Involving manufacturers, distributors, sellers, and more, supply chains are complicated, and they’re even more so when it comes to healthcare organizations. If an ordinary customer doesn’t get their screwdrivers on time, they might be upset, but if a hospital doesn’t get what it needs when it needs it, lives could be on the line.
And, because creating an efficient approval workflow and managing supply chains is so important, supply chain management costs rank as some of the most significant expenses for healthcare providers. Naturally, that also means they’re one of the areas where leaders are looking for savings.
This is why so many healthcare industry providers are adopting Workday Supply Chain Management (SCM) and other Workday features such as human capital management—Workday SCM is one system that can help reduce costs, enable healthcare organizations to provide better patient care, and foster supplier relationships. Read on to learn more!
What Does Supply Chain Management Entail?
Here are a few essential job functions covered by modern supply chain management solutions:
Planning
“By failing to prepare, you’re preparing to fail.” That’s how the old saying goes, right?
As overused as that quote may be, the message remains true, especially where SCM planning for your organization is concerned. Planning is essential to building a successful supply chain management system, so understanding what goes into this step is critical.
This step requires taking a careful look at all the resources needed to meet your company’s demand, providing equal employment opportunities to get the job done, and determining specific measurement metrics to keep track of the efficiency of your supply chain, especially as it concerns meeting specific industry requirements or company goals.
Sourcing
Finding a reliable source can be challenging when it comes to getting the highest quality materials needed in the healthcare industry to create a product and mitigate risk.
Sourcing is one of the most critical steps in the supply chain command, mainly in that it can save your company lots of money (or cost you if you’re not careful). Choosing the right vendor may sound like a daunting task for some of you, but the choice comes down to a few simple questions.
- What is the ideal price for materials?
- How much of each do I need?
- How quickly do I need them?
Once you find a vendor that can provide your answer to all of those questions, you’ve found the right fit. Identifying and evaluating how a vendor can meet your supply chain needs can make or break the success of your company’s SCM operations long term, so make sure you’re picking the right choice and maintaining good supplier relationships.
Manufacturing
Choosing the right materials and vendors to fit your company’s needs is one thing, but manufacturing and storing them is a different ballgame.
From actually making the product to keeping track of inventory, testing quality standards, packing products to be shipped, and more, this step of the SCM process can’t be missed. Issues with supply and demand are inevitable, but with a reliable SCM process, your organization can stay on top of manufacturing schedules and ensure that your inventory is aligned to meet consumer demand.
Transportation and Logistics
Now that you’ve chosen your materials and vendors and even nailed down your manufacturing game plan, it’s time to decide where to store your inventory and how it will be distributed to customers.
This step requires a little more communication between the people on all sides of the product. On one side, suppliers must ensure they have the product inventory and storage space to support customer orders. On the other, your SCM managers need to ensure they have proper means of distribution set up, including transporting the products themselves, supplying invoices to customers, and even receiving payment for the products sold.
Production, warehousing, and distribution are essential parts of supply chain management, and without them, your business processes would fall short of quality standards, no matter what industry you find yourself in.
Returning
So, what do you do when a customer receives a faulty product and wants to return it?
This is where having a set return policy and process comes in handy. By creating a process that caters to both customer and organizational needs, trust between both sides is built, leading to better business relationships down the line. Building a defined return protocol that outlines steps for both sides of the product is essential in maintaining this trust.
Note: The more efficient your return processes are, the more satisfied your customers will be.
Now that you have a better idea of the supply chain management process as a whole, let’s dive a little deeper into how Workday Supply Chain takes this one step further.
How is Workday’s SCM Solution Different?
Workday combines supply chain, analytics, planning, financials, and human resources (HR) transactions in one system that’s cloud-based that you can access from desktop or mobile.
Workday Supply Chain Management focuses its efforts on making SCM operations for healthcare providers more efficient and effective by giving them a single system that offers more visibility for users, provides a more cohesive view of talent management, and is easily adaptable to changes in the industry.
Thanks to this structure, healthcare providers have all the pieces they need for comprehensive supply chain management. WD SCM allows users to collaborate on planning and sourcing, standardize processes, and build more effective teams. WD SCM can also be integrated with other Workday applications like Workday Human Capital Management and Workday Financial Management.
With a system that keeps all supply chain information in one place, managers can make better decisions, tackle complex cost-reducing strategies, and increase supply chain efficiency, leading to higher quality products and less wasted money in the long run.
Read on to learn a bit more about what WD SCM is, some key benefits of the software, and how Workday Supply Chain Management for healthcare can benefit your organization.
