Automating Hospital Supply Chains | Jim Brusseau from PAR Excellence

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Welcome to today’s episode. Let’s talk about today’s guest. We have Jim. How you doing today, Jim?

Jim Brusseau: How are you Ernesto? I hope you had a good Christmas.

Ernesto: Ah, thank you so much for asking. I did spend it with the family—hope you had the same.

Jim Brusseau: I did.

Ernesto: Awesome. Great. And let’s talk about what we’re here for, and for our listeners to get a good understanding of what PAR Excellence is all about. In your own words, can you tell us a little bit more?

Jim Brusseau: Yeah, we play within the med tech space in the healthcare segment, and specific to inventory management, we automate inventory for modern healthcare—specifically hospitals.

Jim Brusseau: There’s a lot more to it than that. In a world of very complex supply chain, global supply disruptions, backorders, substitutions, labor challenges—automating supply chain is a big benefit for today’s healthcare.

Ernesto: And so that everyone listening can get a good understanding of your company, what are some problems that you saw for clients?

Jim Brusseau: High level: reduce their dependence on labor, improve order accuracy, reduce inventory levels—without compromising availability.

Overall, it’s really basic functions about hospital supply chain in the context of Maslow’s hierarchy. There are four primary functions that have to occur before they can get to the functions that enable them to truly be proactive.

The first one is inventory—daily cycle count. Second is reordering and replenishment. The third is receiving—capturing the product as it comes in. And the fourth is stocking or put away.

If we automate the first two of those four, that gives the hospital supply chain team more time to focus proactively on the other elements of day to day duties.

At the end of the day, they’re looking to have the greatest impact for the clinical teams as they care for patients.

Ernesto: Alright, perfect. So who do you guys focus on as your client? Would your segment be anyone in the health industry, specifically?

Jim Brusseau: We typically focus on hospitals.

Ernesto: Hospitals—okay, perfect. Awesome.

Jim Brusseau: You might find from time to time surgery centers or freestanding emergency departments—especially in larger metropolitan markets. Time to time the clinical office area, right, MOBS. But the majority of the time it is inpatient acute care hospital.

Ernesto: Okay, perfect. And as far as getting those hospitals, what would you say is a top client acquisition channel for you guys?

Jim Brusseau: Right now it seems to be referrals.

Ernesto: Okay, referrals. And I’m here on the website, parexcellence.com—what role does the website play for your client acquisition?

Jim Brusseau: We get leads through that. We combine our digital marketing efforts with LinkedIn and our website, and we marry that with our CRM.

Ernesto: Perfect. That’s great to hear. Now, let’s switch gears a little bit, Jim, and talk about you as a leader. You’re the VP of Sales and Marketing there—what key tasks do you focus on in your day to day work?

Jim Brusseau: That’s a big question. I think it probably comes down to three buckets.

Number one: you’ve got to have the right players on the team. People—hiring, training, development—that’s the biggest bucket. Spending your time with your best players, helping them perform even better, making sure you’ve got the right people.

Second: day to day execution. Whether it’s monthly, quarterly, annual—you’ve got to show. Whether it’s driving top line, building pipeline, marketing campaigns—it’s all those things that go into executing day to day and month to month.

Ernesto: Yeah, it’s definitely important, right? It’s a team effort. And you’ve got to manage two things—marketing and sales. It can always be a fine line—“you’re not doing this” or “you’re not doing that”—so you’ve got to balance it.

Jim Brusseau: The third thing is the culture. People want to work in a place that’s fun, that leads to their development, helps make them better—people with like-minded values and beliefs in a cause that they believe in.

So how do you build a thriving culture that recognizes performance, provides autonomy, gives folks creative input and control their own destiny, with a chance to live in a risk-reward environment where they’re winning.

So at the end of the day: people, performance, culture. Those are the three things I focus on.

Ernesto: All right. Awesome. Thank you so much for sharing that with us. Let’s jump into our rapid fire round questions. Are you ready for them, Jim?

All right. First off: what is the last book that you read?

Jim Brusseau: Oh, I’m reading it right now called Back.

Ernesto: All right, interesting read. Now—what is one single thing that PAR Excellence is focused on at the moment the most?

Jim Brusseau: Really selling our differentiated technology. We pioneered this 15 years ago. We’ve been around 30 years. We use a scale and software to replace day to day inventory cycle counting and replenishment.

And how you position that, how you sell that is the challenge. Nobody else sells that technology. Nobody else does it the way we do. Most expensive solution in the market also has the biggest ROI—big challenge.

Ernesto: Definitely. Nice. Now, if there would be no boundaries in technology, Jim, what would be that one thing that you want to have fixed for your role as a marketer today?

Jim Brusseau: I’d love to see who’s planning to buy next year.

Ernesto: All right. I think I remarked you’re doing right. Now—if there was one repetitive task that you could automate, what would that be?

Jim Brusseau: I don’t know. The reality is that so much of our world has been automated—the way we communicate and propose deals, the way we track a deal, whether it’s CRM, various software platforms.

I guess for you guys, the right answer is probably something like prospecting, but no two clients in our industry are the same. And therein lies the challenge.

There’s an old adage: if you’ve been in one hospital, congrats—you’ve been in one hospital. But there’s 6,000 of them. They take care of sick people and make them better, but how they do it—their workflow, processes, IT platforms, risk profiles, budgets, leadership philosophy—all that varies.

It creates so many different permutations. I can’t automate that right now.

Truthfully, I think about it more like a continuum. If you look at hospital supply chains today, there are really only two buckets: those who have automated or are in the process of automating, and those who have not yet—but will be. Only two buckets.

So the question isn’t “are they interested in buying,” but “where are they on that continuum?”

Ernesto: That’s important. And lastly, Jim—you’ve got a lot of experience in the health industry and in marketing. What is one piece of advice you would give yourself if you were to restart your journey as a marketer today?

Jim Brusseau: Don’t hire and you’re—

Ernesto: Oh, interesting. All right, great advice.

Jim, thanks a lot for being on the show with us today. I do want to give you the last word. If someone forgets everything about the interview today, what is that one thing they should remember about PAR Excellence?

Jim Brusseau: We automate supply chains. Real simple. We automate supply chain. Thanks for your time, Ernesto.

Ernesto: No, thank you. And for our listeners—thank you so much for tuning in. If you’re looking to automate in your hospital, you can always check them out at parexcellence.com. Thank you so much for tuning in and looking forward to our next episode at Pathmonk Presents.