–Berry de With, Product Owner and Lead ERP at PFSCM.
Success Story
The Partnership for Supply Chain Management (PFSCM)
Supply Chain Command Center, powered by the Blue Yonder Network
PFSCM
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The Partnership for Supply Chain Management (PFSCM) is a procurement services agent (PSA) and 4PL services provider serving donors, governments, non-profits, and humanitarian agencies. Its health products are used to prevent, test, and treat HIV, malaria, tuberculosis, antimicrobial resistance, COVID-19, mpox, and address other health priorities.
PFSCM offers complete sourcing, supply chain, and logistics solutions. This includes category and channel management, strategic sourcing, supply chain, and 4PL solutions, including forecasting, demand planning, product quality assurance and quality control testing, upstream and last-mile logistics, end-to-end shipment tracking, and storage and warehousing services.
It helps achieve its clients’ public health goals through cost-saving procurement, efficient logistics, pharmaceutical-grade storage, and real-time data tracking in 75 low-and middle-income countries (LMICs) across Africa, Asia, and South America (with 90% of its volumes destined for Africa).
It’s headquartered in Washington, D.C., with a main operational office in the Netherlands and access to several pharma-grade and GDP-compliant warehouses and facilities for data logger placement and re-icing.
PFSCM’s legacy systems were outdated, inflexible, and overly customized. They were not designed for integration with other systems or digital engagement with supply chain partners and were expensive to operate, enhance, and maintain.
PFSCM needed to undergo digital transformation to improve supply chain visibility and streamline stakeholder collaboration. PFSCM sought a solution that could manage its operational scale, product complexity, multi‑party collaboration, and provide a better user experience for its staff.
PFSCM has a product portfolio of more than 6,200 unique stock keeping units (SKUs), and associated services comprising pharmaceuticals and medical devices spanning ambient, temperature-controlled, cold-chain, and frozen products. Its products all have unique attributes that require specialized packing, storage, transportation, installation, and servicing, making every order a complex challenge.
Supplying customers in LMICs presents additional challenges and physical bottlenecks. Often, in-country logistics comprises many supply chain tiers, with deliveries to central medical stores, then to regional and district stores, before reaching hospitals and health facilities. Poor quality roads, sporadic staffing levels, and demurrage penalties for delayed sea freight exacerbate the challenge.
Another big challenge is unrest. Of the 75 countries it serves in 2025, at least 25 experienced a severe and disruptive hardship from natural disasters to infrastructure collapse, conflicts, and socio-political unrest. In some countries, the internet was inaccessible for long periods of time.
Traditionally, PFSCM had focused on the shipment of pharmaceuticals like antiretroviral (ARV) medications, which was a straightforward procedure (around 50 SKUs), with purchase orders (POs) sent directly to a small number of vendors. But since the COVID pandemic, PFSCM has seen a massive increase in shipments of more sophisticated medical devices such as X-ray machines, which have created many additional layers of complexity in its operations, as these devices often require special shipment conditions and supporting products and services. These "lab technics products” are not only more capital-intensive devices but are also more challenging to supply. Aside from their physical delivery, they also require installation, commissioning, and training services—all of which are managed within the Blue Yonder system.
Blue Yonder Supply Chain Command Center has helped drive this transition through the digital execution of processes. It supports thousands of simultaneous orders, each containing multiple order lines, with numerous delivery schedules, across more than 6,200 SKUs. The solution can also handle separate lifecycle processes for products, warranties, maintenance, and services while keeping those flows linked to the originating order and asset records.
In recent times, PFSCM also pivoted to serve as a more strategic orchestration partner to its many stakeholders. Previously, it provided straight-forward order management services—taking orders and handling POs with vendors. With the increasing focus on more complex medical devices, PFSCM needed to transition to a more ‘broker/middleman’ service offerings whereby it can orchestrate the strategic fulfilment amongst multiple parties. By handling all sales and purchase orders, PFSCM can conduct ‘strategic inventory’ for different inventory stores. This has led to improved customer service and increased options using various channels and pricing mechanisms.
The system maintains a robust item master and supplier master database to ensure quality compliance, serial, and lot traceability, and to prevent non‑compliant products from entering the supply chain (chain of custody, serial/lot tracking, recalls).
PFSCM uses Blue Yonder to execute all its critical operational functions, from managing incoming client requisitions to order placement and logistics execution. Importantly, Blue Yonder Supply Chain Command Center enables digital execution of those processes and direct collaboration with freight forwarders within the platform. It also provides native and custom-built functionality to help users manage their transactions and enables managers to track transaction execution and streamline exception handling to mitigate impact.
The Blue Yonder solution ingests purchase requisitions from all types of client systems and external portals and supports quotation generation, routing, approval capture, and version control. It helps order placement with suppliers, tracks confirmations, monitors lead times, and exceptions through to fulfilment. It also helps orchestrate collaboration across suppliers, carriers, third-party logistics (3PL) services providers, and customs brokers to align pickup dates, shipping schedules, import documents, waivers, and customs clearance. This enables execution of warehousing, consolidation/deconsolidation, and last‑mile delivery to health facilities and other sites, while enabling partial/split orders and multi‑shipment handling to help optimize logistics. Ultimately, it provides a single version of the truth across planning, execution, and finance, so decisions are based on consistent, audited data.
PFSCM has seen good results following the Blue Yonder deployment in 2019 (which was managed by a system integrator that later became part of digital solutions company Accenture).
