Cardinal Health 3PL Sampling Program
Cardinal Health Specialty Solutions
Jon McWhinney, Business Development Director
jon.mcwhinney@cardinalhealth.com
Joe Bowman, Business Development Director
joe.bowman@cardinalhealth.com
Samples of prescription drugs are an indisputably effective, though difficult to manage, marketing technique for many pharma companies. Most pharma brand teams use two different supply partners to manage product distribution—one for trade distribution and one for samples distribution. Cardinal Health 3PL Services drives efficiency for its pharmaceutical clients with the launch of a sampling program within a business that has traditionally focused on trade distribution. The new Cardinal Health 3PL Sampling Program now enables pharma companies to consolidate their trade and sample distribution with one partner, thus eliminating redundant processes associated with having multiple supplier relationships.
Cardinal Health 3PL allows pharma teams to use sampling to directly influence prescribing and enable patients to get started on therapy sooner, all while maintaining regulatory compliance and overcoming challenges such as high administrative costs, operational inefficiencies, and wasted product. The innovative new process enables strict compliance with the Prescription Drug Marketing Act (PDMA) requirements using state-of-the-art technology that tracks acknowledgements of content (AOC). In addition, there is decreased risk of product damage since samples do not need to be moved back and forth between the pharma company’s 3PL and a samples management company, offering reduced waste with the ability to repackage soon-to-expire trade product for use in the samples program. This effective solution also allows for simplified billing from one source; focused expertise on sampling provided by a dedicated, samples-only teams who have experience navigating this highly regulated space; and cost efficiencies by eliminating the need for multiple facilities.
While the sampling program is still in its early days, some customers in the pilot program have saved as much as 10% on warehouse and freight costs, while maintaining 99% order accuracy and on-time delivery.
