PSS World Medical, Inc., strives to maintain high customer service along with indispensable products that are valued solutions for the community of clients they serve. With the goal of strengthening the clinical success and financial health of caregivers, PSS World Medical offers professional services and more than 40,000 active products to provide solutions to its customers’ biggest problems through their distribution network of 39 facilities nationwide. PSS World Medical’s two divisions utilize the Roadnet Transportation Suite – Physician Sales & Service provides professional services, medical supplies and equipment to office-based physicians, while Gulf South Medical Supply assists with the needs of long-term care, home care and other extended care providers.
“Anything you can imagine in a doctor’s office, whether it’s the bell you ring on the desk, disposable products like gloves and syringes, or software solutions to improve the efficiency and cash flow of their practice – we carry,” explained Mark Rigdon, Senior Director of Logistics for PSS World Medical.
With over 480 routes per day, as well as next-day and scheduled delivery models, across both divisions, PSS World Medical needed to find a software solution that could assist in serving their 130,000 plus customer base. “Utilizing a manual process and evaluating our route planning by participating in ride-alongs with Delivery Professionals, we knew we had a lot of route overlap and critical Customer information not available to every employee. We have such a large group of active customers, we needed software to help us approach the problem correctly,” stated Rigdon. “Before Roadnet®, we manually routed everything. We had the Delivery Professionals route themselves, and we measured their daily success based on a fully completed and accurate delivery route.”
PSS World Medical evaluated four companies who provide routing software solutions, and narrowed their decision down to Roadnet Technologies, Inc., formerly UPS Logistics Technologies. Rigdon provided the following insight about the process, “Without a doubt, Roadnet Technologies had the most useful features, ease of implementation, and configurable data sets that we could manage ourselves. When we worked with Roadnet’s consultants, we felt confident we were working with people who were routing experts. In comparison, when we spoke to other companies, it felt like we were talking to software experts.”
PSS World Medical elected first to implement Territory Planner®, as a way to help minimize route overlap within their service territories. Once they completed their goals, they implemented Roadnet and Roadnet Info Center®. “For a long time, we knew we had an opportunity with routing, but we saw it as such a dramatic change to the customer and our internal organization, that we held off. Then we started looking at the option within Roadnet to use preferred routing – which became a turning point for us. We saw that we could maintain and improve our customer relationships, create leverage in our fleet, and enable our company to grow without adding resources while achieving improved profitability,” said Rigdon. Preferred routing allowed PSS World Medical to lower costs while still maintaining the high service levels their customers appreciated.
When they rolled-out Roadnet to the company, PSS World Medical gained insight from twelve of their best Delivery Professionals, who were involved in the planning process. “The Delivery Professionals assisted us with the development and implementation of our communication plan. They also helped us to define and design the process in which the software was going to be used every day. It was literally a product that was built by them, which made the roll-out very smooth. Our management did not go through a lot of difficult change to deploy the technology services. Our Delivery Professionals owned part of the process, which helped to make it a successful transition and valuable add to our processes and suite of technology systems,” stated Rigdon.
With the addition of Roadnet Technologies’ products, PSS World Medical was able to have a tool to coach their Delivery Professionals and hold them accountable in their daily activities. Additionally, they found other opportunities for improvement throughout their delivery process. “The roll-out placed a spotlight on several broken processes that we had previously not identified. When you have a solution that is dependent upon certain activities coming together at the same time, and it doesn’t happen, it allows you to find opportunities throughout the loading and delivery process,” explained Rigdon.
Tim Roe, Transportation Manager at PSS World Medical, concurs, “Even though we had a degree of route optimization with Territory Planner, some of our customers continued to have incorrect routing codes. Before Roadnet, orders were processed for delivery, and if they were coded incorrectly, the Delivery Professional would manually hand it to another Delivery Professional. Once we added Roadnet, it spotlighted that problem. We experienced a minimal amount of hand-offs - here or there - but it affected the overall routing process.”
Additionally, PSS World Medical has been able to schedule predictable delivery times for their customers – without calls to the Delivery Professional to assess a time of delivery. They’ve saved time and engaged in better customer service as a result. Rigdon and Roe have been able to look at their service models with Roadnet and see how costs are impacted, allowing them to generate increased efficiencies for each service decision. Rigdon commented, “The ability to place a Delivery Professional on the road with a plan resulted in benefits to our customers, our people, and our company. Our people now possess clear goals, standardized processes, and a reporting system to measure personal performance. For the company, the system enables more prudent decision-making, and real-time management, evaluation and reporting to better manage one of our greatest costs.”
“You definitely need to move down the path of implementing software if you’re delivering any significant volume. If you do not have a solution that can design the best plan and indicate if you are on or off that plan, it is short-sighted from a cost and service perspective. If you roll-out Roadnet, you may gain the opportunity to see 25% of your miles go away, but for us, it was about reducing 5-10% on the 480 routes we plan every day – it all adds up,” concluded Rigdon.
