Cracking the Code: Selling Tech into the ABA C-Suite

What real platform adoption looks like inside an ABA provider—and why many vendors miss the mark

When I was in the C-suite of an ABA provider, technology platforms rarely came up unless there was a problem. We weren’t out shopping for innovation. We were fighting fires.

A platform would enter the conversation only when something broke or caused enough operational drag that we had to stop and fix it. Maybe we couldn’t pull a KPI report for the board. Maybe an inefficient workflow was driving too much overtime or hiring churn. Maybe a payor audit exposed documentation risk. Maybe we needed to engage families stuck on a growing waitlist. Maybe hiring had slowed down, onboarding was inconsistent, or we couldn’t keep staff. Or maybe claims were getting denied at an alarming rate, exposing weaknesses in billing accuracy, documentation, or prior authorization tracking.

Whatever the trigger, the C-suite would huddle, assess the pain, and assign someone to figure it out.

Whoever “owned” the problem got the mandate.

• If it was a data access issue, the CIO would dig in.
• If it was about improving scheduling efficiency, the COO took it.
• If hiring needed attention, HR stepped in.
• If onboarding broke down, Clinical took the lead.
• If there was an audit or legal risk, Compliance got the hot potato.
• If it involved revenue leakage, denial rates, or missed collections, the CFO was on the hook.

This siloed triage model led to patchwork fixes. If someone could propose an RPA script, a tweak to the legacy platform, or a bolt-on tool with a plausible ROI, that often won the day—especially if it didn’t require cross-functional buy-in. Strategy took a back seat to speed and local wins.

I am pretty sure that our ABA organization was better than most at navigating these situations. We had a strong leadership team that trusted one another, and we often turned reactive challenges into opportunities to pilot new workflows or introduce tech enhancements. But even in that environment, we didn’t always have the time or resources to architect a fully integrated long-term solution. The reality is, when you're growing quickly and serving thousands of families, you triage first—and optimize later.

Compare that to my time at Optum. There, we had cross-functional strategy sessions to design the architecture: integrations, capabilities, data access layers, reporting infrastructure. I personally had a $100M budget, and I was one of at least ten tech leaders with a similar scope. We didn’t talk about patching problems—we talked about enabling the business.

That kind of structure doesn’t exist in ABA. Even among the biggest providers, strategic coordination across tech, ops, and clinical is rare. Some groups are starting to build this muscle, but they’re still the exception. That creates tough problems for vendors trying to enter the space—and tough constraints for providers trying to scale.

Who Really Buys Tech in ABA?

If you're a tech platform trying to sell into ABA, here’s what you need to understand: you're not selling to “ABA” as a whole. You're selling into a fragmented C-suite, where pain is isolated, budgets are limited, and the person you’re talking to may only control one slice of the puzzle.

There are a few real-world paths I’ve seen vendors take:

1. The “Single Champion” Play

Platforms like Silna and Brellium often win by identifying a single executive sponsor—someone who owns a real pain point and has the autonomy to act. These vendors don’t try to replace the whole stack. They integrate lightly with legacy systems, reduce friction, and deliver quick wins. That’s often enough to get in the door at larger providers, even if the rest of the C-suite isn’t fully aligned (yet).

2. The “Grow With the Customer” Strategy

Platforms like Passage, Motivity, and Hipp Health tend to focus on mid-sized or emerging providers, where roles are blurred and leadership is more hands-on. These teams are eager for help, nimble enough to implement it, and more open to taking a comprehensive approach. The bet is simple: if these customers grow faster than the market, the platform grows with them.

3. The “Best-of-Breed Coalition”

Companies like Hi Rasmus and Lumary are pursuing a best-of-breed model—partnering with complementary vendors rather than trying to build or own every capability themselves. This approach can absolutely work, and in fact, can outperform monolithic systems if the integrations are seamless and well-coordinated.

But that’s the key: seamlessness. Success hinges on two things:

• Vendors that offer real APIs, interoperable data standards, and shared accountability for outcomes
• Providers that are mature enough operationally to manage a multi-vendor environment—often with at least one leader who acts as the orchestrator across Clinical, Tech, Ops, and Compliance

When done right, this strategy delivers flexibility, faster innovation, and best-in-class performance at every layer of the stack. But when poorly integrated—or when vendors overpromise interoperability—it creates fragmentation, redundant work, and finger-pointing when things break.

This is not a strategy for every provider. But for those that can handle it—or grow into it—it can be a powerful advantage.

4. The Embedded Platform Play (formerly “Legacy Lock-In”)

Vendors like CentralReach tend to take a different approach: maintain broad platform coverage and engage every C-suite function—Clinical, Ops, HR, Compliance, Finance, Tech—before there’s a reason to leave.

Their strength isn’t just in being “sticky.” In many cases, they provide real and immediate pain relief—not because they prevent every problem, but because they’re already embedded in workflows and communication loops. When issues surface (denials spike, documentation lags, a payor escalates something), the platform is often part of the dialogue—and that means it can be part of the fix.

By controlling more of the ecosystem, legacy platforms can often coordinate internal teams more easily, resolve data issues faster, and deploy new tooling (like dashboards, labels, audit features, or AI prompts) with relatively low lift for the provider.

Where this approach shines:

• Broad platform visibility that surfaces problems quickly
• Built-in mechanisms for feedback and iteration
• Stronger customer success/support alignment, if invested in properly

Where it can fall short:

• When long-term strategy gets buried under short-term patching
• When extensibility, openness, or best-of-breed coordination is required

For many providers, this model works—especially when they don’t yet have the capacity to coordinate a multi-platform stack.

Why This Is So Hard

Even if a new platform manages to decode how ABA providers work, they face an even harder challenge: getting the right people to the table. It’s not enough to understand Clinical, Compliance, Client Services, HR, and Finance. You have to convince your customer to bring them into the conversation—and then design a solution that makes sense across all of them.

And then, of course, you have to deliver it.

That might mean integrating with legacy platforms that don’t expose data easily. Or working around systems that weren’t designed for modern workflows. And now that Boards are asking, “What are we doing with AI?” there’s a rush to implement tools that sound innovative—but may not be strategic or sustainable.

What Actually Works

If we want to improve access to ABA—at scale—we need to help providers scale. And that means helping the largest ABA organizations get out of triage mode and into strategy mode. That requires:

• Strategic mindshare from the full C-suite
• A real map of their tech stack and workflows
• Clear alignment on what differentiators matter most
• A roadmap that can evolve—and reduce operational risk as it goes

At our ABA organization, we actually made progress on this front. We created space for interdisciplinary collaboration. We mapped out workflows, piloted platforms, and layered in automation where it made sense. But it took intentional effort—and we still had to fight against daily operational noise.

I meet with a lot of ABA tech platforms. I could count on one hand the vendors that have truly figured out how to approach this.

Final Thought

There’s no one-size-fits-all go-to-market strategy in ABA tech. But if you’re not engaging the C-suite—and not helping them see the bigger picture—you’re probably not building something that scales.

The vendors that will win in this space aren’t just solving isolated problems. They’re building real partnerships to help providers evolve their stack—with all its complexity—and build a foundation for growth that lasts.