Allers: How to manage demand planning for medicines and hospital supplies with Artificial Intelligence

Key Results

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• Automation of the demand forecast for inputs for +4500 SKUs in 5 locations.
• Reliable support in the demand planning process.
• Inventory optimization due to business impact.
• Sales estimates taking into account external factors.
• Increased productivity.

Allers is a Colombian company specialized in the wholesale, retail and distribution of medications and hospital supplies. Founded in 1955 and with more than 100 employees, it has become a pillar in the supply chain of the health sector in Colombia. Its mission is to ensure that hospitals and clinics have the necessary supplies efficiently to save lives.

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Inventory bankruptcies, overstockings, and product maturities

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Supplying the hospital and pharmaceutical sector is a major challenge. A stock failure can directly impact a patient's care, while oversupply immobilizes capital and generates expiration losses, causing valuable resources to be wasted.

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For Allers, it is essential to balance the availability of critical products with their financial sustainability and to keep their service levels high.

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Among the most common challenges faced by Allers were:

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• Assertiveness of the low demand forecast.
• Manual work on spreadsheets that used to take up operating time.
• Poor forecasting visibility by SKU and point of sale that limited decision-making.
• Increase service levels without causing significant increases in costs with inventory overstocking.

Intelligent demand planning for hospital supplies

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To be able to face the challenges of planning of hospital and pharmaceutical supplies, Allers in the Year 2023 decided to implement Datup: which positions them as pioneers in the use of artificial intelligence for the planning of their supply chain in Colombia.

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The features that Allers adopted were:

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• Portfolio classification (cross-functional functionality): complete classification of your portfolio that includes prioritization and impact by SKU and distribution channel.
• Datup Demand Planning Module: This includes the forecast of demand with artificial intelligence by SKU and branch, including the analysis of Exo Demand (external variables).
• Datup inventory management module: This includes suggested replenishment quantities, inventory availability, supplier leadtimes, safety stock, date of bankruptcy and business rules for each product in your portfolio.

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With more than 4700 SKUs in 5 locations, Datup's solution enabled Allers to:

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• Anticipating demand with AI: They stopped reacting to the market to begin to predict with high accuracy the future needs of their customers.
• Know the medium-term and long-term demand forecast, including the impact of external variables.
• Estimate sales budgets and expected revenues.
• Define reorder points and dynamic safety stocks for each product in all the locations analyzed.
• Determine the existence and availability of inventory for each product in the different locations included in the analysis.
• Set the time and quantity of each product necessary to supply the different locations of the analysis.
• Increase productivity and automate demand and sales forecasting operations, purchasing from suppliers and replenishing points of sale (branches).
• Know how much and where they need inventory to raise their service levels.

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Higher productivity, efficiency and demand planning with AI

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Datup accompanies Allers in their daily lives in demand planning, it is a support that guarantees the precision and automation of repetitive processes in a reliable way.

Allers strengthened its operation, achieving:

• Proactive decisions: They went from reactive planning to data-based planning, anticipating problems before they occurred.
• Inventory Optimization: They reduced the risk of stock failures, oversupply and expired products.
• Reinforcing your mission: By ensuring the availability of supplies, they not only improved their efficiency, but also consolidated their role as a reliable partner for the health sector.

With this transformation, Allers is moving steadily towards its 2028 vision: to be the leading distributor in Colombia, recognized for its operational excellence and a superior level of service driven by cutting-edge technology.

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