Each day, in hospitals across the country, supply chain professionals log into analytics tools to benchmark prices on hundreds of medical supplies and pharmacy items. With a few keystrokes they can understand how competitive their prices are to the market and they can use that information to prioritize the biggest opportunities for the most savings. However, after benchmarking is done, the work that actually delivers price performance reverts to a manual process, supported by decentralized and static Excel spreadsheets.
Vizient’s focus on an integrated supply chain analytics platform aims to change that.
“We launched PriceLYNX in 2008 for supply price benchmarking and it continues to be the leader in that area. However, the information the tool provides stops at prioritization,” says Chip Bunata, associate vice president, Product Delivery for Vizient. “We’ve now identified an opportunity to go beyond benchmarking, to help organizations better track supply cost initiatives in progress, and to measure results to ensure negotiated value is realized value.”
Vizient has been piloting a new tool for the last year with member organizations of varying sizes to evaluate functionality and rigor of the design. As part of the pilot, the product developers interviewed and shadowed users to gain additional insight into process and design functionality.
At the 2016 Vizient Connections Summit, attendees had an opportunity to test drive a prototype. Members commented that they experienced a high level of functionality that reflects their desire for more rigor and insight into prioritizing, tracking and measuring price performance efforts. In addition to an ability to pull data into a single location for analysis, the tool provides full visibility to the data to clearly track opportunities to enhance value.
“Vizient is working closely with the end-users to validate the member needs and is developing a solution to truly help my organization make critical, strategic decisions about supply spend,” said Jennifer Paquette, data analyst, Wentworth-Douglass Hospital in Dover, NH. “This platform has everything I need to do my job more effectively and productively, plus all of the information is housed in one area.”
Bunata added, “We’re excited about the progress we’ve made to date. Plus, we’ve engaged members at every stage of development to ensure we meet the range of needs reflected across our membership. We believe the integrated platform will provide an opportunity engine for members with a roadmap to track and measure value and we look forward to bringing it to life.”
Interested to learn more? Email us at SupplyChain@vizientinc.com and we’ll keep you updated as the solution comes to market this summer.