Custom Solutions for Medical Distribution
Short on time? Download this case study and read later.
THE CLIENT:
Our client is a medical distribution company providing a variety of products to support healthcare facilities and professionals, including supplies for preventive care, surgical supplies, and supplies to support medical practices around the world. Additionally, the company offers products manufactured in-house under their own private label brand.
THE BUSINESS NEED:
As the COVID-19 pandemic began, the client needed to make changes that were both reactive and proactive to support customers while keeping their employees safe. Prior 2020, the company’s sales team visited clients and took many orders in person and others by phone. They would return to the office to type up and print out orders for the warehouse teams to use to pack and ship orders. The company had a custom medical website, but it was not configured to take orders—only to showcase products.
As shut down orders closed offices across the country, the client enabled website ordering and transitioned their sales team to working from their homes to take orders and assist customers. The significantly increased need for Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) coupled with decreases in surgical schedules and wellness visits meant significant changes in the types of products ordered by their customers. Their existing paper-based inventory system resulted in a variety of challenges for the company from verifying real-time inventory to making manufacturing decisions as customer needs pivoted quickly. Additionally, COVID-19 upset healthcare supply chains, making it harder for them to acquire high-quality raw materials and finished medical products for their customers. Back-orders, long wait times, and unpredictability could not only hurt the relationship with their customers but risk the lives of the medical professionals and patients they serve.
WHAT GENECA DID:
We listened to the client’s needs for a minimal contact, paperless process to manage their business. The client needed a way to increase visibility into their supply chain with a portal for purchase orders and tracking of incoming items to allow them to make data driven decisions for their manufacturing team. They also needed real time inventory of finished products available for their sales team to accept orders and better predictability of packing and shipping time for their customers. This application needed to be cloud-based to provide access for remote sales and office teams while accessible on tablets for the warehouse and manufacturing teams operating in low internet connectivity areas.
Geneca built a central inventory management system which:
- Built a sales order component with multi-level in-system approvals with email notifications
- Created picking and packing module with back order tracking functionality
- Designed shipping module connected through APIs to major shipping companies
- Built invoicing with tracking numbers and easy upload to existing accounting software system
- Improved and streamlined the entire sales-to-ship experience for employees and customers
- Designed dashboard for increased visibility of customer orders, purchase orders, and real time inventory
THE RESULTS:
Within the first two weeks after going live, the client processed over a million dollars in orders. Sales team members use the real-time inventory number to suggest different, but comparable, items to their customers which reduces wait time or the risk of a medical team being without necessary items. When items are back ordered, they are digitally tracked ensuring smoother communication with customers and priority packing in the warehouse.
Having accurate live data allows the business leaders to easily plan the manufacturing work keeping the team busy creating items that are most in demand and communicating completion dates and stock numbers back to the sales team through their dashboard.
After three months, the warehouse manager confirmed that inventory in the warehouse and in the system matched, saving his team hours each month of manual counting. At the end of the first quarter of use, our client had sold and shipped 42% more orders (without adding any new staff) than they did the previous quarter and 49% more than the same quarter the previous year. A streamlined digital process makes work easier on employees and more profitable for the business.
About Geneca
Geneca is a custom software consulting company with 20+ years of experience using advanced strategies to help clients stay ahead of their competition. At Geneca, we know that software isn’t one size fits all. We explore your unique needs and identify the right solution to accomplish your goals. We create lasting, solid partnerships with our clients and work together to design revolutionary products that engage users, transform industries, and evolve with your business.