This is the final blog of a four-part series. If you missed the rest, catch up on Part One, Part Two, and Part Three.
By Scott Crow, Chief Innovation Officer and Co-Founder
Discover a Smarter Supply Chain Platform.
Today, our VPL healthcare supply chain technology platform is deploying multiple capabilities to help erase the problems facing the industry’s supply chain. In addition to the inbound freight management system we’re known for, we’ve developed tools that help manage outbound shipping in order to optimize the mode and cost of transportation. We allow our clients to work with their choice of carrier(s) or courier(s) and have recently tailored the platform to meet the needs of specialty pharmacy, ensuring compliance shipping of expensive meds directly to patients. We’re actually coming up with innovations that not even the largest IDNs have.
Our visibility tools allow for tracking of inbound shipments coming directly from suppliers, and can be accessed by hospital supply chains and clinicians who need to know where product is and when it’s going to arrive. And our data and intelligence component uses freight data to provide some of the most powerful analytics capabilities available in the market.
It’s our belief that post-order outcomes inform pre-order decisions—not unlike doctors and researchers looking at clinical outcomes and then using them to inform group procedures and therapies. We think the same way. We’ve been able to look at the supply chain outcomes we see every day while managing freight and utilize the resultant data to inform supply chain decisions and avoid problems before they happen.
We’ve added intelligence to purchasing that allows health systems to avoid disruptions, avoid backorders, and quickly find substitutes. We’ve also added intelligence to procurement to help with the effective management of safety stock, forward stock locations and distribution agreements. We’re even creating KPIs to score and understand supplier riskiness, resiliency, and supplier contract performance.
We’ve got everything a health system supply chain needs, including people committed to its success.
We’re clearly not short on technology capability data or vision, but we’re also rich in Customer Experience. When a health system decides to work with us, they receive a Customer Success Manager who stays with them for their entire VPL journey. They’ll help develop an individualized Customer Success Plan tailored to ensure specific results based on the customers’ expectations and goals. They manage and monitor the data—data that customers own. And since they’re measured on customer success, they’re exceptionally committed to finding areas for improvement, ways to drive more value and ongoing cost savings.
While your Customer Success Manager guides you in strategy, our Customer Care Team provides support. That’s right, humans answer the phone and always call back within in 30 minutes. We track our incoming calls very closely and guarantee problems are resolved within a few hours or less. Our customers never feel as if technology was simply dropped in their laps; they always get all the support and help needed.
It’s time for a smarter supply chain and a better customer experience, and we’re proud to say that VPL is building it every single day.
But wait, there’s more!
Watch the 20-minute Pitfalls of Traditional Freight Management Services webinar to learn more about the importance of healthcare supply chain technology.
