Watch and Learn: Sit Down with Chello’s Donald Milan and Zachary Kelly

Chello sat down with the team at Codat to explain in-depth their company’s mission to provide better banking solutions for healthcare practices in the small to mid-sized sector and how data has played a vital role in making that happen. Below is a transcription of the dialogue if you want to read instead of view.

Can you start by telling us a bit about yourselves and Chello?

Zach: Hi, I’m Zach Kelly. I lead our growth team here at Chello, which is a combined marketing, sales, and product strategy organization.

Donald: My name is Donald Milam, and I lead all things technology at Chello.

Zach: Our company, Chello, is built to provide better banking solutions for medical and healthcare practices. Whether it’s a small practice or a small provider network, we leverage advanced analytics and data to provide predictive analysis to those practices so they can better run their businesses.

At Chello, we like to say that we provide three things in terms of our offering. One is faster access to funding. Two is the rhyme or reason around why and when to access funding. And three is more accurate underwriting. We bring together multiple data sources, not only from the traditional banking sense but also layering in specific data sources from the healthcare industry to build a more complete picture of their practice.

Who is your target market?

Donald: Chello’s target market is small to medium-sized healthcare practices. Really, it can be anybody who files a claim and does business in the healthcare industry. The sweet spot is between one to forty providers. We see our clients ranging anywhere from your doctor that you see for a routine checkup to someone operating a long-term care facility.

What makes the market unique?

Donald: The unique thing about this market is that it’s very cash flow dependent. The healthcare providers may not see reimbursement for their services for 30, 60, or even 90 days. So there’s a very large gap in the time when they provide services to when they get reimbursed for them. 

Zach: Part of what makes this industry unique is that it’s complex. There are multiple data sources in the mix. There are claims and payments flowing back and forth between insurance companies and healthcare practices. And for a small and medium-sized practice, often that’s too complex. So we want to be able to give them a leg up and make it easier for them.

What problems do you solve for your customers?

DonaId: In the healthcare industry, it can take quite some time to get paid by the insurance companies. So access to funds is critical. Chello is providing both insights into when they’ll need funding and immediate access to that funding. 

Zach: In short, Chello’s value proposition to our market is the ability to look into the next three months clearly and ask the question, “How am I doing today?” “When and why should I access funding?” And have an immediate way to access that funding when they need it.

Donald: Chello’s created software that is smarter, better, and faster than what our competitors in the market offer. So that’s our real niche. We can be smarter by collecting more data points. We can be more accurate and better by offering more robust insights from the data that we receive. And then having that data collection allows us to offer funds faster.

Zach: Generally, data is a big part of our value proposition. So when a customer comes to us, they often have a disparate picture of their performance. They have data in their current bank accounts, they have data in their healthcare systems, and they have data in their accounting systems. 

At Chello, we bring that all into one place so that practices can more easily answer questions about their business and finances. As a result, we tend to see businesses sharing their data pretty prevalently.

What’s next for Chello?

Donald: We want to grow in the ways that our customers see the most benefit, whether that’s more robust insights inside of the platform or offering and expanding our financial services.

Zach: Here at Chello, it’s very important to maintain course on our mission, which is to help small and medium-sized businesses thrive in a difficult economy. So we’re putting our best foot forward, growing our team, and trying to add to our mix of solutions to be more efficient and effective for the healthcare industry.