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Google’s Healthcare Leader Joins Ultimate Guide to Partnering®
I was excited to welcome a great leader and friend to this podcast. In this episode, Chris Sakolosky, the Managing Director of Healthcare for Google, shares how Google is leveraging its strengths in data, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to help organizations transform how they deliver outcomes. This is a most significant part of our economy, with almost 20% of GDP. Chris shares how Google transforms the future of healthcare across providers, plans, pharmaceuticals, and biotech and what it means to you as a partner?
In Chris’ words
Chris Sakalosky serves as the Managing Director of Google Cloud’s Healthcare and Life Sciences organization where he leads a global team of diverse sales, delivery, technical and clinical industry professionals. These teams are accountable for executing strategic partnerships with industry leaders that accelerate digital transformations and unlock improved quality of life, universal access to care and streamline operations. Find Chris on LinkedIn
What You’ll Learn
- The mission of his organization and how he organizes for success (3:17)
- Google’s Investments in Healthcare and their #5 Ranking? (4:43)
- Healthcare Data Platform? (8:27)
- Why Partner with Google in Healthcare? (14:04)
- How does his team work with partners? (19:24)
- Partners that get it right with Google (28:09)
- Big Announcement? (32:10)
- How partners can drive their best results with his team? (32:47)
- His career journey (38:26)
- How can partners optimize for success with Google? (43:46)
Quote From This Episode
“We think about investing in our partners the way we think about investing in our customers. We are focused on outcomes together, putting that money to work. So when we think about these early areas of exploration, we’re investing in our partners to invest in our customers.“
Other Recent Episodes Featuring Google
157 – A MASTERCLASS – Your Greatest Results Partnering with Google
156 – How Sada Taps into The Power of Ecosystems to Drive Their Greatest Results with Adam Massey
140 – One Google Executive Applies 10X Mindset to Improve Healthcare Outcomes with Andria McGonigle
126 – Hyper-Focus as a Growth Imperative to High-Performance Partnering with Tony Safoian of SADA.
107 – One Leader’s Focus, Taking Partnerships to the Next Level at Google.
97 – Focused Growth Investments, Google Premier Partners SADA’S Pioneering Alliance Program.
64 – Twenty Years, Leadership in Big and Meaningful Ways, with Tony Safoian, CEO of SADA.
Links from this Episode
- Listen on your favorite platform https://pod.link/UltimatePartnerships
- Frost & Sullivan Award
Join our First Ultimate Partnerships Masterclass
LIVE, October 9th & 10th – learn how the best achieve their greatest results HERE.
Our Sponsors
PartnerTap is the Founding Sponsor of Ultimate Guide to Partnering. PartnerTap is the only Partner Ecosystem Platform designed for the Enterprise. Their technology makes it easy to align Channel Teams with automated account mapping, letting you control what data you share while building a partner revenue engine.
Transcription – by Otter.ai – Expect Typos
Ultimate Guide to Partnering – Chris Sakv3
Sun, 9/11 11:54AM • 47:22
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
partners, technology, google, customers, outcomes, platform, vince, healthcare, care, investing, frankly, partnerships, events, opportunity, isvs, data, build, leaders, investments, focus
SPEAKERS
Announcer, Chris Sakalosky, Vince Menzione
Chris Sakalosky 00:00
We think about investing in our partners the way we think about investing in our customers. We are focused on outcomes together, and we put that money to work. So when we think about these early areas of exploration, we’re investing in our partners to invest in our customers.
Announcer 00:16
Welcome to The Ultimate Guide to partnering in this podcast, Vince Menzione. A proven sales and partner executive brings together leaders to discuss transformational trends and deconstruct successful strategies to help technology leaders like you achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. And now your host, Vince Menzione.
Vince Menzione 00:39
Welcome to or welcome back to The Ultimate Guide to partnering. I’m Vince Menzione, your host and my mission is to help leaders like you unlock the leadership principles and learnings of the best in the business to get partnerships right, optimize for success and deliver your greatest results. How Google is shaping the future of healthcare, and what it means to you as a partner. I was so excited to welcome a great leader and friend to this podcast. Chris Sacca. Loski is the vice president of healthcare at Google. And in this episode, he shares how Google is leveraging its strengths and data, artificial intelligence and machine learning to help organizations transform how they deliver outcomes. This is such a significant part of our economy with almost 20% of gross domestic product. He shares how partners can work with providers, plans, pharmaceuticals, and biotechs to help them shape the future of health and how you as a partner should get on board. I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I enjoyed welcoming Chris Sacca Loski. Before we dive into the interview, I am so excited to announce the ultimate partnerships mastermind. Our first event is taking place October 9 and 10th at the gaylord hotel in Orlando, Florida. This first of its kind live event will feature some of the best leaders in the partnership business, the ultimate partnerships, Dream Team, and leaders from Microsoft in person to help you achieve your greatest results in 2023. For more details, follow the link in the shownotes please register today before it’s sold out. Chris, welcome to the podcast.
Chris Sakalosky 02:32
I’m so glad to be here. I was hoping when I joined Google on like this podcast I actually really want to be on I’ve been admired from a distance for so long seeing so many of my colleagues, peers and partners on a student of it, quite frankly, just to actually be honest. It’s a humbling honor to be here with you today. So thanks, man,
Vince Menzione 02:46
you are so kind I am so excited to finally welcome you as a guest. I think I was probably trying to get you on the podcast while you were still at Microsoft. You’re Google’s leader for healthcare, such an impactful role. It’s such an important topic. So happy to have you here today, we’ve been featuring other great Google leaders, recent guests have included Darren Maori, and Jim Anderson, two outstanding leaders, but for our listeners, can you share with us a little bit about you your mission, and what success looks like?