Key Features of the SCM Module in Workday
What makes WD SCM an ideal tool for healthcare? It was built specifically for the industry. As a result, WD SCM helps organizations build better relationships with suppliers, control spending, mitigate risk, and improve procurement.
Additionally, it integrates seamlessly with many other solutions typically used in healthcare settings to improve healthcare interoperability. Here are just a few of the software’s key features:
- Inventory
- Procurement
- Accounts payable
- Item management
- Contract management
- Spend analysis and planning
- Planning sourcing and supplier management
How Workday SCM Benefits Healthcare
Now that we’ve given you a general picture of some of WD SCM’s key features, let’s take a closer look at some specific ways it can benefit your healthcare organization.
1) More Efficient Supply Chain
Workday automates purchasing, tracking, and replenishing products and services supporting your patients. It allows you to manage costs, quantity, and supply levels to forecast trends and plan. Workday’s configurable business process framework also helps with compliance and consistency, whether contracting pricing or standardizing operations.
2) Operation-Improving Insights
Workday gives you a comprehensive view of your supply chain, HR, and finances. In turn, you can improve processes and compliance, mitigate risk, find business process efficiencies to reduce costs, and see how you stack up against similar organizations. In addition, accessing data from Workday and other third-party sources such as electronic medical records (EMR), billing, and more helps to improve interoperability, while analyzing all this data leads to better reporting.
3) Single Source of Truth for Planning
Interested in consolidating your data into a single source to minimize errors, improve accuracy, and save time? Imagine sourcing goods and services, building forecasts, analyzing and reporting, and monitoring all your data from a single platform. With WD SCM, you can streamline sourcing and procurement by working with suppliers through a convenient online portal.
4) Answers to Key Questions
By combining key elements of Supply Chain Management, Financial Management, and Human Resources, WD SCM makes it easier to take a closer look into how your organization compares to other competitors in the industry, how optimized your business processes are, and even gives you some ideas to reduce costs. Combine that with increased data insights, including patient billing, benchmarks, and key KPIs, in a singular system, and you have the most efficient SCM solution possible.
With its uncharted ability to maintain such a high level of insight, Workday makes adapting to change and answering all the important functional and operational questions that come along with it much simpler, saving you time and money.
5) Innovative Ways to Find and Keep Talent
As the roles of Supply Chain Management shift their focus from cost and customer service to increased productivity, operational analysis, and cost-containment, their SCM managers need to adjust their skills to fit the new organizational needs.
Whether that shift involves training managers on updated processes and focal points or hiring new executives that fit the build from the start, Workday supports your organization’s full life cycle, from hire to retire.
WD SCM functionality allows managers and other decision-makers to take charge of their recruiting, hiring, training, and performance management processes, making it easier for them to gain valuable talent insight, increase career development opportunities, and reduce employee turnover.
6) Preparation for What’s to Come
In an industry where change is a constant, WD SCM provides users the tools they need to adapt. A one-stop-shop system combining SCM, Financial Management, and HR services is a game changer in maintaining organizational efficiency and consistency.
Workday’s system flexibility makes maintaining up-to-date business processes, developing your SCM system to fulfill organizational and industry needs, and meeting business goals easier.
Getting Started with WD SCM
The healthcare industry is constantly changing and evolving. With the evolution from the traditional pay-for-service model to the value-based care model implemented by the Affordable Care Act, more healthcare providers are looking for ways to improve patient care while reducing costs.
Combining Workday financial management, supply chain management, and HR into one system can help to control costs and efficiencies across the business.
How Can We Help?
If your organization is looking to implement WD SCM or improve healthcare interoperability, our team of expert Workday consultants can help.
Whether you need a partner to give you peace of mind through your healthcare IT transformation, build personalized content to improve user training and adoption, or facilitate a more reasonable accommodation process for new systems and employees, Surety Systems has the skills and experience to lead you through it.
Take a look at a sample profile of one of our top-notch Workday consultants to give you a better idea of what you’d get in working with us.
Surety Senior Workday Supply Chain Consultant
- 20+ years of SCM experience
- Certified in WD SCM
- Very experienced with WD SCM as a whole – including Inventory, Purchasing, Report Writer, Security and EIBs
- Previous experience working with EIBs to create a purchasing unit of measure to a stocking unit of measure
- Comfortable working with the Security module to set up access domains and to access reports
- Experience in the healthcare industry
- Previously served as a Workday Inventory SCM project lead
To learn more and get started on your next Workday or healthcare IT project, contact us today.
