The Emerging Business of Supply Chain Risk Management

For many organizations, globalization, outsourcing, and extended supply chains are effective strategies to increase efficiency and achieve economies of scale, however, these benefits are accompanied by the significantly increased risk to quality, safety, business continuity, reputation, and more.

Is Your Company Safe to Work With?

As reported by Forbes, there’s an emerging category of business – supply chain risk management – of which many companies aren’t yet aware.

For the largest companies, this is a jugular area – imagine the exposure of a large oil company or a large online retailer when a supplier they’ve contracted with makes a mistake or even causes an all-out disaster? (Think oil drilling contractor, for example.)

Risk Management Overview

For many organizations, globalization, outsourcing, and extended supply chains are effective strategies to increase efficiency and achieve economies of scale.

However, these benefits are accompanied by the significantly increased risk of quality, safety, business continuity, reputation, and more.

Identifying Risk in the Supply Chain

Organizations are always at risk for losses through cost volatility, supply disruption, non-compliance fines, and safety incidents that cause damage to their brand and reputation.

Knowing what’s at stake is the first step to understanding, measuring, and managing risk in your supply chain.

Supply Chain Safety

Among the highest priorities for companies across all industries, safety concerns are often magnified in chemical, oil and gas, construction, and manufacturing.

Workplace accidents can jeopardize contracts, result in fines, and cause significant damage to a company’s reputation.

Supply Chain Quality Control

Do your vendors and suppliers meet your standards for quality and consistency?

Customers are quick to react when they perceive a drop in quality; and, even the smallest product issues can be difficult to recover from.

Supply Chain Financial Challenges

Any disruption to the supply chain due to financial challenges has the potential to impact business continuity and, ultimately, your bottom line.

Taking a proactive approach to understanding supplier financial strength can prevent disruption and unnecessary costs.

Supply Chain Compliance

Are your contractors insured? Do they have the right type of insurance, the right limits?

Knowing this information will help you to manage insurance risk and avoid potentially costly litigation.

Supply Chain Reputation

Damage to a company’s brand or reputation can be long-lasting, extremely costly, and sometimes unrecoverable.

Committing to a supply chain risk management strategy can not only prevent brand damage but can also serve to foster new partnerships with organizations that share like values.

Supply Chain Sustainability

It’s no longer enough to assess risk within the traditional construct of a supply chain.

Organizations must look beyond and consider environmental impacts and corporate social responsibility, including adherence to labor laws and sustainable practices.

Read more at The Emerging Business of Supply Chain Risk Management

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Supply Chain Analytics: How Manufacturers Can Get The Most Value Out Of Their Automated Data Capture Technology

There are a prolific amount of data sets and data sources available that can help overcome the aforementioned challenges. The problem is that “big data” is coming in from so many varied sources, and manufacturers simply do not know what to do with it or how to use it. The answer lies in supply chain analytics. With the right analytical tools, manufacturers can obtain actionable, meaningful, and supported insight from available data in order to make better business decisions. When it comes to AIDC, supply chain analytics are most useful in two chief areas: device optimization (the technology itself) and labor management (those who are using the technology).

AIDC Device Optimization

With supply chain analytics, manufacturers can receive timely and relevant feedback about their AIDC platform to determine how the technology is performing – feedback beyond what is provided by a typical Mobile Device Management solution. Through this insight, users can better understand the underlying causes of inefficiencies, identify areas for continuous improvement, perform predictive analysis, and more. For example, through dashboard and reporting tools, manufacturers can easily see device utilization data to determine user adoption rates. They can monitor battery performance of their devices in the field to prevent downtime. Or, they can even make sure that the right tools are available at the right time. As a result, manufacturers can optimize their mobile deployments to attain additional ROI.

Labor Management

The second component to this equation involves labor management. Using supply chain analytics, it is possible to match the right tools with the right people, and the right people with the work. Analytics platforms accomplish this by gauging and managing the labor resources that use the technology in terms of measurement of activity benchmarking, engineered labor standards, and dashboard reporting. These tools take into consideration production data (volume), integrated with labor, cost, customers, and time data.

Achieving Analytics Success

Supply chain analytics tools can provide practical and fully actionable (fact-based decision making) information to help optimize the supply chain from an AIDC and human capital standpoint. Along with the right AIDC tools and support organization behind those tools, supply chain analytics can assist in driving more revenue, reducing your cost structure and improving the experience of your customers and your workforce. Yet, this is only a piece of the supply chain analytics puzzle. Looking forward, manufacturers will continue to extend the capabilities of analytics tools to gain insight into the overall performance of the manufacturing facility. With the influx of the Internet of Things (IoT), more data points are available than ever before, which allows manufacturers to gauge the efficiency of a particular production line or overall equipment effectiveness (OEE).

Read more at Supply Chain Analytics: How Manufacturers Can Get The Most Value Out Of Their Automated Data Capture Technology

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7 Reasons to Merge Revenue Cycle and Supply Chain Management

Using technology to merge supply chain management and revenue cycle departments may help advance cost-to-charge transparency and increase accuracy in terms of managing reimbursement costs. “In most provider organizations[,] supply chain management (SCM) and revenue cycle operations function in silos, occasionally responding to anecdotal evidence to make improvements in the processes linking the two areas,” confirms HSRC-ASU. “Hospitals and health care systems that become proficient in managing the revenue environment achieve strategic advantage by reaching their financial goals and assuring a stream of revenues to support their clinical efforts,” the researchers explain.

According to HealthITAnalytics, supply chain management should be considered as a marathon endeavor, not a short-lived sprint. Successful supply chain involves connecting costs with analytics to enact substantial long term change. Additionally, hospital executives claim non-EHR health IT acquisitions strengthen the supply chain, states HealthITAnalytics.

Consistency is an essential key to ensuring accurate coding and pricing efforts. “Linking the traditional aspects of supply chain management (e.g., strategic sourcing, logistics, and inventory management) to margin management decreases the probability of lost charges occurring,” the researchers state. “Prices should be strategically set to optimize maximum allowable reimbursement. Charge capture processes should be incorporated in pricing strategies in each of the targeted areas,” they add.

HSRC-ACU confirms seven reasons to combine revenue cycle management and supply chain management:

  1. Increased and more accurate reimbursements
  2. Strengthened contract negotiations and enhanced contract compliance
  3. Improved transparency
  4. Streamlined cross-check utilization of supplies and ease of monitoring supply revenue
  5. Capturing cost-to-charge data visibility will be smoother
  6. Billing will be more accurate
  7. Labor will be wisely utilized and not wasted

Read more at 7 Reasons to Merge Revenue Cycle and Supply Chain Management

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