Chris Sakalosky 03:17
You better listen, first and foremost. And as a company, this is a company wide effort at Google to help billions of people live healthier lives, just put a hard stop at the end of that. And just think about the gravity of that mission events, right. It’s not a single product area. It’s not a single initiative. This is a company wide effort right at the core of the company to help people live healthier lives, that ranges across things like Google search, and YouTube. And Google Ventures, the Fitbit organizations, I’m so glad that they’ve joined us what a great addition to our investments in this area. And then obviously the area of my focus, which is Google Cloud. And when you really double click on the Google Cloud cloud side of it events, at the end of the day, our mission in healthcare is to unlock healthier lives by helping and partnering with organizations like our healthcare and life sciences companies, to digitally transform their businesses, and to do so with data first innovations. And when you really think about the gravity of that it truly it means unlocking new ways, new modalities of care, new ways of dealing with patients bringing therapies to market faster and to removing the friction of that experience as we as consumers feel on that care continuum. And so there’s so many dimensions that we could talk about, we could probably spend an entire podcast just on locking, what we’re really trying to solve, but it’s truly It’s a humbling mission, one that we don’t go alone, we go with a coalition of our partners and our customers, and we’re excited to do it.
Vince Menzione 04:43
It’s such an impactful mission. And I’ve had these conversations with others in the Google sphere about the traditional lift and shift. It’s not that it is about digital transformation. Google has made significant investments in the sector, probably more than most of the economist cites Google as the fifth largest largest in tech in healthcare. So it’s helping you to tell us more about some of those investments and these amazing outcomes you
Chris Sakalosky 05:08
hope to achieve. You bet, Vince, is it okay to stay cool in today’s economy, it is really cool. And quite frankly humbling to be on that list with those customers, partners, and peers in the industry events have to tell you, I looked at that list, and I actually did a double take are proud of what the economist wrote, it’s their story to tell and it really a part of our journey and telling that story ourselves. But to have them acknowledge Google Cloud, as the sole technology company, and I say technology companies that big hyperscale clouds to bring a little definition to that statement in the top five, the top 10 is manufacturing next closest technology, first company was not actually seen until number 20, after Google and sort of being named where we were named with that peer group. As I said, it’s humbling. But it’s also telling about the investments were making in the healthcare arena. What’s unique about the way we’re doing it, because it’s a company wide effort is we’re really looking at it from a partnership perspective. So our goal is not to disrupt this sector, quite frankly, it’s to help our partners and their consumers transform the way they engage with the care continuum, whether that be bringing therapies to market faster events, or whether it be using new modalities of care or using technology as a means to be more efficient and effective. Think about this, that list of players is putting their r&d budgets on the line to bring healthier lives to the economy. And what I love about that is the economy is the key to focusing on their events, you actually have the ability to affect the GDP, could you actually open up access to care? Can you focus on equity of care, big topic these days, and can you do so in friction, less matters, that reduce the cost of that care, regardless of where you are in that continuum, those are things that are legacy making. And it’s just again, humbling to be on that list with those peers. Now, when we think about those investments, it starts at our core with the investments we’re making in our healthcare data platform. I won’t talk about bits and bytes or products, speeds and feeds. But when you really think about it at the core, your Google, its legacy is rich and deep in data. And so our healthcare data platform is really where this begins. It’s about elevating our customers and our partners. Because if you think about what their journey is right now, they’ve often been accused of being technology, laggards, that’s actually not true of the health profession has been leading with technology since the days of Florence Nightingale. But what’s happened is you had this fractioned, or disconnected use of technology across the care continuum. And by building that purpose driven platform or otherwise known as a Health Cloud, you’re really providing your customers and partners a fabric, almost the way you would put a house on a foundation, Vince, you’re giving them a foundation to not have to worry about the basics, and to bring continuity across those different services. And that’s really where Google has been investing. Then we layer on world leading AI and machine learning. We were in our culture as a digital first, digital native, right, we bring culture to our customers and our partners. And quite frankly, I see the culture within our partners as equally digital native to help our customers transform as ours. And it’s just it’s so powerful. When you see those things come together. And you again, you target the things that I was talking about for you. You’re targeting disease, you’re targeting waste, you’re targeting loss. And when you’re talking about therapies and touching lives. It’s a very, very powerful message. And it’s something we’re proud to invest in.
Vince Menzione 08:27
So peel back with me a little bit on the healthcare data platform. I think anytime I have a sniffle, or I think I might have COVID. I’m googling that information. So Google is tracking all of that, certainly. But tell me more about the healthcare data platform, and how that interact, how that works across your continuum?
