Configuring Salesforce as a Supply Chain Management Platform

Solving the Use Case

Overview

There are a variety of requirements to solve this use case. All of them point back towards the business goals of different personas across hospitals, clinics, and provider referral networks. At the highest level, healthcare supply chain management platforms need to:

• Accurately forecast demand
• Streamline order entry across multiple personas
• Create transparency between clinical and supply teams
• Ensure pricing and brand consistency across product lines

Additionally, we need to configure two basic permission sets:

• Vendor Management
• Vendor Contracting
• Patient Data
• Supply Requestor

Let's address how we solve each of these requirements.

Meeting the Requirements

Vendor Management

First of all, we configure the account and contact objects in order to streamline how a provider can manage relationships across all their vendors. Managing relationships falls into 2 categories:

• Activity Tracking
• Vendor Hierarchies

For the supply chain use case, we set up Salesforce inbox to monitor and track activity within healthcare organizations. This enables different departments, such as purchasing, clinical, and administration, to easily keep track of all their communications and activities with vendors. With the help of cross-object reporting, we further empower our clients to analyze and interpret data across various metrics and activities.

Furthermore, within the account object, we establish hierarchies to ensure efficient categorization of vendors. This categorization is done under their respective group purchasing organization (GPO) or integrated delivery network (IDN). By implementing these hierarchies, we streamline the process and enhance productivity in managing vendor relationships.

Contract Management

First of all, we configure products and price books to understand the cost across vendors for their supplies. This means that we can apply pricing updates in Salesforce to provide a single source of truth of agreed upon pricing from vendors for contracts.

With pricing established, we manage contract lifecycle with an add-on from Form Titan. This supports direct vendor, IDN, and GPO contract negotiations and tracking, including:

• Clause Libraries
• Document Generation
• Redlining
• Renewal Notification
• Approval Workflow

Throughout the contract lifecycle, we track requests from initiation to approval (or denial) by leveraging case management. With the right configuration, this includes support for committee tracking with votes and notes to adhere to compliance requirements for new equipment requests. Additionally, we can generate documentation for each supply requests for compliance.

Streamlined Order Entry

To streamline and optimize the ordering process, our team has developed a robust and efficient portal leveraging the power of Salesforce Experience Cloud. This innovative portal serves as a centralized platform, empowering clinical teams to seamlessly request essential equipment from a supply chain team.

With its cutting-edge mobile-friendly and user-friendly design, these portals provide a consistent and measurable way for clinicians to effortlessly submit equipment requests, ensuring a smooth and efficient workflow throughout the entire process.