Intercoastal Medical Center is located on Florida’s Gulf Coast with 10 locations serving the Bradenton and Sarasota areas. The organization includes family practice medicine, specialty medical professionals, labs, imaging facilities and an ambulatory surgical center. Their purchasing process was both centralized and decentralized, and Purchasing Manager Lisa Nieves knew there had to be a better way.
“I had set up all of our facilities to have online access for most of the vendors so orders could be placed directly along with approval flows for oversight,” Lisa said. “But I kept thinking it would be great to have all of those vendors in one portal instead of having to go to each vendor’s individual site.”
While working with one of her GPO representatives, Lisa mentioned that she was looking for some kind of purchasing system and the rep recommended Hybrent. She contacted Hybrent to learn more.
“I got our director of finance involved early in the process, as Hybrent does 3-way matching and integrates with our Sage 100 software,” Lisa said. “We set up a meeting with some of the managers, then with people who were actually going to be placing the orders to let them see how Hybrent worked, and everyone knew it was a good fit.”
Intercoastal had looked at other purchasing software, including vendor-owned purchasing software. “But we didn’t feel comfortable funneling so much of our ordering through one vendor’s software,” Lisa said. Additionally, the team liked how Hybrent was easy to use and had images of vendor products. “People felt comfortable with the technology from the get-go.”
Lisa worked closely with her Hybrent implementation specialist to get the software up and running. “I collected all of our information – the vendors, products, facilities – which was time-consuming but very important for setting up the portal correctly. The spreadsheets Hybrent sent me kept me on track,” Lisa said. Once Intercoastal’s information was entered into the system and initial kinks were worked out, they began the training process.
“We had a very large group of people ordering, receiving and approving supply orders for all of our locations,” she said, “so we actually had someone from Hybrent come to one of our facilities for a couple of days and we had our groups onsite both days, all day long. Then our teams went back to their locations and trained others on the software. Everyone picked it up very quickly.”
“After implementing Hybrent, we saw a significant drop in spending because we had more control over the whole process. We set up a list of approved items, had contracted costs in the system, and people ordering could see things more clearly because it was all on one order screen. That was a big deal for us – control over what people were able to see and do when ordering,” Lisa said. “Previously, people bought what they thought they needed and as a result we had a tremendous surplus of items.”
“Hybrent gives us more oversight and we know what we have on hand – as a result, there is more spend control. We reduced the waste from over-ordering, which was huge,” she said.
Not only is Intercoastal happy with the savings, but Lisa enjoys the relationship with Hybrent Customer Service. “Not only are they extremely helpful, they actually take suggestions we’ve made and make system enhancements based on what we need. They are always great with us!”