In an industry as competitive as orthopedic medical device manufacturing, you need every advantage to grow market share and profitability. Without true visibility into your field inventory, it’s very hard to digitally connect your full supply chain—especially considering traditional business operations have always focused on operating from the inside and extending out. What’s missing? The ability to bring the outside in, meaning visibility of inventory movements and sales operations that occur within the last mile of your supply chain. Here’s a closer look at why—and how.

The inside-out visibility and control gap

Intense competition and a rapidly evolving market leave little room for error before top & bottom lines are affected. The traditional inside-out approach leaves orthopedic OEMs with key vulnerabilities considering the lack of visibility into the last mile logistics.

One of the most persistent and costly issues is lost and wasted inventory. Annual inventory loss and audit write-offs can quickly total millions of dollars for OEMs. And it’s widespread: according to our data, loss can top 10% of total inventory. Consider that most OEMs always have 60 to 70% of their inventory in the field, and you can easily see how inventory loss represents a huge potential financial risk for firms. Inventory loss can also damage otherwise healthy relationships between distributors and OEMs, as data and visibility struggles ensue when there is no single source of truth of inventory in the field.

Inefficient inventory usage is another enduring problem for OEMs—and it’s incredibly difficult to address with inside-out systems that don’t have last mile supply chain visibility. This is because field inventory might reside far from where was originally shipped, and far from where it’s needed. When OEMs and distributors can’t match demand with supply, it sets off a scramble to source and ship devices and sets. Lack of inventory visibility, and tight field inventory controls, create friction for back-office teams and field reps, jeopardize accounts and key relationships, and can lead to top and bottom-line impacts for growth and profitability.

Lack of inventory visibility not only imperils immediate case coverage, but for the future cases. Accurate inventory visibility is critically important for accurate demand forecasting, so that OEMs can translate demand through their supply chain and supply what is needed for the future. Without a clear line of sight into accounts—who’s trending up and down, for example—OEMs cannot make the optimal capital investment, nor can they expect to generate acceptable returns on their investments.

Ultimately, any of these problems come down to solving for accessible, real-time data from the field. Without real-time data from the last mile of your supply chain, you don’t have visibility into what is happening in the field. Manually generated sales reports and insights they provide can come too late for you to act on them—leaving your team and reps at the mercy of the daily inventory challenge, and your financial and operational performance at risk.

Solving the inventory visibility gap from the outside in

Now, let’s look from the outside in. Let’s solve these key problems by connecting the field to your business operations. Imagine integrating your reps, field inventory, and field data seamlessly into your office systems, including your ERP and other traditional business systems. Such an implementation would enable:

Reduced inventory loss

What would real-time visibility into all field inventory across distributor, rep, and product line mean to your team—and your bottom line? We’re betting a lot. It would sharply reduce annual wasted or lost inventory, boosting your profitability even if sales remained flat.

Optimal inventory usage

With real-time visibility comes real-time control over your field inventory movement. When you know what you have and where it is—from the field to warehouse inventory, incoming returns to pending and approved requests—you can end the daily inventory chaos by getting it where it needs to be faster and more easily. Optimal inventory movement in the field begets optimal inventory usage, which helps you drive profitability and growth across accounts, product lines, and your entire business.

Improved inventory visibility

With improved visibility across the field as well as at the detailed level of parts and sets, your team can shift your business from reactive to proactive mode. Improved inventory visibility and a single source of truth reduce friction between distributors and your team, enable highly accurate forecasting and demand planning, and boost profitability by protecting case coverage and account relationships.

Better decision-making

Accurate real-time data and visibility are the foundational inputs for better business decisions. With them, you’ll be better able to stay on top of key metrics like trending accounts as well as shifts like changes in inventory flow and industry headwinds. After all, amid such competitive pressure, success comes down to a proactive (not reactive) stance.

Bringing the outside in

Implementing ImplantBase is the fastest, most effective way to bring the outside in to enable real-time data, visibility, and inventory control. ImplantBase is orthopedic-specific, and is designed exactly for how your teams work together—sales operations, supply chain, field inventory and field reps. Our mobile app provides on-demand, real-time access to inventory, data, and processes to bring the field to you—and your teams together. Orthopedics is our entire focus, and we’re constantly listening to the market and developing new features and enhancements to help you navigate changes in the market and your business, so you can be proactive.

Our field rep adoption rate is 97%, and with 100% success in every implementation, we have the proven methodology for success to transform your business to the next level.

Ready to learn more? Schedule your free assessment with our team to talk about ImplantBase, and how it can help you bring the outside in.