Procurement of supplies, goods, and services has a massive impact on the financial bottom line for healthcare organizations of all sizes. Financial leaders and procurement professionals charged with back-office workflows both know that their success depends on cost effectiveness, reduced waste, and accurate inventory and support for essential staff.
One of the most critical areas for effective procurement and inventory is managing processes with vendors and suppliers. But with the ever-changing complexity of the healthcare delivery landscape across the continuum of care, supplier management can become an overwhelming task that leads to inefficiencies such as duplicative spend, inaccurate inventory, and expired products.
Forward-thinking leaders and officials are looking for ways to control spending and its effect on their organizations’ profitability, resilience, and operations. Knowing that better supplier management always leads to efficiencies, these same leaders identify these factors as crucial to their success:
Centralized Supplier Information
Most healthcare organizations require a wide range of vendors for specific supplies, devices, goods, and services. While a facility or group might do a substantial portion of business with a single supplier, managing the full range of suppliers and vendors can be a daunting task. Centralizing all this information, preferably on a single easy-to-use platform, makes supplier management feasible.Flexible Purchasing and Procurement
Supply chain disruptions in recent years have demonstrated how organizations and procurement professionals can’t be locked into specific suppliers and vendors when crucial supplies are hard to track down. Having the capacity to quickly access inventory from alternate suppliers, and to place those orders with ease, means temporary supply chain disruptions don’t turn into shortfalls in inventory or over-spending because comparison shopping isn’t possible.Centralized Documents
Documentation across the procure-to-pay process is a key to simplifying where things stand with suppliers. From centralized invoices to automated accounts payable, managing documentation means visibility into supplier management without relying on cumbersome paper-based processes.Relationship Management
The human factor is always important in supplier management. Developing relationships with important suppliers means communicating about costs and new opportunities for savings, constructive reviews of compliance and performance,Data-Driven Monitoring and Insights
Accurate spending, inventory, and Accounts Payable reporting makes it possible to monitor supplier performance in terms of cost, delivery, and efficiency.Leveraging Procure-to-Pay Software
Procure-to-pay automated software provides accurate data, reporting, accountability, and visibility that simplifies the supplier management process in every way. The leading healthcare-focused software saves money and time—in many cases paying for itself.
Looking to Reduce Your Annual Spend?
Procurement Partners helps customers reduce their annual spend by more than 10% with an easy-to-navigate procure-to-pay solution where users can place orders and process invoices for all suppliers. Procurement Partners is the leading procure-to-pay management system for post-acute, non-acute, and continuum of care providers and has helped organizations achieve 40% time savings and 95% supplier contract compliance through automating the procure-to-pay process.
