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Did You Know...?

That Value Analysis Was Developed Back In the 1940's After World War II as a Way to Find Lower Cost but Higher Quality Alternative products and methods. This was Due to the Lack of Material Resources At The End of The War.

Savings Beyond Price -Weekly eNewsletter - September 27, 2011

 

A Note from Robert T. Yokl,
President and Chief Value Strategist

I was just reading about new federal legislation that will take effect in January 2012 that calls for manufacturers of drugs, devices, and biological and medical supplies to record and disclose any gifts, food, entertainment, trips, consulting fees, speaking fees or other payments made to their customers.  

Further, this law now prohibits some practices, such as suppliers providing loaner or trial equipment, for longer than 90 days or giving product samples that they know are intended to be sold to a third party. These samples weren’t considered gifts in the past, but accommodations.  

After reading a synopsis of the law, I was completely surprised at its breadth and scope, but believe that all healthcare organizations will welcome it since it puts teeth into their own supplier gift-giving policies.  

Now that all suppliers must by law focus on value and not taint their offerings with questionable incentives, compensation and give-aways, it should create a much more competitive environment where gift-giving is all but eliminated from the buying and selling equation.  And that’s a good thing!

P.S. If you haven’t downloaded your personal copy of our new “Guide to Automating Your Value Analysis Program” yet, what are you waiting for? It will provide you with the #1 secret to up your value analysis game.  And the best part of this offer is that it is absolutely FREE for the asking!

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Competitive Intelligence: Your Window into the Marketplace

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You might think that the term competitive intelligence is only applied in industry to describe the practice of defining, gathering, analyzing and distributing little known information about your competitors business to give you an edge in your marketplace.

If that’s your take on this universal best practice, then you would be greatly mistaken.  Competitive intelligence is actually your window onto the marketplace that can open up your eyes to new savings and quality improvement opportunities that have passed you by over the years. 

For instance, did you know that the best contract pricing we have seen is attributed to local, not regional or national contracts? That hospitals with the lowest supply chain cost buy more generic products, than brand name products? Or, that value analysis teams that employ the “functional approach” save 7x more than their peers. 

These are just three examples of how having a window onto the marketplace can give you the competitive intelligence that is necessary to steer your supply chain ship in the right direction vs. guessing what direction you should be going.  It will save you a lot of lost time and wasted effort by doing so!   

This competitive intelligence won’t come to you out of the blue, you will need to search it out through surveys, benchmarking and good old snooping around. When I was a material manager and now as a consultant, I never miss the opportunity to visit a hospital and then get a tour of the entire facility while asking dozens of questions along the way. I would pick up so much competitive intelligence on these tours that it would take almost a whole notebook to document what I had discovered.  

As my company’s Chief Value Strategist I avidly collect, analyze and then disseminate competitive intelligence to our clients every day, since it’s the lifeblood of our software, training and advisory practice.

This should be your goal too, if you want to keep ahead of your competition or at least stay in step or you could risk falling years behind the intelligence/information curve at your peril!

Warmest Regards,

Robert T. Yokl
Chief Value Strategist
Strategic Value Analysis® In Healthcare
Bobpres@strategicva.com
1-800-220-4274

Your Partner In Savings Beyond Price™,

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