We are often asked how a healthcare supply chain organization can get better than just good. Our answer is always to employ KPIs (or key performance indicators) to quantify and measure your supply chain performance over time. This way your employees and teams have goals to shoot for, milestones to meet, and insights into your operations.
On an operational level, KPIs provide a window into your supply chain operations (i.e., expenses, service quality, logistics, etc.) to determine whether or not they are on track or need improvement. One important key to success is to select the right KPI that will ensure that your operations are best in class in all segments of your supply chain operations.
Selecting The Right KPIs For Your Operations
Every supply chain organization will have different KPIs since they need to be directly related to your healthcare organization’s goals and objectives. For instance, if your hospital, system, or IDN is focused on cost savings then many of your KPIs will be concentrated on cost saving, reduction, and control. If patient centered care is a priority, you will have different KPIs to track on an ongoing basis.
You get the idea?
Whatever you decide, your KPIs will need to be just a few specific key indicators as opposed to measuring everything that can be measured. The reason for limiting your KPIs is that you will become overwhelmed by data overload otherwise and lose perspective for what data is crucial vs. what data is nice to have.
Remember, less is more in developing your KPIs.
Further, the KPIs you select should be based on your stage of maturity. For example, if your value analysis teams are just getting started, you wouldn’t want to give them a KPI that would be designed for a very mature value analysis team. Finally, once you have established your KPIs, you also want to consider adopting comparative KPI benchmarks to help you to become first in class in all of your operations. It’s important to note that without stretch goals based on peer cohort benchmarks you will never get better than just good.
What Is A KPI Dashboard?
A KPI Dashboard is a management tool that enables you to organize, measure, analyze, display, and then visualize your supply chain key performance indicators, as well as show comparative benchmarks that will challenge you to strive for superior performance in all of your business segments. Just as important, it enables you to translate large, complex data into an easy-to-understand format, instead of having to wade through unfiltered datasets for easy decision-making.
A KPI Dashboard can also uncover new opportunities for improvement and identify unfavorable trends in real-time as well as help to define or redefine your goals and objectives. On the flip side, it can show you where you are outperforming your peers in overall performance. All in all, a KPI Dashboard is an invaluable tool to have in your supply chain toolbox. In fact, in our opinion, it should be a best practice for all healthcare organizations.
Note: If you would be interested in participating in our new ValueKPI™ Dashboard “beta testing” to improve your own supply chain performance, please e-mail [email protected] for details.
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