That's a lot of savings when you consider that the average materials manager will cut anywhere from 20 to 50 purchase orders a day. Though the medical online purchasing market is less than two years old, it is already hotly competitive. A handful of Internet start-up companies are jockeying for market dominance. This explosion is not surprising. With varying degrees of political clout at their disposal, the challenge for materials managers is to convince upper management that it's worth changing the way supplies are purchased.
Hospitals typically order goods via phone or fax.
They also have a preferred list of vendors. And while medical advances are more than welcome in a hospital setting, administrative changes cause medical execs to shudder. There's mass confusion out there,'' says Greg Firestone, president of NCI Inc., a technology consulting firm that focuses on the medical community. There's a lot of talk about e-commerce, but it is not explained very clearly to the management. Fortunately, says Firestone, purchasing managers are hip when it comes to the Net, since most have used computers for many years.