The tech company has the critical role in successful 'downstream' deployment

The failure here (as I see it) is that even senior communities and their parent companies who supposedly know all about senior care can turn quite clueless when it comes to the wants, needs, thoughts and opinions of their individual residents and staff when it comes to adopting technology. This is also true of care staff (DONs, social workers, GCMs) who can be surprisingly tech-phobic and reluctant to change.

This is where the 'downstream' part comes in...the hard, usually thankless work of training, IT, marketing and sheer convincing that has to take place (in marketing-land, definitely not the glamor spot.) What John is saying is that the tech company cannot just take the sale and walk away. The tech company has to attach a 'string' to the sale--the implementation plan string. You cannot leave it to senior management (on both sides) who think they can wave a magic wand and it all falls into place!

It means the tech company has to fully understand the users and not go on gut or assumptions about them: the older adult residents (and their differing needs and attitudes) and the care staff who must use and take action on the data. Especially this last group has a wide range of attitudes, abilities and knowledge that are not easily discerned until you work with them.  The tech company works with both to develop an implementation, rollout, training and marketing plan--and buy-in . And it needs to allocate a project head to the customer to lead a responsible, accessible project/account management team who will see to this.

The responsibility ultimately is the tech company's to ensure all of this. And they have to be firm about their participation, measure of control and responsibility, even at the risk of losing the sale--because if it is badly implemented it will be lost anyway.