ask open ended questions that explore technical, commercial, risk, schedule, cost, and customer organizational decision making (and “politics”) in a planned and thought out manner. Interview-style questions can be highly effective. Don’t lead with your product features or push your product. You can assume they’ve read all of your product documentation and marketing materials. Structured, planned conversations and active listening are a golden opportunity to gain deeper understanding of your customer’s needs.
Even if you have what you believe is the best solution since sliced bread, your most important objective is to gain a deep understanding of the customer’s needs and the potential paths forward they are considering. Given the scope of their investment, the market potential they are seeking to capture, their considerations around IP, and some of the challenges they’ll face in achieving FDA certifications, they are likely evaluating multiple architectures, design approaches, technologies, and suppliers. They may also be seriously considering a “make” (vs “buy”) approach. Their supplier selection decision-making and risk management may not match your previous experiences in other markets and applications.
2. Share your capabilities and expertise openly.
After you’ve learned more about the customer’s needs, invest your efforts in making sure the customer understands your technology and technical capabilities. You may find that one small part of your core technology, product, testing or manufacturing capabilities is particularly valuable to them. The only way to find this out is to make sure they are fully informed about what you are capable of.
A highly effective approach is to connect your technical architects directly with the customer’s technical leadership team early and often. It isn’t uncommon to “reserve” your top technical resources for more “qualified” opportunities that are further down the sales funnel, but this is not a winning approach in the surgical robotics market. If your business is seeking to grow in this market, you’ll need to have your best technical people connected to their peers within the customer throughout the entire lifecycle of any potential project. A second-order benefit of this approach is that your teams will gain a deeper, “front line” understanding of the customer application and challenges which can directly benefit current and future new technology and product development.
3. At this stage, you’ll either uncover potential project(s) to explore or you won’t.
If you don’t, be wary about pushing a square peg into a round hole. The customer will have clarity on what your gaps are and if you push too hard on the wrong project, you’ll risk damaging any trust you have earned and being excluded from consideration for future projects. Seek opportunities to communicate with the customer you understand the gaps that prevent you from being a great solution for this particular program and share your thinking and plans regarding these gaps. Whenever possible, recommend trusted third party solutions/suppliers to the customer. The customer’s deeper understanding of your capabilities, your enhanced knowledge about their specific needs, and your knowledge of your limits (and possibly providing a valuable referral) put you in a stronger, more informed position to move forward from in the future.
If you do identify opportunity(ies) to participate in the customer’s program(s) congratulations! Now the fun begins and it’s time for the capabilities, people, technologies, products and teams that got you this far to shine.
4. As you begin to plan and make commitments to the customer, be intentional about two potential “trap” mindsets:
Firstly, ”Surgical robotics development programs are long and don’t move quickly…we’ll have time to respond and can squeeze this in with other work.” Secondly, ”Modeling and analysis will be the customer’s primary method of design iteration, they won’t build many prototypes.”
There is a lot at stake for surgical robotics companies. They are making significant investments in a highly attractive, competitive, complex and regulated market and you’ll need to invest significant organizational attention and resources over a sustained period. There will be times on the journey where you may begin to doubt your ROI or likelihood of a successful outcome. You’ll need to rely on your business tools and decision-making frameworks to guide you. You’ll also need to be mindful that the timelines and design iterations required to win in the surgical robotics market are not for the faint of heart or businesses seeking a quick return on their investment.
In addition to advanced modeling and analysis tools, customers will likely rely on rapid (very rapid!) prototyping and design iteration to drive their programs towards completion. Building and testing multiple revisions of key subsystems and systems is frequently selected as the best/fastest path for the customer to evaluate design alternatives and advance their subsystem and system designs to achieve their objectives. Even though the overall program schedule may be long, each prototyping cycle is an opportunity for you to move forward with the customer or for you to be disqualified from the program. Your ability to move quickly and execute and communicate well at each these steps is key to remaining in contention to win business on the production version of the customer’s system.
