Conference Highlights
It’s
a different market today. But despite group purchasing, contracts and
hospitals’ cost-cutting efforts, specialty distributors have ample
opportunities to excel, said Ron Stephenson, expert on medical products
distribution and professor of marketing at Indiana University. But
opportunities may lie in some unexpected places.
In
today’s environment, specialty distributors have to understand the
financial condition of their customers and how new technology will affect
that, said Nancy Reaven, president of La Canada, CA-based Strategic Health
Resources. Reaven showed IMDA members how to help their customers assess the
clinical and financial impact of new technologies.
Your
website should be a call to interaction, a call to create a relationship,
said Jennifer Renauld, director of new business development for
Minneapolis-based ThreeWire. Too many sites provide plenty of information
but little direction for viewers and potential customers. Don’t let yours
fall into that trap.
When
it comes right down to it, manufacturers who work through distributors
really want to know just one thing: “How are you going to manage my
business when I co-mingle it with yours?” Working with Bradenton, FL-based
software company MedXChange, Products for Surgery (Forest Hill, TX) has
taken some bold steps to help it manage its business correctly and stay
focused on the customer.
Clinician-preference
items – the kind most often carried by specialty distributors -- are now
fair game for group purchasing organizations. Two GPO executives (Todd Ebert
and Gary Kane of AmeriNet) explained to IMDA members how they can get
involved with that GPO’s Clinical Service Program.
Even
if you’re not thinking of buying a business or selling your own, you
should still know the fundamentals of valuating companies. IMDA Legal
Counsel Mitchell Kramer showed IMDA members how to do just that.
What are materials managers’ expectations of their suppliers’ Internet capabilities? Back by popular demand was Al Cook, chief resource officer for St. Francis Medical Center, Monroe, LA, who addressed IMDA at an earlier conference. Cook is president-elect of the Association of Healthcare Resource & Materials Management, and head of an e-commerce task force of materials management executives.