Honeywell: Future-Proofing PPE Supply Chains with RevOps

The COVID-19 pandemic uncovered significant challenges across global supply chains, especially when it comes to vital supplies like PPE. 

Not only did over-reliance on overseas suppliers lead to shortages when export restrictions were imposed and borders closed, but many organisations were unprepared for sudden demand spikes and could not adjust sourcing.

The global crisis highlighted the need for more data-led, resilient and coordinated supply chain strategies.

With this in mind, Vivek Vishal, Senior Director Sales Excellence at Honeywell, highlights the value RevOps can have in global supply chains to enhance sustainability and agility: "PPE is a critical component of global health infrastructure, yet its availability has been inconsistent due to fragmented supply chains, over-reliance on offshore manufacturing and a lack of real-time demand forecasting.

“At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, global demand for PPE surged by 40%, leading: more than 1,000% price hikes on N95 masks; severe shortages in hospitals and frontline organisations; and export restrictions that led to supply bottlenecks, as some countries prioritised domestic stockpiling. 

“The absence of data-driven demand planning and coordinated financial alignment left corporations reactive rather than proactive, further exacerbating shortages.”

What is RevOps?

Revenue Operations (RevOps) is a strategic business approach that ensures an organisation’s marketing, sales, finance and customer service are aligned to unlock greater efficiency and growth. It centralises processes, data and technology to break down silos between departments.

This empowers companies to forecast demand more accurately and enhance end-to-end visibility across the supply chain and customer journey. 

Across the supply chain, RevOps can help combine procurement, operations and financial planning to reduce costs, enhance responsiveness and craft long-term resilience. 

This approach can also improve the entire PPE supply chain. Honeywell points to the fact that they widened N95 mask production across Europe and US during the COVID-19 pandemic to minimise reliance on other suppliers.

3M also leveraged data to maintain equitable distribution during shortages and focus on healthcare providers and emergency responders, resulting in them being able to scale N95 output to 2.5 billion across the world by 2021.

Vivek continues: “RevOps can be a game-changer for PPE by breaking down silos between sales, operations and procurement to provide a 360-degree view of demand and supply. It can also leverage predictive analytics to anticipate demand fluctuations and avoid shortages and optimise financial planning to prevent last-minute bulk buying at inflated prices.

“By structuring PPE supply chains using RevOps principles, corporations can shift from reactive crisis management to strategic, proactive planning.”

How can RevOps be applied to the PPE supply chain?

RevOps can be applied across PPE supply chains to enhance forecasting, agility and efficiency.

Not only can it craft a centralised platform that connects logistics, procurement, finance and demand planning teams to unlock visibility across the supply chain, but it can also call upon ML and AI to forecast demand patterns based on seasonal surges, infection trends or global health alerts. 

Organisations can ensure emergency, frontline healthcare and government services receive PPE before commercial channels by applying RevOps data to segment and focus on distribution.

RevOps can call upon blockchain and traceability technologies to track PPE from source to delivery.

Organisations that integrate RevOps into PPE supply chains can craft a responsive, streamline and sustainable operational model.

Vivek points to the varied capabilities of RevOps: “RevOps ensures equitable distribution through data-driven allocation. Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine deployment demonstrated this by prioritising countries based on infection rates and healthcare capacity, aligning production with real-time demand forecasts and maintaining strict quality control across 45+ global distribution centres.

“PPE corporations can apply a similar demand prioritisation model by segmenting its distribution for healthcare workers, government agencies and critical industries before commercial sales, creating priority-based allocation models using RevOps data insights to ensure frontline responders always have access to necessary personal protective equipment and establishing dynamic reallocation mechanisms to shift PPE supplies in real-time based on emerging hotspots.”

Traceability and sustainability in PPE supply chains

A vast amount of waste was created as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic due to the large-scale production and disposal of single-use PPE. Organisations can turn to alternatives that are made with recyclable materials or reusable PPE to minimise long-term environmental damage. 

Not only will traceability ensure PPE is manufactured under fair, safe and ethical working conditions to avoid exploitation, but transparent supply chains will help to verify the quality and origin of PPE materials. 

RevOps can offer greater coordination, visibility and data intelligence to ensure PPE supply chains can continue to be efficient, sustainable and future-proof. 

This approach can effectively integrate sustainability into financial planning to ensure organisations invest in local production and green materials while maintaining costs. 

As we navigate global disruptions across our supply chains, organisations can embrace RevOps to secure dynamic allocation and reallocation of PPE based on needs to support accurate forecasting and unnecessary stockpiling. 

Vivek concludes: “PPE supply chains must evolve, as the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted. RevOps offers a proven playbook to make them efficient, equitable, transparent and sustainable.

“Corporations that act now by embedding RevOps principles into their operation will not only ensure continuity in the next health emergency, but also lead the way in global resilience, ESG and public trust. The next global crisis is coming; the time to future-proof PPE delivery is now.”

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