5. Expect many iterations of development.
Surgical robotic systems are complex and are arguably as “mission-critical” as it gets. At some point during each program, it is likely that the frequent and fast iterations, coupled with the demanding requirements of supporting rapid prototyping, it is not uncommon for a supplier to develop concerns about “scope creep”. This is a logical concern which can be mitigated by several tools, including a business plan that supports informed growth within the market and sensible project continuation milestones. If approached in the right way, these iterations create substantial (and frequent!) opportunities for a supplier to enhance their value proposition and deepen their relationship with the customer.
Throughout each iteration, ask good questions that address the customer’s technical, commercial, risk, schedule and cost needs and look for opportunities to modify/improve your product and ways to help your product integrate into other parts of the system. When possible, seek to participate in, or at least get direct feedback from customer design reviews.
Miniaturization, increased speed or accuracy, reductions in weight, wiring, cost, and complexity are some examples of ways to enhance your value proposition and elevate the importance of your solution to the customer. The depth of your understanding of how this all fits into the customers’ program needs and risks represents a tremendous opportunity which can be missed if your organization isn’t highly attentive, solution oriented, persistent and patient throughout the design iterations.
6. Keep frequent dialog and communication in place after the bulk of the design and engineering work looks to be completed.
As the customers progress through the later stages of development and into FDA approvals, much of the design work will be “done” and the frequency of your direct dialog with the customers will likely be significantly less than it was during prototyping and design steps. This is an opportunity to be a great partner and is exactly the wrong time to take a step back.
New entrants in the surgical robotics market are going through the process for perhaps the first time. Seasoned companies are experts at the process but may be pioneering into a new procedural area where the FDA is learning and developing their processes simultaneously. By staying close to the customer throughout their qualification, surgeon testing and FDA approval processes, you’ll have opportunities to reinforce your trusted partner status and ensure that you remain in the customer’s plans to be designed into the final system.
You can also expect to encounter some interesting situations regarding requests for test data, product design details, and access to embedded software code that you haven’t experienced in other markets. The customer is navigating an arduous and complex process in receiving FDA approval for their system. Doing so with acceptable levels of cost, risk and on a schedule that fits their business plans often creates the need for them to have access to supplemental information or data from their suppliers that is not commonly requested from customers in other markets. There are many paths to sound, mutually beneficially solutions to be found and they will require you to be creative and entrepreneurial. Having strong design and documentation tools, a great contract review partner/team, and a well thought out IP strategy are building blocks in your efforts to find suitable solutions. This is also a time when your strong technical and commercial relationship with the customer, coupled with active listening and entrepreneurial thinking are keys to success.
7. Be a strong partner throughout the entire lifecycle of the program, especially in the event of quality issues.
Once systems are deployed in the field, your products are contributing to making people’s lives better and this is something to celebrate! And yet, you still have a lot to do, especially if you’d like to keep a strong trusted advisor relationship with your customer, retain your position on the existing system, and be a leading contender for future new products and development programs.
Your Quality Management System (QMS) will need to be excellent and where applicable, cascaded into your supply chain. You’ll be required to participate in frequent audits and business reviews. Your change control, configuration control, and traceability systems and tools will need to be excellent. If designed, installed and managed with the right mindset, all of these things make your business stronger and healthier and can help you differentiate your company from your competition.
Even when you have a best-in-class QMS and you are executing well, surgical robotic systems are complex and inevitably, something will happen in the customer’s manufacturing/test environment or perhaps in the field (which in this case is an operating room!). You may also discover an issue within your internal manufacturing environment or your supply chain. In the event of any quality or reliability issues, it is critical that you are highly responsive and communicate frequently with an extremely high degree of transparency.
In your interactions with your customer, operate with what may feel like an uncomfortably high degree of transparency. Given the complexity and mission-critical nature of these systems and the importance of a high trust relationship with your customer, your best way of thinking and acting is that “it is far better to face the music now than later.”
Lastly, an often-overlooked resource to solving problems and improving performance and quality is to ask the customer for help. Surgical robotics companies tend to treat their suppliers as partners and are willing to invest in and develop them, especially those with the maturity and humility to ask for help. In many cases, they will provide or have knowledge of or access to resources that may help you solve the problem.
Participating in the surgical robotics market as a critical component supplier is very rewarding. Applying these 7 actions and organizational strategies to your business and your specific customer-facing context will increase the probability of you winning business and earning a reputation as a preferred long-term partner in this market.