The organization now sees shorter lead times across all stages of its transaction lifecycle, including quotation, order placement, supplier lead time, and freight execution. Its data-driven processes result in fewer errors and exceptions. Additionally, internal efficiencies have led to lower service costs, which in turn result in savings for its customers.
PFSCM is seeing the benefits of real‑time, multi‑party visibility across suppliers, carriers, distributors, and clients to surface early warnings and exceptions and reduce lead times and errors. By improving visibility and generating alerts, staff can proactively communicate with supply chain partners to ensure the smooth flow of goods. Not only does this ensure that lifesaving medication and medical devices arrive on time and cost-effectively, but it also avoids demurrage and detention penalties associated with port delays.
PFSCM is also optimizing logistics planning. The Blue Yonder solution enables the grouping of items to improve logistics efficiency (consolidation for ocean/air freight) and the splitting of orders and shipments to match supplier readiness, transport capacity, funding windows, or recipient constraints.
It also supports dynamic allocation and routing to make real‑time trade-offs between cost, speed, and risk when exceptions occur. These include load and route optimization, mode selection (road, rail, air, or sea), carrier management, cost control and freight budgeting, and regulation compliance. Planners leverage technology, including Blue Yonder and a Product Information Management (PIM) tool, to analyze data, track shipments, and make informed decisions that improve service levels and operational resilience.
Logistics optimization also helps drive PFSCM’s sustainability targets by orchestrating plans to optimize loads and minimize the number of containers and shipments needed.
PFSCM has cut down the barriers to process improvement and innovation. Staff can now identify gaps related to supplier documentation and can work with suppliers to quickly upload the required data into the Blue Yonder solution. PFSCM has found that the longer staff collaborate in the digital space, the more they identify opportunities to streamline process interactions and data exchanges with suppliers and 3PLs.
The Blue Yonder solution provides integration via APIs/EDI with multiple client procurement systems, supplier portals, freight forwarder platforms, customs systems, and financial systems, so information flows seamlessly across stakeholders.
Clients have total flexibility: They can either be given secure access to the Blue Yonder solution or continue using their own systems and integrate with the Supply Chain Command Center via APIs.
Blue Yonder Supply Chain Command Center provides true ‘control tower’ capabilities that encompass people, processes, and technology. For PFSCM’s users (two-thirds of all staff), there have been marked changes as the solution feeds into intuitive, role‑based dashboards (via Power BI) and workflows so operational staff can easily review queues, manage approvals, and act on exceptions without intensive training. The solution also enables actionable alerts, prompts, and workload views so users know what requires attention, where bottlenecks sit, and how to prioritize tasks. Management dashboards enable managers to track transaction execution, measure team workloads (regional teams), and monitor KPIs (turnaround time, fill rates, exception resolution) to sustain improved service levels and efficiencies.
PFSCM’s mission is to improve access to health products in LMICs through effective procurement and delivery of quality-assured products.
PFSCM has done extensive work to create and maintain a robust framework for managing item and supplier master data to ensure all procurement complies with product quality assurance requirements. Products in the system all comply with the defined quality requirements, which is a key first step in preventing non-compliant products from entering the supply chain. Blue Yonder Supply Chain Command Center supports various chain-of-custody solutions for serial tracking, lot tracking, tracking across consolidation and deconsolidation, IoT operations, and targeted recalls. These innovations will continue to play a critical role in ensuring product integrity and quality throughout the health supply chain.
PFSCM, Accenture and Blue Yonder partnership
“Our approach to working with Accenture and Blue Yonder was to deploy the Supply Chain Command Center as the ultimate ‘go-to’ destination for users and the engine to power the organization. For this reason, it is commonly referred to as our ERP. But in the six years since the initial deployment, we have worked with Accenture to continually refine the system to add incremental value to the business, which is an ongoing initiative. The more our staff use the system, the more they can see areas where value can be created. It is a continual cycle of innovation.”—Berry de With.
Secure online catalog launched
In 2025, PFSCM launched a digital product catalog with a secure ordering portal to improve access to lifesaving health products for its clients. The HealthSupply Portal is connected to the Blue Yonder Supply Chain Command Center to provide streamlined access to an extensive range of health products, simplifying procurement with intuitive search, comprehensive product information, and a secure ordering system.
“In the last few years, PFSCM has become more digital and data-centric, with the deployment of new tools, including Blue Yonder, to help us incrementally improve product information management, increase transparency, and streamline processes to meet and exceed our clients’ expectations. The new portal reduces the complexity of navigating our extensive portfolio of more than 6,200 specialized health products.” —Perry van Dam, PFSCM Information Technology Director.
Since the initial deployment of the Blue Yonder system in 2019, PFSCM has been incrementally unlocking the value within the system to embrace new business models, logistic blueprints and best practices. Next, PFSCM plans to explore some of its advanced transportation management system (TMS) capabilities built into the application to increase the efficiency of its international freight management. It seeks to determine how TMS can help consolidate product consignments at the country of origin to promote efficiency.
Since the successful deployment of the Blue Yonder Supply Chain Command Center, the solution has been used by PFSCM to deliver around 12,000 shipments (averaging 2,000 annually), totalling more than 94 million individual units.
Bringing together real‑time visibility across an end-to-end network, advanced analytics, and a user‑friendly operational layer has enabled PFSCM to automate the use of accurate data to deliver shorter lead times, fewer errors, lower service costs, and better assurance of product quality for patients and end users of medical devices and other health products in LMICs.
Blue Yonder Supply Chain Command Center has helped convert transactional complexity into coordinated, data‑driven execution, enabling smaller teams to manage much larger volumes with greater reliability and transparency.