Chris Sakalosky 08:45
Well, it’s funny, you mentioned I was actually doing an executive briefing with one of our larger pharmaceutical customers out in Sunnyvale. And one of their stats came up what you mentioned, which is three, I think three out of every 10 searches are health related, I think during the pandemic, I think as high as seven. And so just the power of organizing the world’s information and specifically health information and bringing the power of that platform to the consumer. Well, my business is about bringing the power of knowledge of insight of data on that data platform to our enterprise customers, helping them look at the data that they already have that longitudinal view of the patient, of a cohort of patients of a populace, helping them look at that information and make great decisions, next logical decisions with artificial intelligence and machine learning a set of physical brick and mortar taking the burden solely off the clinician and allowing the clinician to work with that technology to make that next logical decision. It is truly magical when you see that work happen. But it starts really in the trenches, the IT organizations that will work with in these companies that we helped transform. They have a huge burden on their shoulders. This isn’t just about keeping it systems up and running. That’s the reason why we built the health data platform is the take some of that friction out of the IT work that they do stitching together all of these disconnected and disparate data sources that have been created over decades, if not centuries of information, allowing scientists and researchers to look over hundreds, if not 1000s, of PDF documents in a matter of seconds to extract the right information to figure out what chemical is going to react with what type of human cell the right way, which really means for you and I a potential cure for a disease either a rare one or one of the more one of the ones we see from a chronic disease perspective, eating out the other side of it, which is the clinicians, right, using that platform to pull that information together that knowledge and putting those special goggles on, that only Google can provide through its data platform, to allow them to see the things that are emerging that the human eye may not see. And that can manifest itself Vinson imaging in emerging categories like digital pathology, genomics and phenomics, it’s just quite frankly, the opportunity is near limitless. And then you flipped to the other side of it so that the burden of the healthier life we shifted somewhere along the way, Vince, I think you remember this, we were working together at the time, people started making a conscious decision to talk about health versus health care. Health care really is about a reactive approach to this. And what the data platform that we have been working on, has really been designed is to let you be more proactive. As a clinician, as a scientist, as a researcher, as a call center agent. It’s not just about the clinical side of this is as much about the operational side. And this data fabric that we’re helping weave together for our customers takes the friction out of for it and how they think about the insights that they need to drive for their T stakeholders. But it also thinks about the stakeholder themselves. And part of every one of these organizations, Vince is their operators, if they can run more efficiently if they can get therapies to market faster if they can lose less product in transit thinking shipping and delivery, and logistics supply chain, all of those things, those same technologies, that same platform that seemed those same insights, that you think about the patient at a personalized care level, all the way to the way the operations run. It’s a purpose built platform, Vince that we put together to take the burden off of it, to lift those partnerships up to the next level. So they can think about the consumer, the patient, the therapy, the operator themselves and how they’re doing the work they’re doing. Because at the end of the day, this is about one thing, driving better outcomes, better outcomes for the consumer, you and I better outcomes for the operator, the folks in the call center, the researchers and taking in the outcomes for the clinicians, the better they can do with the data they have, the better it is for all of us. And that’s a societal statement. As I make events,
Vince Menzione 12:40
I think about better outcomes personally been in situations where family members were wrongly diagnosed or doctors, clinicians didn’t have the right information years ago, to go back and say this pattern of events, this diagnosis looks like this. And this is the way I treat it the information. It’s astounding how much you’re aggregating across the entire world’s data and pulling that all together from a clinician perspective. You talk about areas like supply chain as well, and supply chain logistics and some of the challenges and organizations and trials and all these other areas coming together. Healthcare spans across so many areas, as we think about it, it’s the largest portion of GDP, is it not?
Chris Sakalosky 13:20
It is it’s the fat, it’s not only the largest ones, it’s the fastest growing, I think, the IDC and be careful who I quote there, I think IDC was the one that actually said by 2024, it’ll be 22% of the GDP or greater. Just that’s just a staggering figure. And it’s a great opportunity for us to help reduce the cost of care to recruit reduce that burden together with our partners on the economy, but at the same time, deliver higher quality of care. And I know that’s it’s a juggling act, right to reduce the cost of care to open up access and equity to care. But do so at a higher standard of care of research of development. And quite frankly, operation, there’s no such thing as impossible. It’s about focus. And that’s what I love about the area that we’re in is it’s we’re very, very focused on on achieving those goals.
Vince Menzione 14:04
So I think I know the answer to this. But for our listeners who maybe have not listened to other episodes featuring Google, our partners, all of them who are listening today, can you differentiate for them the strength in Google’s offering versus the other two? hyperscalers?
Chris Sakalosky 14:21
Sure, first and foremost, I’ll kind of cap out the conversation about the health data platform, quite frankly, Google’s overall platform. In health, the goal, there has always been to lift our partners up and have them build on top of our platform. And that was really the goal. As we built it. It wasn’t just for our customers, it was really our customers partners collaborating together. Because we’re a platform company. We don’t want to compete with our customers. And we certainly don’t want to compete with our competitors. And so that was sort of the mindset and the framework behind as we thought about that. How far down that path of solutioning do you go that endpoint solution? And what what we’ve been very excited to see is the is the market reception. And quite frankly, that was the wrong From the fact that so many of our best customers have become our best market partners. And so I think that’s really led us down this journey of being a platform and tools and product company, and allowing our customers and our partners to bring the best solutions and services to market. So I think that in of itself starts to define Vince, what’s unique about Google in the marketplace, I don’t spend a ton of time from a brain cell perspective, thinking about what our competitors do, quite frankly, I’m rooting for all of us. I said, I don’t know what’s hospital, I don’t know which hospital, my mother, my wife, my kids, you, as a great friend will have to visit someday. And I want every one of those clinicians, every one of those researchers upstream thinking about the therapy for you the diagnosis, supply chain logistics, making sure the device or the therapy you need is there on time and at the most effective cost effective efficacy process. For me, this is really about us being laser focused on our mission. And I think the Frost and Sullivan Award, Vince speaks to where we believe we are, we believe we are the leader in this category. And when you look at flattery, and flattery is usually born out of imitation. When we see our peers in the industry, also building health clubs, we’re excited, we’re proud of that. But our focus has always been on leading in this area. And it’s leading in terms of putting in the engineering work, then the engineering work that’s really needed to fix some of those most complex problems in the industry. And I think you’ll see that in our platform, we are focused on outcomes with our platform. And so we light up the partnerships that will actually deliver on those outcomes. And I’ll quote Thomas Kurian, our CEO, the economy of lift and shift, while it might be here, it’s fading fast. And the opportunity for all of us is to focus on outcomes. And when you really boil it down, we are focusing on outcomes with our customers and our partners. That’s what differentiated our platform and Frost and Sullivan call it out. It’s not just the most innovative platform they’ve seen, right? It’s not just the most leading edge, the ability to execute their workout stands head had tall amongst our peers. And like I said, I’m rooting for us all. I think the competition is fantastic, and what better arena to compete in to raise the bar for the quality of care and the standard of care. This is fantastic.
