Inventory management would seem to be the most prosaic of topics. To those not “in the know,” it conjures up static images of products sitting on shelves. But of course, that’s not the real picture at all. While researching this month’s article on the topic, that much became apparent to me.

In fact, inventory management is one piece of a complicated financial puzzle, involving not only products sitting on shelves, but also purchasing, product standardization, patient charging, and more. Think about it: Your customers have to purchase the correct quantity of products, or else inventory will sit idle on their shelves – and that’s as good as money wasted. They have to know what they have on hand, and they must have a handle on anticipated usage.
Successful practices must tackle the painful task of standardizing products among veterinarians. Keeping three kinds of gloves is simply less efficient than keeping one on the shelves. But standardization isn’t easy. It’s a discipline in which every practice must engage in today’s environment. In any environment, really.

Then, if the practice fails to charge for items consumed or dispensed, it will quickly lose control of what it has on hand (not to mention potential revenue). Again, you’re looking at a situation where the practice finds itself with too much or too little of certain items.

As Butler Schein’s Melody Jurgens spoke to me on the topic, I was struck by how interrelated all these aspects of inventory management are. It’s like a web, I told her. She replied that she uses that exact word often to describe it.
Inventory management, then, is not something that your customers can afford to take lightly. And as MWI’s Mark Smalley pointed out, who better to help customers get things under control than their sales reps? After all, sales reps are the inventory experts. That’s what distributors do – control inventory and all the things that go along with that. And given today’s economy, veterinary practices are bound to listen.

Reps can demonstrate the importance of knowing what’s on the shelves. They can share best practices about product standardization and proper charging. They can bring sophisticated, automated inventory control systems to practices. They can share their experiences. As Kirk Augustine pointed out, many practices fail in this aspect of practice management by entrusting inventory control to a person who was never educated or trained in it, or whose personality profile doesn’t lend itself to the task. Doing so reflects the practice’s lack of understanding of what’s involved – or a lack of understanding of the true economic impact of poor inventory management.

Finally, reps can impress upon their customers the fact that inventory management is an ongoing, never-ending, but extremely worthwhile endeavor. It can help the practice control its costs. And what practice isn’t open to learning about that?