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AmerisourceBergen becoming strategic partner

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CONSHOHOCKEN, Pa. — Two decades ago AmeriSource Health merged with Bergen Brunswig to form AmerisourceBergen, one of the nation’s premier pharmaceutical distributors. Today the company, now a $185 billion global diversified health care services provider, is working to forge closer ties with its biggest customers in a bid to improve patient care and drive business.

George Rafferty

George Rafferty

George Rafferty is leading the charge to transform AmerisourceBergen’s relationships with its top-20 accounts — a group that includes Walgreens Boots Alliance, Costco, Sam’s Club, Kaiser Permanente and Humana — into meaningful strategic partnerships.

“This is an outgrowth of a larger unification initiative, which brought everything within our organization together — from a technology standpoint, an operational standpoint and a leadership standpoint,” says Rafferty, president of corporate partnerships. “As our company has evolved, we thought it was time we took a look at how we approach and align with our customers, and make sure that we are structured in a way that truly enables us to bring the benefits of a unified AmerisourceBergen enterprise strategy to them.”

Formally launched last fall, the evolution of the corporate partnerships team (which used to be dubbed strategic accounts) included the creation of corporate partnership managers for each client. The attention of those individuals is squarely on the long term, according to Rafferty.

“Previously we were very focused on solving day to day,” he explains, “and that, quite honestly, was standing in the way of us living up to the expectation that customers had of us to be able to bring more to the relationship. So we changed our coverage model. We added resources to support the day-to-day operations of the customers by bolstering what we call our account services team. And we stood up the new organization of corporate partnership managers. Their job is proactive problem solving. They should wake up every day and say, ‘What am I going to do today to make the experience of our customer better with us?’ ”

Claire-Biermaas

Claire Biermaas

The corporate partnership managers report to Claire Biermaas, who, as group vice president, oversees their interactions with clients while optimizing contract performance. Claire and her team work routinely with vice president of strategic solutions Michael Amante, who is charged with fostering design thinking. The later process is intended to produce a better understanding of customer needs, identify problems and develop ways to fix them.

“My team’s job is actually quite simple,” Amante says. “It is to help AmerisourceBergen, as an organization, understand what matters most to our largest customers and then use that to rally the expertise, the resources of AmerisourceBergen and the amazing people that exist here to launch new solutions.

“The whole process — if I was to call it a linear process, although it’s not — begins with something quite journalistic, because understanding another human being and understanding what motivates them and what they’re trying to accomplish is actually a difficult task to do objectively without your own bias.”

Once that foundational understanding is established, AmerisourceBergen, both internally and in conjunction with its partners, begins to examine how various problems and opportunities should be tackled.

Michael Amante

Michael Amante

“We take that customer understanding back to those folks and say, ‘What thoughts does this inspire in you?’ ” explains Amante, “either thoughts you’ve had for years or new thoughts. There are a lot of amazing things that arise when we do that.

“We then take those thoughts and say, ‘OK, how do we translate them into potential solutions? Things that we can feasibly launch into the marketplace?’ ”

For her part, Biermaas says the design thinking process, coupled with the ongoing efforts of the corporate partnership managers, is already opening new pathways for AmerisourceBergen and its biggest clients: “You’re getting on the phone with your customer and asking open-ended questions about what their experience is like working with you, and also what’s going on in their business. You’re deeply listening to how they’re answering, you’re following them on whatever road they’re going down. Instead of a sales conversation, where you’re trying to sell your products and solutions, the subject is, ‘Hey, what are you thinking about? What do you need?’

“We rely on Mike to take that information and share it within our organization, so we can come up with the right solutions. If the customers are saying this, and this is a huge opportunity for us to differentiate ourselves, let’s work together to put a business case together, bring it to our organization and ask for investment. He’s the customer whisperer when it comes to listening for things that they say, but also listening for things that they don’t say.”

Although AmerisourceBergen’s corporate partnership program is still in the early stages, it has already achieved tangible results. Rafferty notes that his group is currently helping several clients expand into the burgeoning pet medicines category (“a cash-paying business that helps bring patients into the locations of our retailers”) through the company’s MWI Animal Health division, and recently helped one retail account launch a successful flu immunization program. Improving forecasting is a persistent problem that the company is exploring with a number of clients.

“One of the things that all of our customers struggle with — and, quite honestly, it’s something we should always strive to be better at — is good understanding of forecasting and replenishment to make sure that the right product is at the right place when the patient comes in,” he says. “We’re working with our customers to develop specific tools to be able to enable better forecasting so they can meet the needs of their patients.”

Biermaas confirms that clients are eager for assistance on that front. “Having a stable inventory management process and supply chain is one of the most important things that our customers focus on,” she says. “We are realizing through the work we’re doing with them that this is really hard to accomplish, but there are so many things that we could do to improve the process. Helping our customers do it better helps us do it better, which in turn helps to communicate to the manufacturer more precise data about what our customer’s needs are from an inventory perspective.

“Pharmaceutical distribution is one of the best, most stable supply chains in the world, but that doesn’t mean that there also is not major room for improvement. That’s really the core of what we do, and it’s the core of what our customers do. Having to turn a patient away because they couldn’t get the drug is one of the worst experiences that a pharmacist or a pharmacy organization can have. It is unacceptable.”

A common thread running through the corporate partnership group’s efforts is an intense focus on the patient and the client. “No matter what is going on, our customers have always made time and always get excited about talking about how we can evolve our model beyond today,” says Amante. “There are organizations out there, not in this industry, just in the world as a whole, and a lot of people out there who view the world as what our customer needs and what our business needs, and oftentimes view those as two separate things. I can either serve the customer or serve my shareholders.

“I know I’m oversimplifying, but often when you look at the world that way you think, ‘If I take a customer-first approach, there are some risks to my business I’m taking on.’ AmerisourceBergen is an organization that says, ‘No, meeting my customer needs and doing what’s right for my business are one and the same.’ When you do that, you get to some powerful, amazing solutions.”

The ultimate goal of AmerisourceBergen’s corporate partnership program is to help the company achieve its stated aim — creating healthier futures — both for patients and for the providers that take care of them. “When I think about our corporate partnership customers that have the ability to impact millions of lives every single solitary day, I think if we can help them solve the issue around ensuring that the product is there when they need it that it really is in great alignment with our corporate purpose,” Rafferty says. “What better way for us to create healthier futures than through our customers making sure that we’re meeting the needs of their patients every single solitary day, and finding efficiencies and potentially taking costs out of the system.

“If you think about my aspiration for the team, I’m hoping that a day comes that any one customer of ours would never think about making a strategic decision about their business without picking up the phone and calling someone at AmerisourceBergen. As we all are trying to evolve with the changing health care platform, that’s a key role for us and, quite honesty, where I want my team to be with our customers.”

Biermaas expresses confidence that 2021 will be a turning point for the corporate partnerships team. “The first year of the new model was proving the differentiation to our customers,” she says, “because they had to go through the change as much as we have. They’re very, very pleased. You have to earn the right to have strategic conversations.

“What I am looking forward to in FY ‘21 is our customers being open to talking to us about things that they’ve never been open to talking to us about before. When you’re a supply chain company, a lot of times people see you as a vendor. The space that we’re moving into because of this new model is a strategic partner.  I’m excited to see what’s in store and what decisions our big customers are going to make because they have such a huge impact on patient care.”


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