Vince Menzione 17:13
We’re gonna put a link to that award in our show notes. But basically, Frost and Sullivan called out Google Cloud as the technology innovation leadership award winner called out specifically contextual, contextual, lysing. patient data, fast tracking the extraction of meaningful data, leveraging industry, leading machine learning and AI capabilities and building in the privacy and compliance aspects needed. So pretty big kudos there.
Chris Sakalosky 17:39
It’s an engineering feat, quite frankly, I mean, this isn’t an easy sector. Vince, I think most folks, you know, they check your temperature, when you say I want to build a career in health. And it’s not because they think you’re crazy. It’s because of how difficult it is, especially in the tech sector. But what greater legacy, what greater accomplishment, it is to care for billions of your citizens. And we feel we have a very small part of that with our partners. And when you look at the underlying complexity of what each clinician researcher, Doctor operator does on a daily basis, their jobs are hard. The technology behind them is complex. And our focus with our platform is to reduce that complexity is to protect that very precious data that our clinicians reason over every day. And it is to further the decisions that are made day in and day out out there. And I think, again, when you really peel back and you look under the hood, the engineering feat and the ability to execute I think is really what helps us differentiate it’s it’s powerful, it’s powerful.
Vince Menzione 18:39
I’m happy to announce that partner tap has become a founding sponsor of ultimate guide to partnering partner tap is the only partner ecosystem platform designed for the enterprise. Their technology makes it easy to align channel teams with automated account mapping, letting you control what data you share while building a partner revenue engine. I’m so excited to have them on board. mentioned earlier we had Jim Anderson on just recently. And we talked about Thomas Curie ins putting a stake in the ground right with regards to sales teams working with partners, a partner first mentality How does your organization engage with those partners? You’ve mentioned them before in this conversation, but as your team works specifically with them,
Chris Sakalosky 19:24
first of all, what a great leader and Jim Anderson for us to have leading our America’s charge for partnerships if there was ever a constant Sentinel at the door of making sure that that partners are top of mind for us every day. And I will tell you, Thomas could not be any more laser focused on us growing the market opportunity with our partners. Now I won’t quote stats or figures or percentages, because quite frankly, they’re relevant. It’s a way of life for residents. We think about investing in our partners the way we think about investing in our customers. We are focused on outcomes to get Whether, and we put that money to work. So when we think about these early areas of exploration, we’re investing in our partners to invest in our customers. When we think about breaking new ground with new customers, we think about investing through our partners. And we think about implementing and delivering on those outcomes, the promise of those outcomes and driving value for our customers, we’re investing with our partners. So when we think about when you call, quote, deals, or opportunities, right, at the end of the day, there’s financial investments, and every one of them that is slated to go through a partner to delight a customer. And it’s not just rhetoric, you see it every day, we put a disproportionate amount of our Operating Investment every day into our partners, and it’s top down. It’s from Ruth, it’s Thomas, it’s Jim, all the way through the leaders in my organization, and they live and breathe it every day.
Vince Menzione 20:48
One of the things I see I’ve been around the healthcare space, because of my public sector background with Microsoft is that your customers very often become your partners, right? Because a lot of these leading academic medical centers in the like, create their own solutions that then get promulgated out to market. Tell us more about that, if you can, I think
Chris Sakalosky 21:05
in one of your prior podcasts, you talked about the SAS economy. And that’s the reality of the SAS economy, your greatest customers could also be your greatest trading partners, and your greatest delivery partners. When we look at this, and we think about delivering the highest quality of care, as our customers invest in technology to deliver new modalities of care. They’re not only our doctors and clinicians, they’re also our technology partners. And you go back to that list that we were so humbled to beyond that we talked about earlier in the podcast, Vince, that grouping of folks is leading with technology to deliver on new modalities of care. And that I think, is really where the lines have blurred, and why we’re so well positioned. We recognize that the greatest technology companies can be your greatest partners. And as your customers adopt technology, they can be your greatest partners. And so that’s really at the heart of how I see us working at Google, with our customers and our partners.
