SA HEALTH
“ Prior to COVID , our hope was to have our spend analytics implemented last year . So some of our projects have been paused because we had to divert our resources to other priorities . So we are still on our digital transformation journey . We never got to that finish line . But I don ' t believe there is a finish line . I think that technology will keep evolving and improving , and we will have to evolve with it .”
It seems , however , that the global pandemic caused a cultural shift and brought its own set of lessons to be learned .
The Covid Lesson : A Cultural Shift Andrea was on vacation when COVID hit . And as all good supply chain and procurement professionals do , regardless of where in the world they may be , or if they are on or off “ the clock , began to immediately think of the repercussions . By the time she got back to work , usage had started to spike .
Andrea shares the story . “ On the 2nd of February , we saw all our hospitals draw down about six months of PPE stock in about five days . Fortunately for us , we were watching it and saw it happening . We quickly realised we had to put some controls in place . But then we had to come to longer-term solutions .”
“ The first half of 2020 , we focused on PPE and identifying our supply chain vulnerabilities . People thought it was great to see oil prices for Petro going down , but for us , it signified possible supply chain issues as a raw material , e . g . polypropylene used in PPE and hospital supplies . You have to start connecting the dots fast . The team did a great job of that .”
“ I put the team into functional streams early on so we could focus on those areas , and we got some support from government agencies . One of the key things we did early on was to centralise PPE for all government agencies , and that really helped us . I
130 June 2021