What building with our customers means, in practice

At Kodiak, a simple, yet powerful North Star guides our work every day: Building value with values. 

It’s not an abstract concept. The perspective shows up in concrete ways, especially in how we build our technologies. 

We never build in isolation. All our products exist thanks to hand-in-hand collaboration with our customers.  

In practice, that means listening closely to what our customers are telling us. It also means being willing to follow a problem wherever it leads, even if that wasn’t part of the original plan. 

I’ll give you just one example of what that looks like. 

The story of Payor Market Intelligence 

It started with a question, not a roadmap. 

One of our customers came to us after being approached by another vendor offering payor benchmarking data. The data didn’t feel reliable, and it didn’t feel actionable. 

At the same time, the provider’s internal teams were having their own conversations. Their revenue cycle leaders and advocacy teams were trying to better understand payor behavior in their market. Someone at the organization asked the question, “If Kodiak already has access to this data, why wouldn’t we go to them?” 

That’s how we got pulled in. 

From there, the focus wasn’t on building a product. It was on understanding the problem. What problem are you actually trying to solve? What decisions are you trying to make? What’s missing today? 

What we heard was clear. They needed better benchmarks. Not generic benchmarks, but a real, grounded view of how payors were behaving in their specific markets. 

Taking the time to build technology the right way 

Before we built anything, we had to make sure we were approaching it the right way. That meant doing the legal and compliance work to understand what we could share, how we could share it, and what level of aggregation was appropriate. 

We could have moved quickly, but moving fast without discipline doesn’t serve anyone. 

Once we had that foundation in place, we started with a prototype. It wasn’t a fully formed product—just yet. But it was something tangible enough to test to see if we were solving the right problem. 

We brought it back to that customer. We workshopped it together. Then we expanded the conversation, bringing in a broader group of revenue cycle leaders to pressure-test the idea. 

The feedback was consistent. This was a real need. 

That’s when we made the decision to invest in turning it into a product. 

From initial steps to industry impact 

Payor Market Intelligence launched in 2024. 

At its core, PMI gives healthcare organizations the ability to benchmark their reimbursement performance against peer institutions in their state or region. 

In a relatively short period of time, it’s become a meaningful part of how many of our customers operate. Patient financial services leaders are using it to have more transparent, data-driven conversations with payors, especially as claims denials and delays continue to rise. 

In the beginning, we surfaced a wide range of metrics. We wanted to give customers as much visibility as possible. But over time, we saw that too much information can slow teams down. 

We learned early that access to data alone isn’t enough. 

So, we adjusted. 

We focused the product on what actually moves the needle. Which payors are creating the biggest drag on your net revenue? Which ones are impacting your yield? Where is your team spending the most time just trying to get claims paid? 

Those are the questions that matter in practice. 

That evolution didn’t come from us sitting in a room making assumptions. It came directly from ongoing conversations with our customers, and from watching how they were using the product in real environments. 

Why this approach matters 

There are a lot of ways to build technology. 

You can start with a vision and try to fit customers into it. You can prioritize speed and release something early, then refine it later. You can build based on internal assumptions about what the market needs. 

We take a different approach. 

We start with real problems. We stay close to the people experiencing them. We treat product development as a collaborative process, not a one-way delivery. 

That approach shapes more than just individual products. It shapes how we think about our roadmap, how we prioritize investments, and how we define success. 

In many cases, it also means stepping in more directly. Through our managed services, we help take on parts of the work that are difficult to staff or sustain internally. The goal is to reduce friction and give teams more space to focus on what matters most. 

Know you can come to us 

If something isn’t working the way it should, reach out. Next time you see our team at an event, come find us. Pick up the phone. Send us an email. Text us. Ask the hard questions. 

We know that you’re busy solving real problems under real constraints while navigating complexity every day. 

We’re in it with you. 



This article is part of Kodiak’s Healthcare Excellence Series, co-authored by CEO Derek Bang, Chief Product & Technology Officer Ankit Sharma, and Eric Boggs, Vice President, Platform Growth. 

Read more from the series:

• A glimpse into Kodiak’s product development approach 
• The unique power of Kodiak data