29 Sep Member Spotlight: Premier
Premier’s commitment to have an open and competitive purchasing process free of conflicts of interest and any undue influences
Best Practices in implementing principles to highlight Premier’s commitment to ensure that diverse and small businesses are:
- An integral part of our sourcing process to develop a rich ecosystem of competitively price cost options for our members;
Supplier Success Story: Tronex International, a minority-owned business, and a Premier contracted supplier for the past 6 years. They have done an exemplary job in scaling their business with Premier members providing front-line healthcare providers with Personal Protective Equipment in 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic and resulting crisis, brought not only dramatic health, societal and economic impacts, but also massive effects on the global supply chain for PPE. Given the critical role of Tronex products, all Premier members were assured supply, with standout performance for many months into the pandemic. Last but not least, Tronex did not lay off or furlough any staff through the COVID-19 pandemic. Rather, full policies were developed and instituted in early March, with all necessary equipment and infrastructure investments for full remote work productivity. Proper PPE, masks and education were provided to all staff from the start and warehouse shifts were reconfigured and staggered for safety, while maintaining the critical productivity to deliver its essential products to front-line workers across the nation.
- Innovative Coaching and Mentoring strategies that ensure our diverse and small business are provided with support to market and promote their products/services to our members
- Supplier Spotlight communication to develop strong supportive relationships with Premier’s Account Management Teams
- Access to membership roster to develop innovative strategies to grow their business with Premier members to scale their respective businesses local, regional and nationally (one member at time)
Premier/Supplier Success Story: At Premier, our focus is to transform the health of communities, and that includes financial health as well. Having a diversified contract portfolio is important to Premier as it enables us to maintain a competitive edge in today’s marketplace. Premier has created a robust and broad contract portfolio, partly by ensuring diverse and small business suppliers are proactively considered for contracting opportunities. For 20 years, we have demonstrated our commitment to helping minority, woman, veteran and small business enterprises compete and develop through our Supplier Diversity Program. The program includes SEEDS, a contracting platform for small and diverse enterprises to grow incrementally by leveraging opportunities with Premier members. One of the first suppliers to be awarded by the Premier Supplier Diversity Committee for a contract in the SEEDS program was SourceMark, USA. They have done a good job of increasing their scale across the Premier membership alliance in four different contract categories. We also worked closely to create a new category in our portfolio as a result of our open and transparent policies to partner with our suppliers to create wealth in disadvantaged communities.
Headquartered in Nashville, TN, SourceMark™ is a product innovation, manufacturing and distribution company providing affordable solutions for hospitals, health systems, pharmacies, ambulatory surgery centers, clinical laboratories and physician offices. The company’s proven, clinically reviewed medical and surgical products are designed to improve patient care and clinician engagement through their ease-of-use, utilization efficiencies and affordable cost.
- Future Enhancements to diverse and small business commitments, include but are not limited to:
- Increase our impact in the healthcare industry to develop rich and robust Tier 2 supplier commitments;
- Explore opportunities to create opportunity to ensure that the economic and clinical value is an integral part of our respective organizations’ corporate strategy;
- Create synergies by exploring Tier 1 and Tier 2 relationships to have a greater impact on job, health equity and wealth creation within the communities our members serve
In 2019, Mike Alkire, President and Incoming CEO commissioned a Supplier Diversity Committee White Paper to Amplifying the Business Case of Supplier Diversity (Published in 2020 and attached for your reference).