Vince Menzione 21:58
So for our partners listening today, what are the greatest opportunities for them to work with your organization with Google in healthcare,
Chris Sakalosky 22:05
we focus on health providers, health plans, the largest pharmaceutical companies, and the emerging biotechs, the med tech devices, the providers, as well as the digital native tech companies that are hell bent on breaking new ground on modalities of care. And so we think about the multisegment approach to this. And we’re really focused on growth in those areas, some of the greatest opportunities, you heard me use the word friction earlier, removing friction from the cost of care. Now, if you’re talking to a health plan that might be claims modernization, prior authorization real time claims, lowering the cost of that claim, so they can pour more of that money back in to care benefit navigation, working with their customers in new modalities, meeting customers, wherever they are. And it’s not just the health plan that’s thinking about that events, right? Our providers are thinking about the same way. Right? How can they bring new modalities of care if the pandemic taught us nothing is that new modalities of care are here to stay, Karen homes here to stay. And as laws change, to reach right to catch up to what a pandemic taught us, you’ll see the that that drive to higher quality care, greater access and equity to care, and the emerging in home care blended with the physical brick and mortar we know today. So you won’t be replaced. But you’ll see the blending of that. And technology is the great blender. And we’re talking to our life science and med tech companies. Again, some of the greatest opportunities are helping them bring therapies to market faster, and we provide the platforms that our partners can bring their first and third party solutions anchored on top of our platform, they can bring them to market faster, they can bring them to market more effectively. And they can bring more cohesion to solutions across the entire framework that our customers are looking for in terms of solutions, and reducing again, that that functionality that I talked about earlier to your listeners. And so when we think about those opportunities, we see a great opportunity to advance care for that. But we also see the other side of events, what we do in healthcare is not only hard to say, right, when you think about it, it’s the ability to work with data, the most highly sensitive data, you have to protect that data. And so we bring a different point of view on things like security, and application modernization, because this isn’t about lifting and shifting in the economy for technology’s sake. This is about doing things from a digital first data driven innovation perspective. And our approach, I believe, gives our partners the ability and quite frankly, their ability to deliver on the promise of partnering with Google and partnering with our partners,
Vince Menzione 24:32
I think about removing friction from care. I think we all have so many experiences there with claims processing with just the way care is delivered the modalities of care as you describe it life sciences, those who have been around the life sciences space and understand the complexities of developing drugs, developing medtech and the life that there’s a lot of there’s approval processes. There’s all kinds of things along the way that can be streamlined. And then you just talk about protecting the data and secure In APPLICATION modernization, it’s
Chris Sakalosky 25:01
always through ourselves that there’s operators support teams behind all of those events, is why we get so excited about the care delivery side of this. There’s the operators, the folks who are thinking about the supply chain, and get your head around the opportunity that we have here. We’re talking about an economy that’s expanding not only in healthcare, but in technology. There’ll be a trillion dollar opportunity for us and our partners to go tackle in both the quality of care as well as the operational effectiveness and impact the GDP. It’s just sometimes it’s mind boggling.
Vince Menzione 25:29
He talked about telemedicine, and I think about just what COVID did to us with regards probably like 5% of the population was using telemedicine before COVID, the numbers have steeply risen since I don’t know what the percentages are, maybe you do. But it just strikes me that we all learned through this experience of the last two plus years that we didn’t necessarily have to go into a doctor’s office to get the quality of care we needed
Chris Sakalosky 25:54
certainly that we crossed several chasms. During the pandemic, we saw therapies coming to market faster than they ever had therapies that would take seven to 10 years on a normal course, at a very high cost rate. Right between partnerships between technology companies like Google some of our greatest customers in the pharma biotech and life sciences mark with public officials making real changes to policy and technology to bring those things to market faster. And you just talked about the modalities, the modalities. And again, that’s really we put some significant investments in very early in this we could see during the pandemic and that this wasn’t going to be short, this would be something that not only was here for several months or several years, but would fundamentally change. So the other side of the chasm that recross there was that consumers and consumerism would play a greater role meeting the consumer where they are this concept of care, caring for them everywhere, everywhere they are, that really is what we saw emerge from the pandemic. So it’s not about in home care or telehealth was really about meeting the consumer where they are. And again, what a great place to be at Google with the physical properties we have with the technologies we have with a company wide effort to see them come together during the pandemic and to see what’s still sustainable beyond quoting some stats bits, when you just look at that telehealth frame, it spiked up to 89 or 90% of all care interactions were done via telehealth. And I think there was a lot of pundits that said, Yeah, but that’ll crash down to nearly zero when the pandemic is over. And we haven’t seen that. I think they’ve leveled out in the high 40s, low 50s. And I think there’s even bounces up to 60. When you think about chronic disease care and chronic disease management vents, right, when you think about clinical trial delivery, those modalities of care, touching the patient, where they are telehealth, the multiple valleys of care really light up new experiences that will drive the economy forward that will drive the quality of care forward and drive how we care for the society differently and more effectively,
Vince Menzione 27:51
the genies out of the bottle. Chris, I’ve been saying this ever since the pandemic that we’re never going to go back work, education, health care, all these areas that had been greatly touched through this crisis. I think we all learned quite a bit through it.
Chris Sakalosky 28:05
We did. We certainly did. And we’re still learning this.
Vince Menzione 28:09
So I’d love to shift gears a little bit as this is the ultimate guide to partnering. And as you mentioned, you have had an amazing career in tech and working with partners, you worked in a very partner centric organization before coming to Google. And I know you’ve had experiences here with partners, specifically, can you tell us can you give us an example of when a partner you’re working with got it right working with you and your organization?
