Trust but Verify, A Solution for Short Dated Products..

Short dated and expired goods – whose responsibility is it?

It seems that  wholesalers/suppliers and manufacturers cannot agree on who should take the financial hit when products need to be pulled from the shelf. 

As a distributor since you use inventory control practices to ensure consistent product turns, which drive the re-order process, Those controls should be able to minimize the incidence of non-salable expired goods.  However having said that it's not always consistent across the board and many vendors offer different policies about returning expired goods.

Additionally it can be a significant sales opportunity if you are aware of, and have the information on what products are going to become short dated and use that to make a large sale or purchase. 

If there is a business "partnership" where the supplier agrees to ship you items with a minimum expiration date with the MDS-Nx you can now Trust but Verify.

On a vendor by vendor basis you can now setup business rules to prevent short dated product from getting into your inventory or advise you in real time so you can make a business decision, negotiate pricing, or find a buyer before you lose your inventory investment. 

Based upon rules in the vendor profile you can decide what is considered short dated and display warnings as well as generate alerts based upon any product that is received if it does not meet your criteria..

Increase your profits 

Prevent waste 

and use our business tools to 

"Trust but Verify"

For more information on TSH or MDS call The Systems House, Inc. at 1-800- MDS-5556. Or send a message to sales@tshinc.com

Click here and tell us how we can help you with your business solutions.

Try before you buy...

Imagine your business operations cleaner easier and faster

The Systems House’s Try and Buy offering will allow you to evaluate the MDS-Nx system with your Customers and Products.. The MDS-Nx Distribution System is a cost-effective, enterprise wide system specifically designed to meet the business challenges of Medical/Pharma distributors.  Let us show you our system working with your information to make your operations cleaner easier and faster today. For a Limited Time we are offering a FREE try before you buy implementation of the MDS-Nx System with your data on our cloud servers. Click Here to start your try and buy today!! Don’t be held back by standalone software systems that cut performance and profitability.

• Increase speed and precision of business processes, from sales orders to financials to purchasing
• Connect customers, manufacturers and partners across multiple systems, so the right products get to the right locations at the right times 
• Configure and Manage Supplier and Customer Rebates with Contract Management/ GPO’s/Buying Groups
• Easily comply with complex Federal and State regulations
• Reduce risk through advanced  ePedigree, DEA/ARCOS, narcotics and  compliance reporting
• Track and Trace drugs across your entire supply chain for accurate reporting, pricing, recall and return purposes
• Utilize Websites and Social Media to increase customer visibility and expand your client base

Review our Industry Specific version of the MDS system with added benefits for:

MDS Healthcare provides scalability for rapid growth in targeted medical segments

o   Pharmaceutical

o   Medical/Surgical  

o   EMS - Emergency

o   Physician

o   Acute Care

o   LTC/Home Health

Click Here to start your try and buy today!!

For more information on TSH or MDS call The Systems House, Inc. at 1-800- MDS-5556. Or send a message to sales@tshinc.com
The Systems House, Inc. | 1033 Rt 46 East | Suite A201 | Clifton | NJ | 07013

Click here and tell us how we can help you with your business solutions.

Sticky Marketing - Make your Own Reorder Labels

The MDS-Nx System now offers Reorder Labels  designed to support long-term care , Retail Pharmacy and offers integration with our ScanConnect Web Based Inventory Management System. 

Reorder Labels can contain standard Product label information as well as contact information, pricing and quantity as well as the date ordered to prompt the  customer to reorder in a timely fashion.  Reorder Labels are a standard Zebra label and use off the shelf and readily available technology.

Reorder Labels integrate with our Fast and Accurate Barcode Inventory Management System called ScanConnect. With ScanConnect your customers can reorder by using barcode scanners directly in each facility and sending the orders to you via the Internet.

It benefits both you and your customers by:

• Saving time and order costs
• Eliminating keystroke-generated errors
• Reviewing scheduled orders allowing for inventory management and automated reorders

For more information on TSH or MDS call The Systems House, Inc. at 1-800- MDS-5556. Or send a message to sales@tshinc.com

Click here and tell us how we can help you with your business solutions.

Rebates and Contracts and Sales Tracings, Oh My!!

