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What should you consider when making a purchasing decision on a visibility solution for your cold chain operation?
It’s time for the final chapter in our series Quality & Efficiency; Can You Have Both? And where better to end this journey than by considering money? We’ve talked a lot about the possibilities of real-time visibility as compared to non-real-time solutions, and it’s pretty clear that real-time will deliver better quality and efficiency, but can you afford it?
Then Again, Can You Afford Not To?
Now, there’s no use denying that, when compared purchase to purchase, real-time visibility solutions will always cost more than your standard USB logger or doing everything by hand yourself.
But that is only factoring in the one-off purchase price.
For real-time solutions, you really also need to factor in the predicted results you get by using the solution as compared to using retroactive systems or manual work. Only then, and depending on what the numbers say, should you make a decision on what kinds of needs will the system you’re looking to purchase be addressing.
This is because when evaluating visibility solutions and their prices, it’s very important to look at the benefits they offer as a part of the purchasing price. That is, when you look at the system as an investment towards being able to deliver better quality and compliance more efficiently, the ROI is actually very decent. It doesn’t take that many prevented critical deviations before you’ll be making a profit.
This is not to say that a real-time solution would always win in this kind of evaluation – sometimes you’ll be just fine with a retroactive system. But without doing the math with the potential benefit and process development in mind, you won’t have the information to make the best decision for your cold chain.
And then that cheaper system will end up costing you more than what you would have saved by getting the real-time system in the first place.
I hope this series of blogs has helped you get a better picture of how better visibility and real-time systems can actually improve quality and efficiency in cold chain logistics.
If you have something to add, or any questions you’d like to ask, please contact us and we can discuss any of these matters further – we’re always happy to help you with your cold chain monitoring needs.
You can also find more information on this and other related subjects on our most comprehensive resource yet: Temperature Monitoring in the Pharmaceutical Cold Chain