Chris Sakalosky 28:32
Yeah, listen, Vince, I mean, we could probably put all of the experience and exposure I’ve had to some of the greatest partners from my past. And the ones I’m currently working today into some a symphony of, of learnings there. And it starts with communication bits. They when I say communicate, I don’t mean just passing information back and forth. When it’s convenient. I mean, that that hyper communication that you see in the greatest relationships, whether they be personal relationships, or whether it be professional relationships, that hyper communication that leads to the collaboration that leads to innovation that leads to forward momentum. And that’s really what I’ve seen from some of our best partners. They’re communicating about what they see in their businesses, they’re communicating about the challenges they see. They’re communicating about the outcomes that their customers are trying to achieve and where they’re stuck in getting. And that informs us to build better products to bring to those opportunities, and informs us on how we can best support their platforms with our platforms and technologies. But it’s that hyper communication, Vince that that is at the core of all of this, what I also have come to learn about some of the best partnerships, certifications, certifications, certifications, our best partners events, they’re certified. They’re certified not only in their areas of focus, but they’re certified in our technology. So what that means to a customer when they’re engaged with that partner is that they know our technology inside and out and they know how to get the best out of our technology to drive the best outcomes for their and our shared customer, one other nugget partners who are investing to scale. That doesn’t mean you have to be big to be great. It’s matter of fact, who have worked, some of the best partners I’ve worked with knew exactly how large they wanted to be, and knew where that tipping point was where they got too big, where the quality of delivery or quality of service would have actually started to erode. So they they either make a conscious decision, some of the best leaders and I’m exposed to some of the best in the business, they know their focus, they don’t deviate from that focus often. And then when they do, it’s exploring new exposure to new areas of growth, what they invest towards their focus, knowing where to invest in staying focused. And when you’re going to grow and scale, investing in that scale, to ensure the quality of why they chose you on day one is the right reason why they stay with you. And quite frankly, with you and Google for years to come on one of your other podcasts, one of your guests said you have to re up in the cloud economy, you have to re recruit your customers every 24 hours. They’re absolutely right. And I think it’s that attention to detail that attention to growth and scale. And so I think it really is what some of the best partners do.
Vince Menzione 31:04
You bring up three really great points here. First of all, the hyper communication, so important to have a consistent, persistent, and I didn’t say aggressive dialogue with one another, like being totally honest and open about what we’re achieving where we need to work and remedy results. You talked about certifications. And I know that’s an area of Jim’s focus. And Google’s focus, in particular, to make sure that more and more partners customers have those certifications are trained on Google’s cloud. And then you talked about investing to scale. Some organizations try to be all things to all people, instead of focusing on the right areas of growth
Chris Sakalosky 31:39
in the health arena. Again, you can say I’m in everything, you can have a hand in every pot, but the reality is you won’t be great at everything. So what you want Google to know you for what you want Google’s team to know that you are great at so that they can apply that knowledge so that when they see that thing in their customer, that outcome that they’re trying to drive, they should be able to correlate that with you and your offerings, and your skills and your certifications.
Vince Menzione 32:03
So I understand you might have a big announcement coming, Chris, in the near future. Can you tell us more about that
Chris Sakalosky 32:10
fit, I would love to share some big news here on this podcast. And maybe I can follow back up and insert one in the future. But we’re not quite there ready to make this announcement. But it will be big, I think it’ll be great for the marketplace will be great for our health and life sciences customers. And I’m hopeful that by the time our CEO Thomas Kurian, goes on stage at HL th which is mid November, that we’ll be able to make that announcement. And there’ll be a great partnership tucked in there that we’re very, very excited about a couple of bread crumbs there for our listeners, but can’t quite let the cat out of the bag just yet.
Vince Menzione 32:42
When is that event?
Chris Sakalosky 32:43
I believe it’s the 13th of November, it begins inside the it runs through the wonderful. Okay,
Vince Menzione 32:47
well, we’re gonna stay tuned, Chris, and hope to hear back from you at that point. cliffhanger. Yes, yeah, our partners that wish to work with you and your team, what’s the best way to do so?
Chris Sakalosky 32:58
Vince, I’m going to break my answer up into two things. Because as I mentioned before, our our partners are varied. And some of them are strategic integrators or solutions integrators and others are ISVs, those we’re building at unique IP to bring in some of them have practices in both. But I want to speak to our ISVs. First, you gave me the opportunity to talk about our health platform earlier. And what we’re building there, that’s a great opportunity for us to think about integrating from the ground up not talking about lifting someone else’s technology just on the Google Cloud Platform. But for the sake of saying we running Google Cloud Platform, I’m talking about truly working with Google to invest right to integrate our core technology stack is yours, that’s an ISV saying we’re willing to invest, we’re willing to make that and we’ve seen great successes, I was just with a partner the other day, and they were talking to a customer and I haven’t had an opportunity to be a fly on the wall and listen in. And they were talking about that there’s a difference between running on a cloud versus being truly integrated and leveraging the stack from the bottom up. And the fact that they could actually transfer images faster, where their radiologists were not, were actually saying I want to move to the cloud. You think that there’s all these barriers with line speeds and connectivity, but when they integrated it from the ground up, they got greater fidelity, they actually move the industry forward. That’s impact and so to our ISVs, let’s build together, let’s integrate together. And let’s exploit the best technologies from both of us together at the core for the Yesyes. It’s kind of a dot dot dot off the back end of that. Let’s focus on outcomes. Let’s truly focus on the outcomes that these great technologies are intended to unleash. Let’s figure out together where you are. And we’ll meet you there whether you are focusing on the providers and with highest quality of care and new modalities of care, whether you’re with the largest health plans, which are looking to remove the friction and modernize that claims process, or whether we’re on the life science and med device function bringing therapies to market faster for us you about communicating where our customers are looking to go and keeping our investments and our focus solely on those outcomes. Everything else takes care of itself. And you’ll go back to the advice I gave earlier, communication, communication, communication, certification, certification, certification, and focus, focus, focus, we can do those things well together, Vince, right. Without comes at the core, I think both audiences of that we work with and have the privilege of working with every day, we’ll be in great shape, and we’ll be able to harvest that opportunity that sits out in front of us.