Some us of may be familiar with the phrase Lions and Tigers and Bears Oh My!! if not see the video below. But what it has really come to represent is someone who is fearful of a rumored threat. But if you watch the movie or see the story you will realize it was not a real threat, just something to scare you with.. 

Well in many industries,  Rebates and Contracts and Sales Tracings have come to represent those scary rumored threats. And prevent companies from taking advantage of contract pricing and costing options. 


But with the MDS Rebate Management System that's no longer a problem.

—       Simply match to the example Spreadsheet from your vendor —and save it as an MDS Rebate Format. —Then use it to generate a sales tracing based upon your selection criteria, Using the output format specified by your vendor. To assist you MDS includes a database of  pre-existing —Vendor Format Templates available as a Library. now you don't have to be scared by the threat of having to send your sales tracings and track your products and customers. Take advantage of GPO Pricing and Rebates while streamlining your business. 

Link to the Video for those who love the Wizard of Oz.

For more information on TSH or MDS call The Systems House, Inc. at 1-800- MDS-5556. Or send a message to sales@tshinc.com

Click here and tell us how we can help you with your business solutions.

Hope you had a great Turkey Day , President signs Drug Quality and Security Act

Hope you enjoyed your Thanksgiving Holiday.  In case you missed it,  
just before the break the president signed H.R 3204, The Drug Quality and Security Act.  Now that is has passed here is a quick recap from our friends at HIDA. As your review some of the highlights of the bill,  and  the coming affect on the Healthcare Supply Chain,  feel free to reach out out to TSH to help you navigate the regulatory maze.

"

Click here for an overview: http://energycommerce.house.gov/fact-sheet/hr-3204-drug-quality-and-security-act
or for the full text: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/hr3204/text

Last Wednesday, the president signed the Drug Quality and Security Act (H.R. 3204) into law, creating a national prescription drug pedigree solution. 

 HIDA Government Affairs has created a summary of H.R. 3204, which includes a flowchart highlighting the information required to be passed by trading partners. 

The Drug Quality and Security Act (H.R. 3204) creates a uniform, national standard for tracing pharmaceuticals through the supply chain.  The bill ensures the safety of drugs for patients and the immediate preemption provision eliminates the burdensome patchwork of state pedigree laws. Wholesale distributors can start conducting business the same way in all 50 states

Key Provisions Important to Medical Surgical and Pharma Distributors:

1.  National uniform standard with immediate state preemption of pedigree laws.  
2.  Key exemptions for convenience kits, IVs, combination products, etc. 
3.  Affiliate language so that all companies (C Corps, S Corps and LLCs, etc) can conduct intracompany transfers of pharmaceutical product.
4.  Medical surgical distributors are not mandated to provide all information required to be passed down the supply chain in one document.
5.  Federal Licensure standards for pharmaceutical distributors.

Key Terms:  The terms below are important to understand as different trading partners are required to pass different combinations of the documents depending on upstream and downstream trading partners. 

• The transaction information (TI) includes the name of the product, strength and dosage form,  National Drug Code (NDC), the container size, the number of containers, the lot number, the transaction date, the shipment date, and the name and address of the businesses from which and to which ownership is being transferred. 
• A transaction history (TH) is a paper or electronic statement that includes the transaction information for each prior transaction back to the manufacturer. 
• A transaction statement (TS) is a paper or electronic attestation by the business transferring ownership of the product that it has complied with the Act.

Key Dates:

•  Prior to January 1, 2015:  The federal Prescription Drug Marketing Act of 1987 (PDMA) requirements remain in place during the interim period between enactment and the start of Phase I requirements.  
•  January 1, 2015:  Phase I begins requiring manufacturers, wholesalers and repackagers to  comply with applicable traceability requirements and engage with only “authorized trading partners”
•  July 1, 2015:  Dispensers must comply with applicable traceability requirements.
•  4 Years After Enactment:  Manufacturers must have all product serialized.
•  5 Years After Enactment:  Repackagers must have all product serialized.
•  6 Years After Enactment: Wholesalers must only engage in transactions with serialized product.
•  7 Years After Enactment: Dispensers must only engage in transactions with serialized product.
•  10 Years After Enactment: Trading partners must be compliant with Phase II.  

Phase II is self effectuating (does not require final FDA regulations) and requires an interoperable electronic system that traces serialized product at the unit level through the supply chain.

