Timely delivery of ventilators helps save lives

As the world combats Coronavirus, the need for medical ventilators has become more urgent. For a global medical device manufacturer, this meant reprioritizing and accelerating processes to ensure that equipment arrives where it's needed – fast. And these actions have been saving lives.

When the manufacturer welcomes new customers, the contract management team adds them to the purchasing database so that the business can take orders and initiate shipment. Under normal circumstances, registering and processing a new customer takes three to four days. These processing times had to change to meet public-health demands.

Preparing for the spike

Although the need for ventilators has been widely publicized, some of the challenges suppliers face in meeting this demand spike are less well documented. As the threat from COVID-19 became apparent, Genpact's contract management team recognized that the company would see an imminent rise in order volumes.

Our five years' experience working with the device manufacturer gave the team the knowledge they needed to tackle this scenario. We reassigned members to prioritize orders to the Respiratory Monitoring Systems division and revised processes so that customer details could be loaded into the system within 24 hours, instead of the usual three-to-four-day wait.

Responding to a vital order

When a major convention center that has been transformed into a temporary hospital requested a shipment of ventilators, the manufacturer was ready. The contract management team's revised approach made it possible for the company to process and ship the ventilators more quickly than ever.

The center placed the order on Friday, and the goods arrived on Saturday, saving two lives within 24 hours. The company received a heartfelt thanks from the state governor's deputy director, which the client passed on to the Genpact team along with its own praise of the team's work.

By cutting back on inefficiency and reducing friction between device manufacturers and healthcare providers, Genpact is helping deliver better outcomes for the people who need it most: the patients.