Vince Menzione 35:30
So let’s build together and focus on outcomes.
Chris Sakalosky 35:33
I should be interviewing you, Vince, you say? Well, I think about outcomes,
Vince Menzione 35:36
I think about costs, I think about quality of care, I think about longevity and justice, the most impactful area, I mean, I don’t want to hype it, but it really is the most important area of focus for us in technology. So as you might know, I’m fascinated with the career journey, we got to work together at Microsoft, and you had a stellar career there as well. And you’ve continued to be a rising star on this fast track. I’d love to like peel back a little bit with you, because it looks easy from the outside. But I’m sure and I want to understand was there a challenge or obstacle you needed to overcome along this amazing journey,
Chris Sakalosky 36:14
we often talk about diversity in terms of race, creed, color, religion, and so many other dimensions. And for me, those are still very important, but so is experience. And one of the greatest challenges I faced in business was diversity of experience. My first roles were rooted in the enterprise. And so I got labeled the enterprise guy, do you see people pegging you in there? And as opportunities would come, they kind of had you said, Well, it’s the enterprise guy, what would an enterprise guy know about the channel, the first one I kind of stumbled into, I had a mentor who said, Go do something new goes, do something you haven’t done before, go do something that they wouldn’t expect you to do. That mentor gave me my first opportunity on the channel side, then I got labeled the channel guy, which is interesting. And then and then like, the next thing came up, it’s like, you don’t know much about small business. And so then I was like, Wait a second, there’s a pattern forming here, whatever they say, I don’t know how to do or don’t have experience. And maybe I should go get that experience. And as I started to do that more deliberately fits. What I realized is I was becoming a more rounded leader, I became a more balanced leader. And quite frankly, the decisions I made, the people I hired helped me build better businesses, better decisions, a better teammate, a better leader, quite frankly, even crept into my personal life just being more broad in my thinking. And you could go all the way through my career and see a more deliberate change each time to learn more of the businesses. And so folks will say, Well, how’d you get to health? Well, I started thinking about legacy at some point events, bringing all of those experiences together, and what better way to do it than in a health framework. And there’s so many worthy industries to plant your career. And so I’m not here advocating just for health, it just happened to be something I was so passionate about being touched through care through my entire life in meaningful ways. And those who provided that care, I wanted to leave something behind, I wanted to leave teams behind, I wanted to build something that that would last far beyond my name, far beyond any of our names, but that actually made meaningful progress in care. And so that’s what led me there. But the journey to it fits, being the enterprise guy being the channel guy being the small business guy being the mid market guy, and eventually full circle back to enterprise strategic and multisegment discipline, bringing those all together in the health business is really what has lit up my time and my energy here at Google. Now. I was gonna ask
Vince Menzione 38:26
you, how did it transform you? But I think I just heard that it’s lit you up, Chris, in a big way? Certainly has. And I’m still learning. I’m still learning. And I love what you’re doing here. But there is a favorite question I have for our listeners, you’re hosting a dinner party. And you can invite any three guests to this amazing dinner party from the present or the past, whom would you invite?
38:51
And why?
Chris Sakalosky 38:52
Vince, we could take that a lot of directions. Or we could be talking about current politicians and have conversations about their decision making. We could take that towards either childhood or current sports idols or celebrities. I think given the fact that we’re talking about health, we’re talking about technology, and we’re talking to our partners, I’ll keep it. I’ll keep it business oriented. I think the first guest I probably bring to the table, someone who I admired from a distance but had had some interactions over my career with and that would be Judy Faulkner. I had a lot of people I’ve asked this question I’ve been asked this question before, and I’ve answered the same way. And folks usually say, Chris, why Judy, and I will tell you, I’ve never been more impressed by someone who has led their passion for outcomes, passion, for care, passionate for Hollywood, every decision they make just a maniacal focus on their customer. And I strive to even reach the shadow that she’s cast in that regard. It’s something I’ve admired again, from a distance from the business she’s built. And there’s so many businesses quite frankly industries that it’s that have sprouted out in the wake of what she has built up at Epic. I just, it’s truly remarkable and I would love to ask her to Where that passion comes from where that focus and drive comes from? And quite frankly, how does she navigate some of the toughest decisions that a CEO can face as, as new markets emerge with the complexities of the regulations that she has to navigate it just truly humbling.
