Antech is the nation’s largest diagnostic reference laboratory, made up of more than 70 state-of-the-art reference laboratories, processing 90,000 samples daily, and employing 150 board-certified veterinary specialists.
The cross-functional team at Antech focused on advancing both supply chain and finance needs of a diverse network of veterinary laboratories, leveraging cloud-based Envi technology to drive on-contract purchasing, automate processes and gain enterprise visibility.
THE ANTECH DIAGNOSTICS STORY
The Need: Visibility through Consolidated Order Management
Antech has long used Envi technology across its nationwide enterprise of veterinary reference laboratories, many of which operate 24 hours per day. Historically, each lab operated as its own entity. Today the corporate team is responsible for ordering and managing products, while each lab maintains responsibility for requisitioning and onsite supply management, along with individual Profit & Loss management.
The Antech team faced additional challenges created by the COVID-19 pandemic. Although the veterinary world adjusted quickly to accommodate care, there remain long-term issues related to supplies, even those beyond PPE items, due to the availability of raw materials and the impact on many products used throughout Antech operations.
Rapid Growth Demanded Better Solutions, Quickly
In the early stages, the business was quickly growing and supply chain and accounting processes were primarily manual, including ordering and processing supplies. “Today we’re working to improve automation and increase visibility across our supply chain processes,” said Shawn Liberty, Director of Purchasing. “We’ve been using Envi technology to ensure we have a strong repository of transactional history – Envi provides great records of everything we’ve purchased and where supplies are ultimately received and consumed. Envi helps build more predictive modeling; we’ve set up standing orders that create forecasting that our internal teams – and our vendors – can use to understand demand.”
Envi Best Practice Drives System-wide Improvements
The accounting team has aligned closely with supply chain, in order to achieve more end-to-end efficiencies. “There’s a high degree of focus on automation – we’re using technology to improve everything we do,” said Richard Acevedo, Director of Accounting. “We can create orders, receive supplies, get invoices and activate 3-way price matching in Envi, then connect with other systems to advance even more electronic processing.”
“There’s so much we can keep doing to advance and improve,” added Acevedo. “We want our team members to think strategically and embrace change. By understanding the big picture, team members in all roles make an important contribution to success.
“The phase we’re entering now is all about better data,” Acevedo concluded. “The better the data within Envi, the better our reporting, the better for our finance team. Reporting is crucial. By understanding spend, we build greater understanding and efficiencies for better pricing. With this focus on spend, it’s important we have the tools that help us access information quickly and accurately.”
• Data mining project with Envi and GPO teams to examine spend, identify areas of improvement
• Working with Envi and GPO teams to identify and connect available contracts
• Driving cost reductions by ensuring on-contract pricing for frequently purchased supplies
• Empowering team members, creating pathways to improve staff’s strategic perspective – by understanding the big picture, each team member acts with greater purpose and efficiency
The Antech team will continue to improve results by focusing on-contract purchasing and greater automation of supply management processes, ultimately, improving efficiencies throughout their nationwide system of diagnostic reference labs.
