Non-Conformance to Requirements is Holding Back Your Savings Opportunities

Every product, service, and technology should have their functional requirements or exact specifications defined by your customers, not specified by their sales representative or selected from a catalog as often happens. Because of this fact, many of the products, services, and technologies you are buying are non-conforming to requirements because of:

1. TRADITION: Customers continue to purchase a particular product, service, and technology because they “have always done it that way.” Like insisting that they need four ports on their IV catheters when there is no medical reason to do so.

2. OVERSPECIFICATION: Like tradition, customers buy products, services, and technologies that have too many components, too many features, and are too big, too small, or too robust. One of our clients had been buying patient slippers at a cost of $3.95 when a $0.99 slipper actually met their patients’ functional requirements exactly.

3. UNDERSPECIFICATION: Underspecifications include too few components, too few features, and missing functions. For example, when one of our health system clients functionally analyzed their patient garment bags, they found them to be too small at eight of their hospitals. Actually, none of their bags were big enough to hold their patients’ garments.