Vince Menzione 40:14
And for those who don’t know, Judith Faulkner is the founder of Epic Systems, which is the largest in the healthcare, electronic records, health records industry,
Chris Sakalosky 40:23
indeed, and I guess if I had two more, and I won’t go into in depth, the detail, but if I had two more to invite, I think I would invite Florence Nightingale may explain why I said I’m not a history buff, but the the Florence Nightingale was one of the first to introduce data analytics to the to the medical profession, I did not. I think it’s fascinating because either lineage, we’re walking in her footsteps, IT systems, the beach, I feel like my feet are just right next to her side by side with hers. And here we are today. Still, however, many decades later, still talking about how we bring great insights to the best clinicians deliver the best care. And how did she come up with that? How did she think through that? How did that Where did that come from? It’s that founders inventors mentality, and I would just love to put my brain next to them, because they because it’s just it’s truly mesmerizing. I think the last person Vince, that I probably do so this is coming from the the father of two daughters to teenagers who are just starting to realize their potential. If you’ve seen the movie Hidden Figures, I think it’s really, really humbling to watch my daughters realize their potential and just early on their journey, but to actually have Melbourne movement, speak to them about her journey in STEM, the impact that she had, as a woman in business, the barrier, she broke what’s available to them. Now that wasn’t there, to give them some perspective on what is afforded to them today, that wasn’t there before. But I’ll go back. I’m a huge proponent of STEM. And I’d love our girls to consider them to consider that field and technology, whether it be in healthcare or engineering or something else, but just to expose them to what the power of STEM is. And quite frankly, I think STEM is going to be woven into the fabric of our economy for years. And just so they have self sustained longevity. I’d love to see them in those fields. And I think, What greater mentor if I could have three people at a dinner table outside of the first two I mentioned would be my two girls and elbow. So again, what was what was the cool dinner party with all of
Vince Menzione 42:12
such impactful guests like, can I come along, maybe I can bring a beverage
Chris Sakalosky 42:16
up both, we’ll probably just sit back and let them talk as long as they will be fun. But
Vince Menzione 42:22
yeah, and I don’t want to leave this untouched because you talked about STEM. And one of the issues I have I feature a lot of women, guests, women leaders, women and people of color not entering the technology arena in the STEM arena. In the numbers we need them to
Chris Sakalosky 42:37
listen, when you actually look at Google’s wide initiatives, one of them that you’ll see as a heavy investment in STEM, and heavy investment in STEM across the multiple dimensions. diversity in STEM is just one of those dimensions. And we’re so excited to put the investments that we have into that we do it from a we do it with buy through partnerships with our partners, we have some like minded partners who do those types of community outreach and driving STEM at the earliest stages in education. But we have starters and incubators focused on minority owned companies, I happen to sit on the board of capital G and my good friend Jackson, Georgia is laser focused as part of his initiative on bringing Google’s capital to pioneers and innovations in STEM in technology for entrepreneurs. But you can see in so many other areas that that will find its way into the community and society. Again, it’s humbling effort. It’s a company wide effort. And it’s something you’ll see our particular grouping with our partners and our customers are like mine who think about equity and access to care and equity and access to STEM is the start of that. And that’s where you’ll see our focus.
Vince Menzione 43:40
And capital G is
Chris Sakalosky 43:41
the venture capital arm of Google. Correct. It’s our Well, one of our many investment arms. Yes,
Vince Menzione 43:46
you have Chris been an amazing guest such a good friend such a great and energetic conversation with you today. I want to thank you for being generous with your time with our listeners with these amazing partners before them for the 1000s of ISVs MSPs resellers s eyes listening today, what advice would you give to them to optimize for success working with Google?
Chris Sakalosky 44:10
Well, first of all, I want to thank them, then send you a big ditto button. If I could punch it, I would we appreciate the investments you make. I recognize that every day you all are investing in Google as much as we invest in you. And as founders, as owners as operators, we can’t thank you enough for us. It’s about taking advantage of the investments. We’re what we are looking to hydrate your businesses with our investments. And we’re looking to do it to hydrate outcomes for our customers. And so let’s work together let’s communicate through that. Let’s get focused together, let’s get really clear on what we want to do together through that communication. We’ll invest in those areas. And we’ll bring those things to market. And when you think about our platforms, where you’re going to invest if you’re those who are thinking about building IP and you’re thinking about which cloud you build on building with Google Cloud, we’ve got partner programs, our partner ranch program being just one of them which allows you to build with develop with we have tech Pinnacle teams will work with you on that digital native integration at the core of your technology stack and ours together. And we have great integrators who are looking to partner and that partner to partner pieces, the new dimension, Vincent last year, that partner and partner dimension is not something to be overlooked, it is not trivial, when we can bring our best ISVs to our best integrators, it is magical to see how quickly we can bring value and how the delivery of those outcomes to our customers. And so that would be the advice I live on. We can’t wait to talk to the ones we haven’t talked to before. So please look us up. We’d love there and your business. And for those that we work with every day, we thank you for the investments you make today, and the ones you’re gonna meet in the near future. So thanks.
Vince Menzione 45:40
And Chris, we’re gonna provide links in our show notes, certainly to you on LinkedIn. But also, you mentioned the partner Advantage Program. And if you could provide us that information, I’ll pass it along to our partners,
Chris Sakalosky 45:50
you bet. We’ll make sure you get all that over to events, but really appreciate the time with you. And the work you’re doing here with this leading podcast and building channel, I think is fantastic. And I think it serves a greater good, just humbled to be a part of it. So thanks for having me today.
Vince Menzione 46:02
humbled to have you Chris, thank you so much for your time today, you the I am so excited to announce the ultimate partnerships mastermind. Our first event is taking place October 9 and 10th at the gaylord hotel in Orlando, Florida. This first of its kind live event will feature some of the best leaders in the partnership business. The group I call the ultimate partnerships Dream Team, and leaders from Microsoft in person to help you achieve your greatest results in 2023. For more details, follow the link in the show notes. attendance for this event is strictly limited to support and intimate executive dialogue. So please register today. Before it’s sold out. I hope you join us my friend at the beautiful Gaylord hotel, October 9 and 10.
Announcer 46:59 Thanks so much for listening to this episode of The Ultimate Guide to partnering with your host Vince Menzione online at Ultimate Guide to partnering.com and facebook.com/ultimate Guide to partnering. We’ll catch you next time on The Ultimate Gui