For more information on TSH or MDS call The Systems House, Inc. at 1-800- MDS-5556. Or send a message to sales@tshinc.com

Click here and tell us how we can help you with your business solutions.

The only difference between death and taxes is that death doesn't get worse every time Congress meets.

MDS Tax options now offer a new choice

Thanks to Will Rogers for the Quote. 

Taxes are a business reality for some and a non-issue for others but as the government needs more money it's going to have to come from somewhere. Amazon is charging tax now and in all likelihood they will start taxing your business in some way soon. The good news is that MDS has you covered and here are a few options for tax setup and maintenance within the MDS systems. 

     

Taxrates.com – Our simplest option,  login to the website and download a spreadsheet of all zip codes you have a tax nexus in. You can them upload into MDS  this will create the tax jurisdictions. Then when setting up customers just key in the zip code to get the correct tax rate, Update as often as needed check with your accountant.

      Alternate Option  – Taxrates.com with overrides for specific product classes in certain zip codes or jurisdictions. This allows you to flag certain product classes as non taxable in certain jurisdictions. however it does require you to setup additional product classes. There is some added time to review your products and segregate.

        Salestax.com/Esalestax.com  – This is our most comprehensive method. All your tax liability is entered online and each product can be mapped to a specific unspsc code or taxable class (available on their site/spreadsheet). Then each time an order is place a website call is made to calculate the tax. The website allows options for customer specific exemptions and they map to geo codes based upon the shipping address,  not zip codes so they are  more accurate. They also offer the ability to file your taxes for you with the correct forms for state/local etc Note: There is an added cost from TSH as well on ongoing monthly fees for this service.

          Speedtax com –This is the same method as Esalestax as they were bought out by CCH (esalestax.com) . All your tax liability is entered online and each product can be mapped to a specific unspsc code or taxable class (available on their site/spreadsheet). Then each time an order is place a website call is made to calculate the tax. The website allows options for customer specific exemptions and they map to geo codes based upon the shipping address,  not zip codes so they are  more accurate. They also offer the ability to file your taxes for you with the correct forms for state/local etc Note: There is an added cost from TSH as well on ongoing monthly fees for this service. Speedtax offers s pricing advantages as it's designed for online SAAS models and is not strictly based upon volume or business size. 

For more information on TSH or MDS call The Systems House, Inc. at 1-800- MDS-5556. Or send a message to sales@tshinc.com

Click here and tell us how we can help you with your business solutions.

It's so good people won't know it's not their regular coffee..

Direct Fulfillment lets your customer look like a national brand. 

Using the MDS Direct fulfillment option allows you to expand your service offering to make your company more valuable as a business partner, Amazon ships from all over but it's really a combination of amazon warehouses and your third party fulfillment centers.  MDS lets you take advantage of that same technology with our direct fulfillment system. 

Back in the 80's there was a commercial from Folgers where customers were secretly switched from their regular coffee to Folgers, well in our example customers won't know they are getting product from another distributor and with the MDS system they may just like it better. 
Folgers Coffee commercial with "the switch" watch the video.

MDS Direct fulfillment offers: 

• You the ability ship to your customer’s customers
• Custom forms & labels with your customer’s logo and packing documents

In our example Scott Medical is doing direct fulfillment for their customer John Smith.
By selecting that customer’s ship to location in order entry, MDS will print packing documents as though the shipment came from Scott Medical. In setting up the packing documents,
MDS offer a library of templates for the shipping forms. You will then only have to select the template for that Ship to location Maintenance. Essentially Drop shipping for your Customer with their Packing Slip

For more information on TSH or MDS call The Systems House, Inc. at 1-800- MDS-5556. Or send a message to sales@tshinc.com

Click here and tell us how we can help you with your business solutions.

Reminder: Webinar on Drug Supply Chain Changes

H.R 3204 has passed and the coming changes will affect for your company. Join us for a brief webinar, where we will take you through some of the highlights of the bill,  the coming affect on the Healthcare Supply Chain, and some innovative software solutions to help you navigate the regulatory maze.

This legislation would strengthen the prescription drug supply chain in order to protect American families against counterfeit drugs. The bill also would help prevent increases in drug prices, avoid additional drug shortages, and eliminate hundreds of millions of dollars worth of duplicative government red tape on American businesses that is harming job growth.

