People of Perficient: Meet John Ideler, Director of Healthcare and Life Sciences

After nearly two decades with our global digital consultancy, John Ideler, director in our healthcare and life sciences (HLS) business unit, is expanding his role and helping to build a culture of collaboration at Perficient. I recently sat down with him to learn more about his role and how he manages tactical and strategic responsibilities. I loved hearing about how his team is consistently exceeding client expectations with a “can-do” attitude, and I’m sure you will too!

John, Thanks for joining me today. I’d love to kick off with hearing about your career journey with Perficient. How do you impact the company’s culture of collaboration? What does a typical day or project look like?  

I have been with Perficient for 19 years. In 2002, Perficient acquired the small technology company I was working for in Chicago. Our healthcare practice incubated out of the Chicago team in 2008, originally focusing on data analytics and warehouses. I joined the healthcare team several years later, as I had already been managing multiple healthcare projects. While a part of the healthcare team as a senior project manager, leadership asked me to lead the execution team. This team consists of all project and program managers, scrum masters, product owners and product managers.

The team grew from three project managers up to 22 team members as of today. Last year, Brent Teiken, the general manager of healthcare and life sciences, asked me to expand my role to develop processes and procedures that build a stronger and more robust delivery excellence presence and operational mindset. I initiated the HLS onboarding experience, providing a sense of belonging and community to new hires. I also developed an HLS account dashboard to track the performance of all HLS accounts.

I am focused on building stronger collaboration between HLS colleagues.

My typical day consists of balancing the tactical needs of the execution team with the more strategic role of delivery excellence. The execution team requires:

Staffing

Recruiting
Career counseling
Career growth
Training
Reviewing the team status
Any operation support required

In the delivery excellence role, I am usually:

Onboarding one or two HLS colleagues per week
Tracking the health of all HLS owned accounts
Developing new processes
Assisting in managing daily operations

Since joining the HLS team, I have been managing the delivery of projects and ensuring the HLS execution team is enabled to meet and exceed client expectations. We are accomplishing this through best practices in project management. The HLS team is bringing delivery excellence to each client project.

What energizes you in your daily responsibilities?   

In my role: I like providing value to my team at Perficient. Every day presents a unique challenge to solve.  As Forrest Gump says, “Life is like a box of chocolates – you never know what you are going to get”. That sums up my daily routine. There are always unexpected items that need answers, guidance, or action.

On my team: I thoroughly enjoy watching my talented team members consistently exceeding client expectations and going above and beyond to support the execution team. I enjoy my interactions with the team and am energized by their hard work and enthusiasm.

At this company: I am impressed with the entrepreneurial environment at Perficient. We establish opportunities to grow your career with challenging and fulfilling work at every client. I have worked on many projects, with many practices and team members. I am consistently amazed at the “can do” spirit of every team that I have worked with at Perficient.

What has kept you with Perficient for the last 19 years? What continues to excite you about the company, today?

If you would have asked me 19 years ago, when my company was acquired, if I thought I would still be working at Perficient, I probably would have said no. But over the years, I came to appreciate Perficient as a very entrepreneurial place to work.

Perficient greatly appreciates out-of-the-box thinking and new and improved ways to meet client’s needs. 

The size, scope, breadth, and complexity of client work has grown, which provides challenging and rewarding project and program management experiences. Perficient also allows you to be you, and to do your job without a lot of unneeded oversight, provided things are going well.

The most important reason I stay at Perficient is the philosophy that for all projects, Perficient does it with the client, not to the client.

Throughout my 19 years at Perficient, I have enjoyed the comradery of the various practices, teams, and team members I have worked with over the years.  It sounds cliché, but I do get inspired by the hard work and dedication of all Perficient colleagues.

Healthcare Leaders Turn to Us

Our healthcare experts  understand the unique challenges facing the industry. The 10 largest health systems and 10 largest health insurers in the U.S. have counted on us to support their end-to-end digital success. Modern Healthcare has also recognized us as the fourth largest healthcare IT consulting firm.

We bring pragmatic, strategically-grounded know-how to our clients’ initiatives. And our work gets attention – not only by industry groups that recognize and award our work but also by top technology partners that know our teams will reliably deliver complex, game-changing implementations. Most importantly, our clients demonstrate their trust in us by partnering with us again and again. We are incredibly proud of our 90% repeat business rate because it represents the trust and collaborative culture that we work so hard to build everyday within our teams and with every client.

With more than 20 years of experience in the healthcare industry, Perficient is a trusted, end-to-end, global digital consultancy.

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