Reducing costs from a process perspective

The healthcare sector depends heavily on its supply chain to deliver critical medical supplies, equipment, and medications. However, inefficiencies, shortages, and other factors expose vulnerabilities that can compromise on delivering on your mission.

Solutions that provide a vast selection, multiple supplier options, and competitive pricing can help you build your contingency plans, so you can be a reliable partner to your teams.

Outside of using a solution that provides vast selection and supplier diversification, there are tools you can use to optimize the purchasing process so you and your users can drive down costs and focus on what’s at hand.

Build a buying experience that works for your organization

Healthcare systems often use e-procurement systems to manage parts or the entirety of their source-to-pay process. Each organization may have their own purchasing processes and guardrails set in place which can make it harder for teams to comply. This can lead to increased p-card usage or duplicate orders, making it harder for procurement teams to track purchases and driving up costs.

With solutions like HAQM Business, you can set up your purchasing process so that it works with your existing systems. With Punchout, your users can start their buying journey in your e-procurement system, then punch out to HAQM Business and shop within a familiar experience.

If you want your buyers to stay in your e-procurement system, make it easier for them to shop and benefit from HAQM Business’ selection with Hosted Catalog. This allows your buyers to quickly find and purchase your organization’s preferred items in your e-procurement system.

These solutions simplify the purchasing process, drive purchasing compliance, and reduce administrative burdens.

Set purchasing guardrails

Guided Buying policies empower staff to make better purchasing decisions by directing them to preferred suppliers who meet quality standards, offer competitive pricing, and align with compliance requirements.

Control tail spend, manage employee spending, and maintain compliance by steering them to the right products or suppliers and identifying product categories that employees shouldn’t purchase.

For users, it takes the guesswork out of figuring which products they can buy. For admins, it reduces time spent answering questions and drives compliance towards purchasing goals or mandates.  

Make the approval process easier for you and your users

Without standardized approval processes, unnecessary or duplicate purchases can quickly eat into budgets. Implementing a robust approval process ensures that every expense is evaluated and justified before funds are allocated.

As an admin, you can build approval workflows with checkpoints around orders so that buyers can experience a frictionless purchasing experience. You can also set purchasing guardrails and utilize batch approvals, so that buyers can get what they need, when they need it.

Get better visibility through analytics

Opportunities for cost savings may be missed without analytics tools. These tools can transform raw data into actionable insights, helping healthcare organizations make smarter decisions about resource allocation, supplier performance, and cost trends.

While HAQM Business Analytics has a suite of dashboards that make it easier to gain clarity into purchasing trends, the HAQM Business Analytics Savings Report can help you easily understand savings across all your orders, with line-item details of savings types. Explore savings across shipping, pricing savings programs (such as custom, bulk, and business pricing), total savings, and more.

Conclusion

Simplifying the purchasing process—whether by implementing one of the strategies mentioned above or all of them—makes it easier for your buyers to get what they need. For administrators, solutions like these can help manage costs, create organizational efficiencies, and reduce administrative burdens, allowing everyone in your organization to focus on advancing your mission.