"House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI) "

Click here for an overview: http://energycommerce.house.gov/fact-sheet/hr-3204-drug-quality-and-security-act
or for the full text: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/hr3204/text

Follow the life cycle of a controlled drug through the healthcare supply chain with real world examples with simple and concise explanations using no jargon.  The MDS Medical Distribution System is a cost-effective, enterprise wide system designed specifically to meet the business challenges of Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Distributors. Utilizing a single Integrated system to handle pharmaceutical, MedSurg , Drug Pedigree and Unique Device Identification allows you to concentrate on your business operations while staying on top of regulatory and compliance issues. 

For your convenience, this webinar is being offered at two different times on the same date:

Session A   10:00 - 11:00 am ET |  8  am MT  on Tuesday November 12, 2013 http://www.anymeeting.com/PIID=E959D980894731

or  

Session B 4:00 - 5:00 pm ET |  2 pm MT        on  Tuesday November 12, 2013

http://www.anymeeting.com/PIID=E959D983804F39

For more information on TSH or MDS call The Systems House, Inc. at 1-800- MDS-5556. Or send a message to sales@tshinc.com

Click here and tell us how we can help you with your business solutions.

She Blinded Me With Science...

The MDS Audit and QC module allows you to audit any document or transaction in the MDS system.

"She Blinded Me With Science" is a New Wave song by British musician Thomas Dolby, released in 1982. 

what does that have to do with this post? The song's chorus, "She blinded me with science", plays upon the colloquial British expression "to blind [someone] with science", meaning to deliberately confuse someone by giving the impression of highly complex knowledge. Well in our own way we now can use the same technique within the MDS system. For those not familiar here is the video. 

This Module is designed to allow your company to comply with   21 CFR 211 - (1) Sample size and test intervals based on statistical criteria for each attribute examined. While there are many methodologies used in sampling, the MDS QC and Audit Module offers "Systematic sampling" as a method of choosing which documents to check. 

Systematic sampling relies on arranging the study population according to some ordering scheme and then selecting elements at regular intervals through that ordered list. Systematic sampling involves a random start and then proceeds with the selection of every kth element from then onwards. In this case, k=(population size/sample size). It is important that the starting point is not automatically the first in the list, but is instead randomly chosen from within the first to the kth element in the list. A simple example would be to select every 10th name from the telephone directory (an 'every 10th' sample, also referred to as 'sampling with a skip of 10').

Once a document or transaction is flagged for audit the system will automatically create a task assigned to a a specific user to complete the function and update any additional steps in your audits. 


By combining a little bit of science with a simplified audit capability the MDS QC and Audit system now allow your company to comply with regulatory concerns, Industry Best Practices and statistically measure and improve and critical processes. 

For more information on TSH or MDS call The Systems House, Inc. at 1-800- MDS-5556. Or send a message to sales@tshinc.com

Click here and tell us how we can help you with your business solutions.

Cleaner Easier and Faster, User Meeting 2013

Last week we hosted our annual user meeting and reviewed the latest updates to the MDS System. 



This past year brought us over 140 updates to the Base MDS System, and 37 Customer Specific enhancements, which were requested by customers and integrated into the core MDS functionality.

144 Base Enhancements

37 Customer Specific Enhancements












Customers from all over the US,  from Seattle to Miami attended and 3 clients were awarded with the prestigious TSH 10 year award , marking 10 years of continuing support with the TSH Team.





Thanks all our employees and customers for their participation in making this year's event a great success. 

For those who did not attend please reach out to sales@tshinc.com for your copy of 
our user meeting DVD with our latest guides, videos and a copy of all of our presentations. 

Webinar: H.R. 3204, The Drug Quality and Security Act and What It Means For You.

H.R 3204 has passed and the coming changes will affect for your company. Join us for a brief webinar, where we will take you through some of the highlights of the bill,  the coming affect on the Healthcare Supply Chain, and some innovative software solutions to help you navigate the regulatory maze.

This legislation would strengthen the prescription drug supply chain in order to protect American families against counterfeit drugs. The bill also would help prevent increases in drug prices, avoid additional drug shortages, and eliminate hundreds of millions of dollars worth of duplicative government red tape on American businesses that is harming job growth.

