INDUSTRY CASE
Healthcare
One Hour to Save $200k: Optimizing Your Hospital Supply Chain with AstroBee
AstroBee
Your $200K supply chain optimization plan is ready.
You don’t need a data scientist or a six‑week integration to unlock real savings. With AstroBee, any procurement lead, buyer or value analysis nurse who can upload a CSV or connect their source and type a question can enforce best pricing, stop maverick orders, get item substitution recommendations, and brief leadership with audit‑ready evidence.
The old way
Export data, clean it, book time with analysts, wait for a dashboard, then translate it for clinicians and finance. Weeks pass, the cost of waiting rises.
The AstroBee Way
Completely independent and self-serve.
Connect
Connect platform (EHR, POU, GPO, EDI, ERP, RCM, WMS and/or CLM) or just drag‑and‑drop raw CSVs.
Ask
Query AstroBee using natural language without the need of a data scientist or analyst.
Act
Get insights and recommendations from AstroBee using your own data.
Why this matters (and why now)
Self‑serve removes the bottleneck. Instead of queuing for analyst time, buyers and category managers can personally surface opportunities, implement catalogue rules, and prove impact, without leaving their workflow.
That speed is your ROI.
Give meaning to your data
With AstroBe simply upload or connect your data so it automatically understands its meaning.
Get recommendations
Once AstroBee understands your data, you can ask it insights, actionable recommendations and more.
What I did (and what you can copy)
This is what you can also do using AstroBee, right after connecting your data.
Step 1
Ask AstroBee what your data already supports
Based on the following supply chain strategies, tell me which we can do using our data: procurement optimisation, supplier scorecards, lifecycle controls, exception‑driven control tower, demand segmentation, service levels, MEIO pilots, non‑conformance analytics, S&OP, logistics, freight, warehouse efficiency, full returns/waste.
Sure! Here's what I can do for you given the current data I have available on your hospital supply chain:
Strong now: procurement optimisation, supplier scorecards, lifecycle controls, exception‑driven control tower.
Partially possible: demand segmentation, service levels, MEIO, non‑conformance analytics, S&OP.
Not supported yet: logistics, freight, warehouse efficiency, full returns/waste.
Tip: Switch to Edit mode and I'll propose the minimal fields—usage, MOQ/EOQ, freight lanes/costs—to unlock the rest. Still no data scientist required.
Step 2
Choose the fastest win (in my case, I've chosen procurement optimisation)
Procurement Optimisation
This is the most “doable‑today” lever because it relies on rules you control: catalogue defaults, contract enforcement, buyer alerts (rather than renegotiations). It tackles the two everyday leaks everyone recognises: paying above your best contract price (PPV) and off‑contract (maverick) orders [3][4].
Step 3
Ask for a plan you can action immediately
Let’s focus on procurement optimisation. I need a plan I can action right away.
Sure thing! Here's what you can do now:
Enforce contract price at release: block any PO line above the lowest active contract; require override to proceed, and also:
Route the catalogue to preferred: set the lowest‑price contract item as default; hide non‑preferred alternates.
Stop new maverick on A/B categories: require sourcing approval if no active contract exists at PO creation.
Daily ‘hot list’ to buyers: push top price‑variance outliers and no‑contract lines each morning.
Tell suppliers the new guardrails: orders route to lowest‑price active contracts; no off‑contract subs without pre‑approval.
Prep Week‑2 sourcing: export “no active contract” items (by UNSPSC) for quick mini‑RFQs.
Would you like me to prepare recommendations you can action within a short period of time?
AstroBee’s quick math (demo dataset, last 12 months)
Total spend: $2,287,801Active‑contract coverage: 43.0% ($983,022)
Maverick spend: $1,304,779Immediate savings by enforcing contract price: $213,005/year (policy‑only; no renegotiation)
Top‑5 items (subset): $121.4k/year of the total
Cost of waiting: ≈ $4.1k/week until enforcement is live
Confidence: full dataset returned (no sampling)
Step 4
Item‑level actions you can take this week
Here's a top-5 list of recommendations you can action right now, with no contract re-negotiation either:
Acetabular Cup 52 mm
Qty 47
Orthopaedic & prosthetic
$43,514.95
Projected savings
CURRENT
OrthoPrime Devices
Vendor
$2,324.95
Purchase order
RECOMMENDED CHOICE
HealthEquip Ltd.
