Pharma Companies under Focus
How can Mobiles add value to the B2B order processing and Process Management?
Here you will have to go by the Healthcare Value chain. Mobility value add in Order processing i.e. B2B will be helpful only if:
It eases out product procurement and delivery
It helps stumbling blocks to improved value chain operations
For this one need to understand the strategies in three product areas i.e. pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and medical-surgical products and other such deliverables.Let's take the pharmacy market first!
There is already a scope for healthcare products/Devices and Pharma products as far as process management in the value chain are concerned.Introduction of M-commerce in health care value chain is also worth pondering over.
For eg. Mobiles can be useful in effectively managing a small scale industry supply chain.
Similarly, managing prescription order workflow in a pharmacy network can be done using mobile phones. A workflow may define a sequence of queues. To complete the distributed processing of the prescription order, the task object may be passed along the queues, where each queue corresponds to a portion of work in processing a prescription order. The original order data object may be referenced in the task object or passed along with the task object.
Value = a MOBILITY service provider in a B2B value model, the value that it will pass on to the entire workflow would primarily be:
- Effective Communications
- Process Productivity
The revenue for a service provider would be fee-for-service business model. For most of the Value chain, Big Pharma Distributors like ABC say for example operate on a buy/hold business model under which a company would purchase drugs from manufacturers in large quantities based on what their own pricing models predicted would happen to the value of the drugs. Then ABC would sell the drugs to its customers for a higher price than that paid for the drugs. This set up is also evolving today and shifting focus, which can readily be addressed by Mobile Phones.
Wholesalers are shifting rapidly to a new, fee-for-service pricing strategy- in which suppliers pay directly for wholesaling services rather than having those services bundied and paid for indirectly through gross margin and unseen discounts.
Free for Service Model using Mobiles:
ABC says “ABC has traditionally benefited from profits earned through buy-side opportunities from manufacturers .We have invested our profits in serving customers by dramatically increasing service levels over time. However, the manufacturers' model is changing, shifting to just-in-time inventory models that reduce our buy-side opportunities.”
ABC= “To support our investments in quality, technology and the future, we are making changes in how we do business. And while our goal is to insulate customers from changing economics whenever possible, we must make sure all our customers pay in a fair way for the value they receive." "We are moving toward a model in which manufacturers compensate us for distribution services on a fee-for-service basis."Solutions/Services on Mobiles will help:
NEW Profits and Services
1. creating and managing service fee programs per contract
2. calculating, and managing fees as they accrue
3. setting up payment packages
4. accurately calculating payments based on incoming sales data
5. publishing this data to distributor’s (ABC) Pricing module on
6. a transaction-by-transaction basis
Traditional Profit margins:
The price wholesalers charged for servicing manufacturers dwindled down to a small, set discount
In today’s increasingly complicated supply chain,
Will come up with more…
Copyright @ Ruchi Bhatt ,Canadian Guild 2008