A Fortune 500 company and the largest pharmaceuticals distributor in the US, McKesson is also the leading provider of supply, information and care management products designed to reduce healthcare costs while improving healthcare quality.

Business Challenge

By 2001, McKesson knew that its antiquated supply chain management system was simply inadequate. The company needed a dynamic, durable internet-based alternative that would employ emerging technologies in order to process increasing order volume from a wider variety of customers. In an ideal circumstance, doctors, hospitals and other medical institutions throughout the world would be able to place pharmaceutical orders online while also accessing information from various supply sources. McKesson sought out Command Information to help them quickly develop and deploy this solution.

How Command Information Helped

Command Information led development of McKesson's Supply Management Online system; a B2B solution to accommodate customer orders, provide the ability to check order status, view invoices, and examine purchasing history. Command Information was able to seamlessly integrate the two existing, disparate systems that were struggling to accomplish those objectives. The development team further enhanced the solution with online catalog access, allowing customers to build order templates that made repeat orders much easier. Today, customers can order from McKesson using any browser, on any computer, almost anywhere in the world.

Value Delivered

Remarkably, Command Information developed the Supply Management Online solution for McKesson in less than three months. During the next three years, the company embraced the iterative development techniques introduced by Command Information, refining and expanding the system's capabilities in parallel with the company's evolving business needs. Since 2001, company revenue has increased, and the real-time business value of the supply management solution continues to provide real-time business value to McKesson customers. Additionally, the system remains adaptable, allowing for enhancement to meet new needs of both existing and prospective McKesson customers; new features can be developed and activated in weeks using the iterative approach established by Command Information. By 2004, this combination of rapid-fire service and flexibility helped the McKesson system exceed even Amazon.com for throughput.