20 Sep Hospital’s Electronic Procure-to-Pay Dilemma

In most hospitals, supply-chain automation usually starts and finishes based upon spend, which is simply calculated by looking at who a hospital or healthcare organization spends the most money with over a period of time. On average, the top 10% are then automated via EDI (Electronic Data Interchange).  A more comprehensive look at the true costs of processing supply-chain documents,such as the purchase orders or invoices, would lead to a much different way of looking at automation. In most vertical markets outside of healthcare, the process has been finely-tuned to extract the maximum benefit from utilizing EDI by automating most, if not all vendors and trading partners.

The decision to move a vendor from “paper to EDI” does not have to be a time-consuming, complex process, especially if costs are kept low and absorbed by the vendor, as is the case in most verticals outside of healthcare.  Unfortunately, many hospitals have been so attuned to paying the vendor for the right to electronically purchase goods that making this directional change seems daunting to most hospital procurement or supply-chain executives.  And while many healthcare organizations are excited about the ability to have electronic invoicing, most do not realize that the true cost of the paper-filled Procure-to-Pay cycle is directly related to the starting document, or the Purchase Order.

By streamlining the EDI System implementation process and minimizing the associated costs, hospitals can now take full advantage of DataTrans Web EDI and achieve close to 100% EDI compliance. An added benefit includes having access to features used by other vertical markets such as Vendor Score-carding, supply-chain Dashboards and other Business Intelligence tools.

Extending supply-chain automation to all of your vendors without having to consider the purchase order amount or the volume of orders received maximizes the investment in EDI systems and radically reduces supply-chain costs.

The Revolution is here and DataTrans leads the Charge!