Driving deeper customer relationships

In late 2019, the AmerisourceBergen Corporate Partnerships team changed its go-to-market model to elevate the services we provide to our largest customers and foster an environment of co-creation. In January 2020, a Strategic Solutions function was added within Corporate Partnerships to ensure the services we provide are cultivated from a deep understanding of customers and developed in partnership with our customers. Michael Amante, Vice President of Corporate Partnerships Strategic Solutions, shares how this newly formed team adds a new layer of empathy and insight to the distribution partnership.

Q: What is the role of the Strategic Solutions team at AmerisourceBergen?

Michael Amante: Our corporate partners have the scale and vision to influence the evolution of the pharmaceutical industry in ways that improve the quality of patient treatments and outcomes. Our team brings these partners together with experts and visionaries from across AmerisourceBergen to identify, design, build, and launch new solutions together to shape the future of healthcare delivery.

The Strategic Solutions team strives to spend as much time with customers as they do with AmerisourceBergen associates, building valuable solutions that harness the capabilities of the enterprise while driving results for the customer.

Q: Being a relatively new team, what are the initiatives your team is tackling immediately?

MA: We are following two paths in parallel. Path One involves continuing to support activities that help our customers obtain their fair share amidst day-to-day shifts in the market. Path Two is focused on discovering and implementing new solutions that address our partners’ biggest pain points. 

Our initial focus area on Path Two has been to find ways to tangibly demonstrate to our customers that we are evolving our ability to fulfill their demand. Forecasting, receiving, and managing inventory in ways that enable our partners to never miss an opportunity to serve a patient is an area where we know we can differentiate ourselves from other distributors. By working closely with key partners over the last four months, we now know the most impactful solutions we can offer. In FY21, we will be focused on designing and implementing pilots of these innovation offerings.

Q: How do you approach solution development?

MA: Strategic Solutions approaches opportunities for collaboration with customers through a five-phase model for innovative partnership:

1. Need: Begins with immersing ourselves in the realities of our customers
2. Thoughts: Uses what we know to be true for our customers to drive new thinking
3. Potential Solutions: Balances customer value with the capabilities of our business
4. Worthwhile Solutions: Leaves room to validate and verify the true value of new solutions before development
5. Investment in Development: Follows a build/test/learn approach to demonstrate real world value before scaling

In order to ensure the successful development of solutions, it’s important to follow the steps and invest time in each phase. By introducing an environment of co-creation with our Corporation Partnership customers, AmerisourceBergen is committed to constructing solutions that drive real value.