Datalliance VMI Customer, Bracco Diagnostics, Reviewed in Analyst Case Study on Healthcare Supply Chain

CINCINNATI, OH–(Marketwire – July 21, 2010) –  The Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) strategy being developed by Bracco Diagnostics, a leading provider of contrast media and related equipment to hospitals and imaging centers, was recently featured in a Gartner report on supply chain innovations in the healthcare industry titled “Case Study: Bracco Diagnostics Leverages Datalliance for Downstream Customer Alliances” published July 8, 2010. 

The case study discusses Bracco Diagnostics’ success with the first phase of their VMI program within its own distribution network, as well as the company’s strategy to offer VMI to key customers as a value-added service to manage inventory, prevent stock-outs, and optimize procure-to-pay processes. 

Addressing the challenges to collaborative supply chain processes such as VMI in the healthcare industry, the report lists the following as lessons learned:

• “Trading partners must be willing to collaborate on the development of improved business processes, increasing the level of trust by establishing bidirectional goals and measures.

• Both the hospital and upstream supplier must start by thinking from the patient back. They should then develop innovative solutions to age-old challenges, such as inefficient transactions, bloated network inventories and less-than-optimal customer satisfaction.

• There are a host of ancillary benefits to establishing robust VMI capabilities between trading partners. For example, the cycle time required to renegotiate supply contracts can be greatly reduced when both parties have a clear line of sight to expected volumes, supplier performance and customer satisfaction.”

The full report is available to Gartner clients at www.gartner.com/resId=1397037.

“VMI continues to expand in the healthcare industry and we’re proud to be working with forward-thinking suppliers like Bracco Diagnostics and others to leverage it as one means of bringing down the cost of patient care,” said Bob Jennings, Datalliance VP of Sales & Marketing. “This is another example of the many successful VMI programs within our customer community.” 

Earlier, Datalliance VMI was positively referenced in the AMR Research report titled “The Resurgence of Vendor Managed Inventory: A Landscape” published in October 2009. Visit www.datalliance.com/2009_dec_pr1.html for more information about that report, which is also available on the Gartner web site for companies with appropriate subscriptions. AMR Research is now part of Gartner.

About Datalliance
Datalliance is a leading provider of collaborative commerce services, and the world’s largest independent VMI service provider. Delivered via the Internet using the ‘Software as a Service’ (SaaS) model, Datalliance solutions make it easy for suppliers and their customers to establish sales and inventory management relationships that fully align business objectives, improve collaboration, and streamline supply chain operations. Datalliance manages billions of dollars in orders, millions of SKUs, and thousands of locations for leading Fortune 1000 companies in a number of industries. For more information about Datalliance, visit www.datalliance.com