A comment by a financial analyst in Friday’s National Post made me think of an old Canadian Tire ad series: “more than just tires”.
Blackmont Capital Markets was commenting on TELUS’ acquisition of Emergis and their analyst said he was caught completely off guard and doesn’t see the fit.
If you call Telus to buy a phone and after that, they try to offer you an electronic medical record, it just doesn’t jive.
Huh? Is it really possible that a telecom analyst thinks this is a likely outcome of the transaction with Emergis? That TELUS is just in the retail phone business (and presumably the same holds for the other players in the sector)?
Let’s try to look past such an incredibly simplistic perspective.
Surely Blackmont would agree that the health care system could benefit from improved electronic communications? For examples, see my post from 2 weeks ago or take a look at the supplement that accompanied Friday’s Globe and Mail.
So, if you are following along, health care might be an attractive vertical for a carrier to target. How could a telecom carrier help?
Why are diagnostic labs still producing radiological films and using couriers or patients to move them around? Why do we still see faxed lab reports in our files with doctors squinting to read through the poor resolution?
Do you think there might be a systems approach to reduce our health care costs and maybe improve the quality of service delivery?
Maybe Blackmont had been surprised from the perspective that Bell couldn’t make a go of integrating Emergis, so they had trouble seeing the difference with TELUS. I could understand that view – at least intellectually. But to suggest that they have trouble seeing how medical records jive with a retail sale of phones? Either Investor Relations needs to do some educating, or Blackmont needs to learn more about the telecom sector.
I can see the ads in my mind (after the holiday season, of course): more than just phones.