Provident Healthcare Partners enables flexibility and better client servicing with Zoom Phone

Boston-based Provident Healthcare Partners is a healthcare investment bank specializing in mergers and acquisitions advisory, strategic planning, and capital formation services for middle-market and emerging growth companies. The company has extensive experience in both mature and developing areas of the healthcare services industry.  

While its services previously involved frequent travel for in-person client meetings and traditional in-office desk phones, Provident had to lean on Zoom to maintain business continuity when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. They soon discovered unrivaled cost savings, flexibility, and reduced IT friction as a result.  

Johanna Enwright, Corporate Development at Provident Healthcare Partners, shared her experience deploying the Zoom platform, and how Zoom Phone, in particular, has changed the way they conduct business. 

Surprise! Onboarding can be easy

Enwright has been with Provident for more than a decade, starting as a receptionist and evolving into a jack-of-all-trades, supporting business development and IT for the firm. She’s supervised three different — and sometimes strenuous — phone transitions during her tenure. 

“I had to learn my last phone system because I was so sick of calling support,” she explained. “We were with Mitel and were extremely unhappy.” So when an employee brought Zoom to Enwright’s attention, she was interested in trying the technology out. 

“Right before the pandemic hit, one of our employees asked if we could switch over to Zoom. Once we realized everyone was Zooming now and wasn’t attending anything in person, it made sense to get licenses for the entire firm.” 

Sixty-five phone licenses later, Enwright was prepared for yet another rigorous implementation process but found herself surprised by how little she had to do.

“Everyone I’ve talked to on the Zoom side is extremely knowledgeable,” she noted. “My onboarding process here was incredible — I had to be told 10 times that these phones come ready to plug in. I made [the customer success manager] send me all 65 phones because I thought I had to turn them on when I realized I didn’t have to.”

“It’s been such a good onboarding process. I know I can just ping anyone or email someone quickly and they’ll always be there to answer any question,” Enwright added.

Powering flexible work through phone communications

With both softphones and hard phones in use, the Provident team found it easy to enable a flexible working environment for employees. “With Wi-Fi phones, you can use them anywhere and it’s all intuitive,” Enwright said. 

Zoom Phone’s interoperability fosters greater flexibility across the firm, adding a sense of trust in a new hybrid working model. Enwright added, “The functionality to move from the desk phone to the cell phone is big with my boss. We never had this functionality before. Sitting at your desk for nine hours a day and not being able to run an errand because you’re afraid of missing a call is now a thing of the past.”

The team uses Zoom Phone’s SMS feature to enhance both prospect outreach and employee privacy simultaneously. Enwright said, “The text message feature is really cool — the [employees] can send texts without giving out their personal cell phone number to any potential prospects.” 

Cost savings came easy once the Provident team deployed Zoom Phone. “[Zoom Phone] cut our phone system bill significantly. I was grateful — it made me look really good!” Enwright said. “It’s, hands down, so beneficial to us.”

Client servicing gets an upgrade

When it came to servicing clients via Zoom, the Provident team found that the digital format better supported doctors’ busy schedules. “A lot of our clients are working all day, so you have to meet a bunch of shareholders often at night when they’re done practicing. That was typically pretty hard on those with families.”  

“Now, the vast majority of those shareholder meetings are taking place virtually. We know this doctor can be home with his family, and people can avoid travel or staying up late,” Enwright explained. 

Zoom also helped Provident maintain close relationships with clients, even without the travel and in-person time. “Having the video aspect has given a real personal touch to our business, and it’s beneficial on both ends. Travel was a huge part of our business, and now we can get away from that,” Enwright said.

Elevating employee (and IT) experience 

As Provident Healthcare Partners navigates a new hybrid work model, employee experience is helping to guide the firm’s decision-making. “We have a lot of employees that don’t live in the Massachusetts area, so now they get to be home while still feeling like they’re in the office,” Enwright said. “Then when we do see each other in the office, it’s great!” 

Though teams are distributed, Provident employees don’t feel any less connected — in part thanks to a new video-on culture. “Video was not a thing before, but now we can just jump on staff meetings to see each other. That’s more important than any cost savings,” Enwright said.

Beyond Zoom Meetings and Zoom Phone, Provident employees have also embraced Zoom Team Chat as a tool for collaboration and information-sharing. “[Workers] love that they can search in chat and find files. They ask, ‘Why do I have to send an email when I can just send files over chat?’” Enwright noted, “They’ve completely stopped using Slack.” 

With Zoom’s unified communications platform, Provident employees have the intuitive experience they need to remain agile and efficient in their day-to-day work. “It’s just nice to be all on one platform — I can’t stress that enough. It’s been fluid for the workers and an easy transition,” Enwright said. And it’s made her experience better too, as both administrative and IT support. 

“The fact that I can schedule and create meetings through Zoom, that then integrate with [Microsoft] Outlook, was a really big selling point for me on the admin side,” Enwright said. Plus, with workers able to see each other’s status and online presence via the Zoom client, redundant administrative work has become a thing of the past. “Workers don’t have to rely on me as much to see who is on a call, who they can get ahold of. I also get less and less calls about problems and user errors. Now, everyone is using Zoom, so it’s just easy.”

Becoming a Zoom evangelist

Provident’s positive experience with Zoom Phone has caused a ripple effect, with Enwright helping others get acquainted with the technology. “My boss also owns an auto body shop, and I now am transitioning that company [to Zoom Phone] too.” 

“It was great to know I could pass on this savings to someone else. It’s just two guys that run an auto body shop, so they don’t have time to answer phones all day,” Enwright said. She’s even shown them how they can answer the phone from any device of their choosing, whether they’re in the shop or on the go. 

And her evangelism doesn’t stop there — Enwright has even talked with her sister about using Zoom for her company and coaches Provident clients on how to use the platform. “Now that everybody has Zoom, I can even troubleshoot with clients.” 

Enwright knows this is only the beginning of Provident’s relationship with Zoom. “I can’t wait to see where we can go with a lot of the platform, how we can evolve into it more. It’s already helped us grow so much.” 

To learn more about how financial services organizations use Zoom, visit our Zoom for Financial Services page.