"House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI) "

Click here for an overview: http://energycommerce.house.gov/fact-sheet/hr-3204-drug-quality-and-security-act
or for the full text: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/hr3204/text

Follow the life cycle of a controlled drug through the healthcare supply chain with real world examples with simple and concise explanations using no jargon.  The MDS Medical Distribution System is a cost-effective, enterprise wide system designed specifically to meet the business challenges of Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Distributors. Utilizing a single Integrated system to handle pharmaceutical, MedSurg , Drug Pedigree and Unique Device Identification allows you to concentrate on your business operations while staying on top of regulatory and compliance issues. 

For your convenience, this webinar is being offered at two different times on the same date:

Session A   10:00 - 11:00 am ET |  8  am MT  on Tuesday November 12, 2013 http://www.anymeeting.com/PIID=E959D980894731

or  

Session B 4:00 - 5:00 pm ET |  2 pm MT        on  Tuesday November 12, 2013

http://www.anymeeting.com/PIID=E959D983804F39

For more information on TSH or MDS call The Systems House, Inc. at 1-800- MDS-5556. Or send a message to sales@tshinc.com

Click here and tell us how we can help you with your business solutions.

But we need it!! , I promise I will use it..

Just a friendly reminder , Our Annual MDS User Group Meeting will be held on Monday, October 21, 2013.

Please Contact mlv@tshinc.com for registration details and Hotel Arrangements. If you would like to arrange a private meeting for October 22^nd  during your visit you can register and request a meeting on your form. 

So you go to the store and how many of us have heard that phrase from our kids? You buy the product and it sits on the shelf and no one ever uses it.  Well at home it's only our budgets that get affected but as a distributor every time a salesman or an inventory manager tells you "We need it!!" , its costing you money.. 

One Solution to the problem... Come to our user meeting and learn how to find those items and clean them up using our Inventory Analysis Tools. 

 Inventory Management – This session will explore the expanded purchasing capabilities incorporated into MDS. The objective is to identify the vendors and products in need of replenishment. The Inventory Management module attempts to minimize inventory investment while reducing stock outs and backorders.

TSH Director of Professional Services, Julianne Rauco will be presenting our Inventory Management System including our Inventory Analysis Tool used to identify items that can be eliminated from inventory.  

"The analysis identifies all stock items that are contributing less than 1%, or 5%, or

whatever level you select of the sales.  You could get rid of all those items and risk

losing only 1% of the sales you experienced during the last 12 months.  A branch

manager might really want to argue this statement.  "We have to keep that stock

item to assure that we'll get the good stuff that Company X buys from us !"  No

problem.  Keep it.  Keep every one of the items someone can give a specific reason

for retaining.  But get rid of the rest.  The fact is, they are contributing nothing!

- In too many distributor's inventories, as much as 30% or 40% of the total investment

may be below the 100% sales line.  Zero turns per year.  No sales activity at all.

Obviously, these are the candidates for disposition.  Realistically, you should cut

more deeply.  "

Items below the 98% sales line ought to be dropped from stock as a

general rule.

Join us at our user meeting for more information on this and other  important topics. 

For more information on TSH or MDS call The Systems House, Inc. at 1-800- MDS-5556. Or send a message to sales@tshinc.com

Click here and tell us how we can help you with your business solutions.

Convenience Fee? No Problem..

MDS Offers additional credit card integration platforms

As a result of long-standing litigation against the cards brands, merchants are now permitted to charge customers a surcharge for paying with a credit card. Ten states still prohibit surcharging, and surcharges are still not allowed on signature and pin debit transactions.  Your business can charge customers a credit card fee, but there's a maze of rules, exceptions and even state laws to navigate to ensure you stay compliant with the terms of your merchant processing agreement.

OK so i lied... you got me, but like it or not many customers are demanding to use their cards more and more often, One approach is to find the best deal and stick with that processor, 

By adding the flexibility to allow you to connect to multiple processing gateways for each company in the MDS system you now have the leverage to negotiate with your bank and payment processor. 

While it's not the best solution, we can offer help to make sure you now have the right partner for credit card processing. 

For more information on TSH or MDS call The Systems House, Inc. at 1-800- MDS-5556. Or send a message to sales@tshinc.com

Click here and tell us how we can help you with your business solutions.