Mark Zacur, healthcare industry executive, reflects on an unprecedented time to be in the healthcare supply chain.
To say that the last two and a half years have been chaotic for the med/surg industry would be an understatement. At the beginning of 2022, Mark Zacur announced his retirement from Owens & Minor as executive vice president and chief commercial officer. Zacur said it’s been a “crazy, but immensely satisfying two-and-a-half-year run, as teammates came together and transformed the company … to a dynamic industry leader.”
Zacur oversaw the commercial operations of the company – which came front and center during the pandemic. Prior to Owens & Minor, Zacur worked for Thermo Fisher Scientific in several roles, including vice president and general manager of Fisher Healthcare. He spoke with Repertoire about Owens & Minor’s pandemic response, how the supply chain has changed in such a short period of time, and what skills distributor reps will need to be successful with today’s clients.
Repertoire: Commercially, did the pandemic accelerate what Owens & Minor was able to accomplish because of the collaboration and changes happening?
Mark Zacur: Owens & Minor was well positioned pre-pandemic. For starters, Owens & Minor has an established America’s based PPE manufacturing footprint with raw materials being manufactured in North Carolina and the products finished in either the Americas or the United States. This gave Owens & Minor an advantage as our PPE manufacturing and supply chains were not impacted by the shutdowns overseas that were happening during the most intense periods of the pandemic.
Also prior to the pandemic, Owens & Minor made the decision to expand raw material production, a decision that allowed us to expand finished goods manufacturing much faster than would typically happen. The O&M team pre-pandemic certainly had things going in the right direction. When the pandemic hit, all of a sudden the sale of domestic-manufactured product was in demand and O&M was able to respond to the industry’s need.
Repertoire: How do you think the pandemic has changed the supply chain permanently, both for Owens & Minor and distributors overall?
Zacur: There are several things. Certainly, transparency is much more important than it’s ever been. Transparency from the perspective of all involved parties – manufacturers, distributors and providers. From the provider perspective – what are their demand signals? Obviously, in a pandemic, it’s dramatically different. But even in normal circumstances, provider demand signals are key. Are they going to have a demand increase because they’re bringing on a new practice or there’s a new initiative around certain procedures, that sort of thing.
In the pandemic, all parties worked together to optimize PPE supply. Using real-time data helped to identify when there was a product shortage and where to allocate a product, so we could send PPE into hotspots while maintaining continuity of supply in regions that weren’t seeing dramatic spikes.
Similarly, when there’s supply disruption from the manufacturer, the distributor and the manufacturer have to be very open about it and communicate the status proactively to the providers.
Moving forward, this timely and transparent three-way communication is really critical. I see this with the global supply chain challenges the industry continues to deal with today. Since this is an industry-wide problem and everybody’s in the same boat, the transparency has gotten better. The test will come when as an industry we get back to a sense of normalcy; will the transparency and collaboration commitments still be a priority?
The other piece is the visibility of the Country of Origin for different products. Providers need to mitigate the risk associated with products originating in distant parts of the world. This complicates the situation and poses questions about alternative product availability, inventory investment, product standardization, etc. Even with U.S. manufactured product, there could be a reliance on components that come out of Asia, for example. Together, manufacturers, distributors and providers need to have a deep understanding of their mutual supply risk and build plans to mitigate those risks.
Repertoire: What skills do you think are now imperative for distributor reps when they’re helping customers?
Zacur: That’s a really good question. Some of it is clearly sales fundamentals – sales process, product knowledge, pipeline management, etc… For me, the most critical imperative, which is also fundamental, is responsiveness to the customer needs. The best sales processes in the industry won’t matter if the representative (and their support teams) aren’t attentive to customer needs. In my experience with many different companies, the farther away from the customer, the less urgency is felt. Obviously, lack of responsiveness is not a formula for success, and I speak from personal experience that the Owens & Minor teammates work really hard to ensure that customer needs are met proactively and that a sense of urgency permeates the entire team. From the customer perspective, this urgency starts with the distributor representative.
One other point is that we all need to be comfortable selling and serving the customer virtually. The scale/criticality of decisions being made through Zoom calls is really eye-opening. I’m a firm believer in being physically together with the customer whenever possible but those opportunities are dramatically fewer now and will remain that way in the future.
Repertoire: Looking back on your career track, what resonated with you when it came to working in the supply chain?
Zacur: I’m a big believer in encouraging employees from the heart. I use a story of my nephew Mike, who was diagnosed with Stage 4 glioblastoma at 29 years old. That was seven years ago, and thankfully he’s through that and continues to remain healthy. Eventually we’re all going to have someone that we know and love who is going to go through a hard time medically. When that happens, as a family member or concerned friend, you want to make sure that you’ve got the best doctors, you have the best care available at the best hospital with the best products and the best supplies. And you have this passion and fervor around making sure everything is perfect for the patient – essentially an advocate for your loved one.
What I always have tried to encourage, and sales teams are typically very receptive to, is making “the why” about having a patient advocacy mindset when you’re doing your job. To make this personal, I ask my teams: “Who’s your Mike?” In other words, who is the patient that you’re going to help today by making sure that the clinicians have all they need for a successful day. For all of us, it’s such a great privilege to be in healthcare and help patients and clinicians. Clinicians treat the patients literally every single day, and over the last two years in the midst of a pandemic our roles in healthcare have never been more critical.
Sure, there were (and continue to be) extraordinarily long days. Through much of 2020, we had team calls seven days a week for months on end with government representatives, our customers and our own teammates. It was exhausting, but there was no better time to be in healthcare. Because literally every single day we shipped PPE and those critical supplies got somewhere to protect a clinician and enabled a clinician to care for a patient.
For me, it’s not about being in supply chain, it’s about the privilege to be in healthcare. In the pandemic, I was speaking to our customers routinely, and the passion that they all had for the patients and the communities they serve was evident during every single conversation. I don’t know that I can find another profession where you have that connectivity that’s right in front of you.
Many businesses can concoct stories that tie their work to the greater good, and they’re sincere in doing so. But when you’re in healthcare, you don’t need a long, thought-out mission statement to connect your work to serving people as we literally do that every hour of every day.