AliMed modernizes its digital systems to better serve its customers, distributor reps
By Daniel Beaird
“We focus on delivering a wide breadth of products that serve a continuum of clinical settings from acute through post-acute.”
AliMed has helped customers solve clinical and business problems for over 50 years through product innovation, informed sales and customer care reps, and reliable delivery. But after the pandemic hit, it found itself needing to modernize.
Specializing in high mix, low volume
AliMed is a niche medical device supplier and manufacturer offering high-mix, low-volume product assortment. About half of the products that it sells are either branded, proprietary, or manufactured by AliMed.
“We take great pride in the fact that we’re not just distributing national brands,” said Adam Epstein, CEO of AliMed. “But we’ve also focused on the clinical and business needs of our customers, and then we productize solutions.”
AliMed can help distributor reps solve some of their most challenging problems through a wide range of offerings, depending on the unique needs of their customers.
AliMed specializes in three key market segments:
1. Behind the red line. AliMed sells all of the accessories around the patient in the OR.
“We sell all of the products that are used to put the patient into position,” Epstein said. “So, table surfaces, table accessories, retention straps, and patient positioners. For example, for a wrist surgery, it’s an arm board, pads, and skin-friendly straps. We sell all of that.”
“It’s not just individual products either, but an entire solution,” he added. “We sell the table accessories that clamp onto the table along with the pads and positioners that mitigate pressure ulcers for longer surgeries. We also have patient transfer equipment, a huge line of radiation protection, IV stands, skin markers, PPE dispensers, stands, and carts. Anything that’s required to keep the patient secure and the clinicians productive and safe.”
2. Radiation protection. AliMed sells a variety of products around this category including aprons off the rack and custom aprons.
“For an individual or institution, we can add something simple like a logo, monogramming, or colors, or completely custom fit aprons,” Epstein said. “We also sell radiation protection glasses, gloves, shields, mobile barriers and anything that protects the clinicians while they are performing their duties.”
Epstein also highlighted AliMed’s ability to design radiation protection around its customers’ specific needs. The types of aprons used in imaging centers, teaching hospitals, and interventional radiology suites, for example, differ.
“We studied the needs of these different user groups and designed products specifically for them,” Epstein said. “By being both the designer and the manufacturer, it allows us to create a broader offering, and one that’s tailored to solving their business and clinical problems. One example of this is our AliTrack cloud-based inventory management software, which uses RFID technology to track the condition and location of a facility’s radiation protection garments. It even alerts them when it’s time for a replacement. It makes quick work of Joint Commission inspection prep!”
3. Post-acute and rehabilitation facilities. AliMed is best known in rehabilitation and post-acute facilities for its splints and braces, orthoses, and positioners.
Epstein said, “That business tends to be much higher mix and lower volume, with a variety of specialized patient needs. Much of that product we keep in stock for same-day shipment, which supports our 97.5% fill rate. Managing that complexity efficiently is made possible with our new ERP system, which is one reason why we invested in it.”
AliMed has a wide variety of products that can meet patients’ needs with over 15,000 active products serving 12,000 customers worldwide. “We love selling through distribution,” Epstein said. “A significant portion of our business is specifically designed around servicing big box distributors.”
AliMed has three groups of specialists to service the acute space. MTMC (MedTech/MedCare) covers territory responsibilities, regional account managers focus on a narrower group of products and serve the needs of the customers in product support. Finally, AliMed is expanding its product management group and hiring specialists for each product area.
“It’s about ensuring we’re focusing on the products that are most relevant to our customers,” Epstein said. “Then expanding the offering to give them the widest variety of options depending on their customers’ specific needs.”
AliMed’s modernization
Well-known for its catalog, AliMed had to rethink its model when everyone started working remotely and supply chain problems arose.
Everything from how customers discover pricing, how they order products and how those products are delivered was on the table. “Even down to how we inventory products in anticipation of our customers’ needs,” said Epstein. “We really had to rethink the business and modernize our IT systems.”
So, AliMed made significant multi-million-dollar investments in upgrading its entire business.
“Last year, we upgraded our ERP system and everything that plugs into it,” Epstein said. “This included our tax platform, EDI platform and customer experience module that’s powering our call center – both inbound and outbound – have been upgraded.”
AliMed is finalizing its PIM (product information management) system, its DAM (digital asset management) system, and its e-commerce platform later this year. “Our syndication feeds and e-commerce platform really allow us to deliver content like product information and pricing where, how, and when the distributor or end customer wants to receive it,” he said.
Epstein says AliMed is redesigning itself to be much more user friendly and accessible, whether the customer is a DIY (do-it-yourself) customer or a DIFM (do-it-for-me) customer. Everything is being re-designed starting from and then around servicing the customers’ needs.
AliMed’s future
AliMed’s business is expanding on two fronts through serious investment. One is on digital transformation and the other is on new product focus for specific customer classes. AliMed has historically sold into some customer classes that require broader offerings than it had.
“We focus on delivering a wide breadth of products that serve a continuum of clinical settings from acute through post-acute,” Epstein said.
As AliMed’s digital systems continue to evolve, it makes it easier to do business with its customers and deliver content and purchasing options that it hasn’t had in the past.
“Now we can deliver product solutions when, where, and how the customers or distributor reps want it,” Epstein concluded. “That is the key to keeping the reps productive and retaining happy customers. That is truly the key to AliMed’s future.”