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Every supply chain professional is looking for that magic bullet to squeeze a few more dollars out of their supply chain expenses this fiscal year. However, let me tell you a secret I have learned in my long supply chain career about saving money. There are no magic bullets; just proven strategies, tactics, and techniques that strengthen your supply expense management efforts. Here are five that we recommend for you to employ for this purpose.

My son, Robert W. Yokl, VP of SVAH Solutions, sent me an article the other day from BBC Sports about the Mercedes Formula 1 racing team, who won six consecutive championships, on their “relentless pursuit of excellence”. More specifically, how Toto Wolff, head of Mercedes’s motorsport program, never stops pushing for even higher performance from his award-winning team. Here’s four tips from Wolff that you too can use in your own pursuit of supply chain excellence

Healthcare Value analysis training appears to be at the bottom of most VA practitioners to do list, yet it is an imperative that you and your VA teams have basic, advanced and then masterclass value analysis training. Not one-time training, but training on an on-going basis.  One hospital we worked with that has annual VA training for their VA team leaders and VA team members. This is the only way to ensure that your VA training sticks.  If this isn’t your practice too, here are 4 reasons why you must do so before your Hospital VA teams lose their edge

If you are a frequent reader of our blog, you would know that we are very high on hospital supply chain benchmarking because it will make your supply chain operation better than just good. Yet, for those who still doubt the benefits of healthcare supply benchmarking here are four things you need to know to change this mindset

Every healthcare supply chain organization we know of has either a monthly, quarterly and annual savings reports that they prepare for their senior healthcare management.  Most are prepared on spreadsheets that limit the accuracy, comprehension and integrity of these reports.  Consequently, here are three big pitfalls we see that you need to avoid if you want your savings reports to reflect your real short and long-term savings accurately. Plus we highlight two of the biggest savings areas in the healthcare supply chain that you should be aware of in our Q & A Section

Of all the challenges that value analysis practitioners are facing, the lack of time to perform value analysis appears to be on top of their list. With this said, here are five ways how to create more time to perform value analysis at your healthcare organization

The Top Five Things You Can do to Save More In Less Time with Less Effort in 2017

We all know how many arguments we have lost in the past on our savings proposals and how frustrating it can be when that happens. We also know that we are on the right side of the argument, but we can’t understand why our customers can’t see what is obvious to us. How can we turn this situation around so that we win more arguments than we lose?

I would like you to look around your healthcare organization and ask yourself “Who’s in charge of your purchase services?” I can assure you, if you are honest with yourself, the answer is – nobody! The reason for this circumstance is that this function, at most healthcare organizations, has been outsourced to your department heads and managers with disastrous results. We have seen department heads sign purchase service multi-year contracts that have cost their healthcare organization hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, due to benign neglect.

As more healthcare organizations prepare for the implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act more pressure will be placed upon supply chain professionals to save even more in less time. With this said, we though we would talk about in this podcast the 5-Rock Solid Value Analysis strategies and tactics that we have found can give you a big leap forward in savings. Your Co-hosts for the show are Robert T. Yokl, President/CEO and Robert W. Yokl, VP Operations of Strategic Value Analysis in Healthcare

In this podcast we show you how cost management yet ever more challenging and sophisticated in many respects does not necessarily need for you to make your job harder. We will show you four strategies to make your cost management job easier while still achieving higher levels of savings in less time with minimal effort.

Value Analysis Analytics is a new and different strategic approach that helps takes yours hospital expense reduction and value analysis efforts to a whole new level of savings beyond price. The concepts are sound and forward thinking but more importantly they are proven and tested over a 15 year period in development and use at our client hospitals. Learn how these Value Analysis Analytics are revealing savings that organizations never thought possible before.

There is Gold in Them Thar Hills--Maximizing Your MMIS Systems for Greater Savings. In this podcast you we will outline the strategy for maximizing your greatest assest in your healthcare supply chain operations which is your Purchasing/Materials Management information System.

This podcast is taking one of our sayings Purchase Price is Just the Tip of the Iceberg a bit further in detail. We will dispel the popular thought and mindset that Value Analysis is the only tool that you need in order to attack your costs below the waterline. We will give you a more defined examples of how with this below the waterline mindset you can open up a whole new world of savings for your organization that you never imaged was there before.

There is a critical need for healthcare organizations to realize the value of a new generation of incentive programs that will help you keep your supply chain teams working on all of your special initiatives in order to maintain your bottom line. We can no longer believe that just because we pay managers and staff a salary that we will get 100% effort and participation on the value analysis and other special project teams that the end results are so important to your hospital's bottom line.