A Case Study on

American Hospital Supply Corporation

Given Information: AHSC was founded in 1922 by Foster G Mcgraw. It was a healthcare products manufacturing organization from surgical equipments, surgical drapes and gowns, gloves, syringes and other items and instruments. AHSC had sales of $3.5billion and net earnings of $238 million. Most of 7500 short term general hospital in US bought at least some of their supplies from AHSC online purchasing system. AHSC had the market share of almost 30 % and was able to manage the sales growth of 13% almost every year from 1978 to 83.The two third sales of AHSC came from laborites and international business accounted for 10 % of the sales .They had the 150 distribution channels worldwide and the manufacturing items were made from 46% sales and 83 % of net profits. In early 1960 the AHSC initiated the online system for its customer to place orders. Orders were frequently delivered late and incomplete, creating problems for both the customer and AHSC .And finally the new order entry system, with mainframe computer support was called Analytic systems automatic purchasing (ASAP) was launched. Eventually ASAP1, 2,3,4,5 were launched which led to customer satisfaction and sales force utilization. Objectives: y y y y y To provide such a system to customer which would make placing order easy. Customer retention Delivery time optimization Inventory control Understanding competition

Assumptions: y y Customers are satisfied with ASAP system Company is running in profits after implementing ASAP

Analysis: Let s look at analysis with the help of some questions 1. How much competitive advantage can IT give wrt this case y It has optimized all the processes like CRM, Inventory management, order and delivery management which results in customer retention and satisfaction the key points in the success of any organization.

2. How can competition find opportunities for such uses in IT y Competition can utilize various data analytics tools available with IT for cost optimization, strategic management and competition analysis. 3. What could make IT related advantage sustainable y Customer has to keep their IT evolve wrt to latest technologies, competitive strategies and customer needs. If IT changes in accordance with these factors then this advantage can be made sustainable 4. How is AHSC and customer impacted by ASAP y All the problems mentioned in the above section which were being faced by customer were resolved like o Order Placing o Price transparency o Order execution o Delivery time and status tracking o Payment details AHSC was benefitted in terms of more business, customer satisfaction and retention, inventory management. Observation: Major positive changes came into the operations of AHSC after ASAP was implemented. This involved a major change in processes like inventory; billing, order management and CRM were handled in the organization. All these processes were optimized and were now working in policy of lowest cost and highest customer satisfaction. Conclusion: The implementation of ASAP (MIS) in AHSC resulted in win win proposition for both AHSC and the customers of AHSC. AHSC could reduce cost to the lowest and increase profits simultaneously where as customer satisfaction was highest due to this. Recommendation: It should be implemented in the businesses to give it a much needed competitive advantage and gain customer satisfaction and retention, but any business has to keep evolving its IT framework and processes to sustain changing markets and competition.