Vendor
$1,399.10
Purchase order block
Knee Implant Femoral Size 4
Qty 9
Orthopaedic & prosthetic
$42,105.20
Projected savings
CURRENT
KneeWorks Medical
Vendor
$4,724.34
Purchase order
RECOMMENDED CHOICE
RespiraMed Ltd
Vendor
$3,671.71
Purchase order block
Hip Femoral Head 36 mm
Qty 55
Orthopaedic & prosthetic
$35,535.50
Projected savings
CURRENT
AxisOrtho Ltd
Vendor
$4,320.98
Purchase order
RECOMMENDED CHOICE
CardioLine LLC
Vendor
$3,674.88
Purchase order block
Sterile Surgical Gown L
Qty 27
Medical apparel & textiles
$140.94
Projected savings
CURRENT
MedTex Apparel Co
Vendor
$14.87
Purchase order
RECOMMENDED CHOICE
RespiraMed Ltd
Vendor
$9.65
Purchase order block
Surgical Mask, Level 2
Qty 26
Medical apparel & textiles
$135.46
Projected savings
CURRENT
SafeBreath Medical Supply
Vendor
$13.90
Purchase order
RECOMMENDED CHOICE
AnesthSys LLC
Vendor
$8.69
Purchase order block
Why self‑serve wins hearts (and governance)
Self‑serve lets buyers enforce savings today: no analysts, no backlog. Using simple catalogue and PO controls backed by audit‑ready logic.
Speed to value
No tickets, no backlog. You move from idea to enforcement in the same hour.
Clarity over complexity
Buyers can read the policy in the tool (“block above best contract”) and watch it work.
Audit‑ready by design
The Sources & Logic and SQL tabs make finance and compliance comfortable signing off.
Change management made human
A morning hot list is easier to adopt than a 40‑page slide deck
Resilience
Even if analyst capacity is tight or turnover happens, your savings controls live in catalogue rules (not in one person’s model).
What the first week delivered
Using synthetic (AI‑generated) demo data, AstroBee’s Week‑1 plan surfaced a clear, policy‑only savings figure. No vendor renegotiation. Just catalogue and PO controls. It also produced a Top‑50 enforcement list with item, preferred vendor, last paid price, and the rule to set (e.g., “block above $X”). That list becomes your buyers’ morning checklist.
If you want to go beyond procurement optimisation, AstroBee will generate an ontology using your data (semantic layer of your data) by itself. In this case above, AstroBee would just add the few fields (usage, MOQ/EOQ, freight lanes/costs, etc.) so you can expand into segmentation, service levels, and control‑tower workflows (again, without drafting a data‑engineering project).
Try this in under one hour
Go to https://app.astrobee.ai
Connect source or upload CSVs (you can .zip multiple CSVs too!)
Paste this prompt: “Given "procurement optimisation, supplier scorecards, lifecycle controls, exception‑driven control tower, demand segmentation, service levels, MEIO pilots, non‑conformance analytics, S&OP, logistics, freight, warehouse efficiency, full returns/waste" strategies, what can we do now with our data (strong/partial/not yet)?”
Then paste: “Focus on a strategy with highest return we have full capacity using my data. Give me a plan I can action right away.”
Implement the changes AstroBee returns.
Drop the Results / Sources & Logic / SQL screenshots straight into your steering‑group deck.
That’s it: no data scientist, no consulting scope of work.
Just connect, ask and act.
Why this matters for CFOs and supply‑chain leaders
Supply chain is the second‑largest expense after labour [1]. Every week you wait to fix known leaks is money you can’t redeploy to staffing, equipment, or service lines. An hour with AstroBee gets your team from conversation to control, and gives finance the evidence they need to back you. The enterprise benefit isn’t just savings; it’s a culture shift to data‑backed, buyer‑led improvement that survives staffing changes and budget cycles.
Disclosure
The screenshots and figures referenced here come from synthetic (AI‑generated) data solely for demonstration. In production, AstroBee uses your real data and shows the exact maths, so your teams can validate every recommendation before enforcing it.
References
[1] Health Catalyst: Improving Data Integrity Leads to Lower Supplies Costs. https://www.healthcatalyst.com/learn/success-stories/hospital-supply-chain-hawaii-pacific-health
[2] Guidehouse (Navigant): Annual Supply Chain Savings Opportunity Reaches $25.7 Billion for U.S. Hospitals (study of 2,127 hospitals). https://guidehouse.com/news/corporate-news/2019/supply-chain-analysis-2019
[3] Precoro: What Is Purchase Price Variance (PPV)? https://precoro.com/blog/what-is-ppv-purchase-price-variance-explained/
[4] Tipalti: Maverick Spend Explained: How to Identify and Prevent It. https://tipalti.com/resources/learn/maverick-spend/
What would you ask to AstroBee?
Built between the physical and the digital world. All rights reserved ©