Hospital Supply Chain Data Analytics, in and of itself, won’t change the minds of your customers to enable them to change their behavior or practices unless they can visualize the damage their behavior or practices are doing to their departmental budget. Our experience has been that this transformation can only happen when you provide your customer’s data analytics in a visualization dashboard. For instance, if your customers can see that a product, service or technology they are buying is being utilized improperly, our experience has been, that they will self-correct their behavior without any arm twisting from your supply chain management. Here are three tips on how to build a visualization dashboard that persuades, informs and engages your customers:
- Simple, Communicates Easily: We have all seen dashboards that are too busy and confusing to understand. Generally, the creators of these dashboards are trying to provide too much information because they think that “more” is better. It’s been our practice to provide a few key indicators or metrics that represent all the information that a customer needs to know about their data. No more, no less! We recommend that you do the same.
- Provides Fiscal Year over Fiscal Year Data: This has been a real eye opener for our clients, since it quickly shows them if they are spending more on a commodity than last fiscal year. They don’t need to be accountants to know if this is Ok or they have a spending problem. This data can also keep them from going over budget.
- Employs Graphs, Histograms and Trendlines: Numbers are nice to get a point across, but graphs, histograms and trendlines are better at telling a story, such as, why is a product that has been discontinued continuing to be purchased every month?
Data analytics should be the lifeblood or foundation of your supply chain expense management efforts. However, this data is worthless unless it’s formatted visually to persuade, inform and engage your customers to make change happen. We have found that the best way to present this data is with a visualization dashboard that paints a picture for your customers of the opportunities for improvement in their supply chain expenses.
If you are looking for innovative Value Analysis or Supply Utilization Tools, please sign up for a no cost no obligation demonstration to see how you can take your purchase service program to a whole new level.