5 Case Studies: How to Strengthen Healthcare Operations at the Last Mile

No matter the industry, TaroWorks is a tool that strengthens and drives efficiency at the last mile — but how can it help your healthcare operations? TaroWorks, powered by Salesforce, has the ability to track the movement and distribution of essential healthcare supplies, and track the recipients. On World Health Day (April 7, 2023), take a look at how TaroWorks clients are using the offline mobile CRM and field services app to strengthen their healthcare operations, and improve their impact in their communities.

Inventory Management of Health Supplies in Rural Communities

Fonkoze, a health-focused charity in Haiti, is using TaroWorks to support its healthcare program – Boutik Sante – by tracking the movement of over 100 health products throughout Haiti.

Fonkoze’s healthcare operations reach over 250,000 households a year through Community Health Entrepreneurs who conduct basic health screenings, deliver health education and procure health products from Fonkoze to resell in communities.

Before TaroWorks, Fonkoze was using paper and Excel to track everything, including what health products were coming from suppliers, information about where and when the health products were distributed, and information on when the health products were handed to Community Health Entrepreneurs for resale to local residents. Fonkoze looked to TaroWorks to digitize this hard-to-scale approach.

Today, TaroWorks provides a centralized inventory management system that uses our mobile field service app and Salesforce’s CRM database to track healthcare product movements between the suppliers, Fonkoze warehouses, and the point of sale locations – even when inventory activities are happening in areas with limited internet connectivity. Fonkozes management now has visibility into inventory cycle counts, adjustments, and the value of the stock on hand to proactively prevent stock-outs.

TaroWorks has given us tools we didn’t have before. We can quickly tap into our network of rural healthcare entrepreneurs and product distribution centers to gauge product demand, smooth out kinks in the supply chain and help measure the impact of our business training efforts.

Florence Jean-Louis, Former Director of Human Development, Fonkoze

Scaling a Sales Management System for Health Products

Population Services International (PSI) – a social marketing organization – looked to TaroWorks to help solve their challenge of scaling their sales management system they used for tracking the sales of their health products in the multiple countries they work in. To make things more complex, PSI had the additional challenge of scaling their sales management system for their healthcare operations in multiple languages, during COVID.

PSI works to improve healthcare globally. They focus on issues like HIV, tuberculosis, malaria, family planning, and WASH. Before implementing TaroWorks, sales managers in the field could not make timely decisions because of their lack of data. Sales data was either not available or not accurate/complete. If the data happened to be accurate, it was not timely. A crucial component to PSI’s double-bottom line strategy is the distribution of their health products. These products range anywhere from HIV self-test kits to insecticide-treated nets to contraceptives. 

Once TaroWorks was implemented, PSI was using the technology as their front-end interface to allow their salespeople to enter medical details and sales information like the location of pharmacies, distributors, addresses, contact names, and geolocations. TaroWorks also enabled PSI salespeople to collect data on what kind of products they are selling, the prices, discounts and the quantities. This data proved to be invaluable because it helped PSI make strategic decisions and create new objectives for the next round of sales. Once the data is collected in TaroWorks, the app syncs to Salesforce CRM.

Technology like TaroWorks is going to work for us. As the technology grows and the new Android version comes out, TaroWorks does the hard work of making sure integrations are going to work.

Alan Doyle, Director, Corporate Systems, Population Services International (PSI)

Distributing Menstrual Health Products for Girls

Days for Girls – an organization providing menstrual health services for girls and women – uses TaroWorks to help distribute menstrual kits to micro-enterprises across East Africa.  

The Days for Girls (DfG) Pad is a washable, reusable, menstrual health product that’s built to last and includes a protective shield and absorbent liner. Before TaroWorks, Days for Girls faced issues in procuring the correct quantities of materials to resource hubs to build the custom product.

Since 2021, Days For Girls has been using TaroWorks for inventory management, sales and order management, and maintenance and support to help track the movement of these menstrual kits. In Kenya alone, Days For Girls works with 22 different micro-enterprises. Each enterprise sells approximately 500 menstrual kits a month. TaroWorks Enterprise gives administrators at the HQ level a birds-eye view of the orders placed across all countries. TaroWorks allows better tracking of supplies in transit. Since TaroWorks, the organization has been able to prevent stockouts, and better track the menstrual supplies in transit.

Since TaroWorks, our processes are going smoothly. Recently we were able to improve the cycle counts and adjustments which we had previously struggled with.

Faith Murabwa, Operations and Supply Chain Assistant, Days for Girls

Tracking Healthcare Recipients in rural Kenya

In many cultures Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is a rite of passage, marking the transition from girlhood to womanhood. Amref Health Africa – a health based NGO in Africa – is working in Kenya and Tanzania on a model of FGM that revolves around comminty-led alternative rites of passage (CL-ARP) interventions within mainly remote communities. Since 2009, Amref has supported over 21,000 girls to denounce FGM during the rite of passage, and have graduated them into womanhood without the cut.

Amref has developed a digital ‘Tracking the Girls’ tool, which was developed to be used in the remote areas of Kajiado, Kenya. The tool monitors the health, well-being and educational status of the girls rescued from FMG  through Amrefs CL-ARP programs. This tool supports Amref to keep these girls safe by visiting them bi-annually. With the collected & analyzed data of their healthcare operations and by conducting research we will be able to improve our future interventions. 

Throughout 2020 and 2021, with the support of Salesforce CRM and Taroworks, Amref Health Africa developed and tested the digital tracking tool which has been used to register girls, report cases and track girls graduating through CL-ARP. The tool acts as a storage or database for all beneficiary girls and provides for further data management and analysis, and offers a centralized and standardized data collection platform even in the most hard to reach areas of the project sites. TaroWorks collects longitudinal data relating to the beneficiary girls who have undergone the process.

Distributing and Tracking a Vaccine Technology System 

Nexleaf Analytics is a non-profit organization that partners with countries to ensure they have the data they need to build lasting solutions to improve the health of their people.

Nexleaf Analytics used TaroWorks for their  ColdTrace program, which has the goal of providing actionable data insights to improve the efficacy, reliability, and sustainability of vaccine distribution in remote areas. Nexleaf used TaroWorks to track and distribute vaccine fridge sensors, wireless devices and data analytics tools tho improve global public health and environment. They have distributed over 13 thousand devices to health clinics throughout rural Northern India. TaroWorks was used to track the distribution and the installation of the sensors. They needed this inventory tracking management software to show proof of delivery, which uses TaroWorks features including g photos, barcode scanning, recording deliveries with signatures and GPS.