Automation and Insights for Success

Pharmacy inventory management also suffers. It’s harder to prevent unnecessary orders or catch out-of-stocks before it’s too late across multiple locations. Even if most locations maintain a lean, efficient inventory, a single location that orders excessively or fails to prevent spoilage makes a significant impact on the entire chain. These issues often come down to uncertainties like:

Automating purchase order submission allows teams to generate and submit a single purchase order for multiple vendors, streamlining the ordering process and reducing administrative overhead. Instead of comparing an array of catalogs, having to record various log-in credentials and tracking who bought what from whom and when, management ensures consistency across all locations by implementing a standardized process for submitting purchase orders. These measures reduce variability and potential errors, and they maintain consistent workflows from the corporate level down to each location. This improved pharmacy purchasing process can lead to significant cost savings.

Automated processes can also improve pharmacy compliance with vendor agreements and ensure accountability for vendors. Loading all contract and agreement terms into a pharmacy procurement solution enables automated monitoring of both purchases and received items.

Purchasers can also see if there are better options from other vendors that won’t affect compliance. At receiving, the system compares items against purchase orders and agreements, flagging deviations from contract terms to enable prompt corrective actions and maintain compliance.

Maintaining all agreements, catalogs and purchasing history with a unified platform centralizes contract management and simplifies purchasing oversight across all locations. Instead of waiting for vendor reports from each location, leadership can view and analyze compliance across their entire network in real time.

Pharmacy inventory automation helps ensure pharmacies keep the right amount of the products patients need in stock. A dynamic perpetual inventory updates in real time, so management and staff can always see exactly what’s on the shelves. In addition to displaying what’s available, pharmacy procurement software should also enable staff to schedule recurring orders for high-demand items tailored to their location’s specific needs. This is crucial for effective inventory management.

Beyond reordering—which is obtaining the item again—staff also need the capability for automatic replenishment: returning stock to its preferred amount on the shelf. In perpetual inventory, when you create a replenishment order, the system scans the inventory and automatically recommends items for purchase based on your preferences and preferred automatic replenishment method:

All these measures point to inventory optimization, which involves maintaining optimal stock levels and reducing both out-of-stocks and overstocking. This is crucial for multi-location pharmacies that need to balance inventory across locations. Instead of spending money to replenish an area with low demand, leadership can transfer surplus stock from a location with higher demand. SureCost helps pharmacies repurpose existing inventory, reducing unnecessary spend and optimizing purchasing strategy

Likewise, each pharmacy will rely on different reports. But SureCost has spoken to literally thousands of pharmacy professionals across the country. We’ve found that most, if not all, rely on the following types of reports to reach their strategic outcomes and stay competitive.

A vendor compliance report should identify substitution trends, track unfilled items and hold vendors accountable across all sites. Everyone makes honest mistakes, including vendors, but their mistakes cost pharmacies literally millions of dollars. SureCost’s Smarter Purchasing Report revealed that a single vendor’s invoicing error resulted in a pharmacy incurring nearly $2M in costs. The report outlines several similarly costly errors related to GPO compliance, the value of received goods and other vendor issues. These common errors directly impact overall pharmacy cost savings.