This was presented by Alexis Heaton at the International Conference on Family Planning (ICFP) in Kigali, Rwanda in November 2018. For over a decade, our community has put in place important supply chain visibility tools, like the Procurement Planning and Monitoring Report and the RH Interchange, but their siloed and outdated technology is hindering data validation and collaboration. Therefore, the Global FP VAN is establishing a single, more advanced, flexible virtual collaborative platform that allows teams to simultaneously see the same data and make supply decisions together. Selecting a single system to meet the myriad needs of the community required creative thinking. Unlike a typical tender process where there is one “buyer” calling the shots, the Global FP VAN initiative has many “buyers” with diverse needs. A collaborative process was therefore needed to define the requirements and start the procurement process. First, the Global FP VAN initiative established a three-staged request for proposal (RFP) process that combined a more traditional request for information (RFI) with the RFP. Second, an interactive platform was used to allow for an open, but secure, way to manage access to documentation, conversations, and updates across the community and bidders. Finally, the initiative integrated use of regular task force meetings, weekly calls, and recordings to engage the community and the bidders to work together on defining requirements to forge a collective “ask” of the bidders. Together this formed the basis of the RFP Addendum, including all final business and IT requirements, proposal templates, and the scoring guide to choose the system. Following the selection of a technology partner, this collaborative group has been an integral part of the design and launch of the system. An initiative like the Global FP VAN needs community buy-in to the technology platform to be successful and sustainable. This requires an innovative approach to system selection and design that involves users of the platform and captures their varied perspectives.

1. @rh_supplies@rhsupplies
You Can’t Manage What
You Can’t See
The Global Family Planning Visibility and Analytics Network (Global FP VAN)
and Contraceptive Commodity Security
International Conference on Family Planning
Kigali, Rwanda November 2018
Julia White, Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition
Ellen Tompsett, GHSC-PSM
Arati Krishnamoorthy, USAID
Alexis Heaton, John Snow, Inc.

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Stand up if you have ever asked any of these
questions…
1) How many contraceptives are needed for a country or program?
2) How many contraceptives to produce and by when?
3) Where is a country or program's contraceptive order and when will it arrive in-
country?

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11/19/18
How many of which products
do countries want? Need?
What are other donors
procuring?
• How can donors align?
• How can I achieve best
pricing and availability?
• How do I get the best
transportation?
• How do I ensure QC,
sampling, and testing?
• What are product and
manufacturers
alternatives?
• Do I need to warehouse
products?
• Lack of visibility to other
procurement organizations
• Lack of full end-to-end
plans by supplier/product
• We spend so much time triangulating data and chasing down
current status of data
• Confusing lines/multiple lines of communication
• Supply plans do not meet minimum quality standards, therefore, are
not useful
• Lack of funding can prevent meaningful recommendations
• New product regulatory approval process variability and lead times
• Stock price pressure
• Lack of reliable, consolidated, and shared data
• Lack of access to intelligence aggregated across partners
• Lack of trust in others treating our data as confidential and that my
competitors will gain an advantage over us.
• Where is my shipment?
• Can the global stakeholders help
me to solve [x] issue?
• What data do I report that is
shareable quality data?
• What is the quality of my data?
• Which issues do I flag to the Global
FP VAN?
None of the this data is in the
right format! What’s the real
story?
How do we prevent
these stock outs? Have
the countries received their
orders yet?
What is the upcoming demand
going to be?
Why are there so many
change orders?
What data did the country use to make
these decisions? Can additional funding
be mobilized?
Where is my order?
When will it arrive?
PROCURER DEMAND PLANNER MANUFACTURER COUNTRY
GLOBAL PROCURER DEMAND PLANNER MANUFACTURER COUNTRY
Problem: Lack of visibility = inefficacies/pain points

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Structured Response
Global FP VAN Goal: Better, aggregate, share,
and align country demand data with production,
procurement and funding to avoid stock
imbalances and maximize use of limited
resources to ensure continuous availability and
choice of family planning products in developing
countries.
Better = technology
Align = people
Share = policy
Aggregate = process

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Partnership and Governance

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11/19/18
Steerco and task
forces
September 2017
Road Map 1: Completed
Current/Future State
Validation Workshops
November 2017
Demos &
Sandbox v2
March 2018
Scoring &
Recommendation
March 2018
Field
Test
April
2018
Sandbox v1
January
2018
Initial Scope
Decisions
October 2017
RHSC GMM
Launch
March 2018
Publish RFP
November
2017
Publish RFP –
Addendum
w/ Finalized
Requirements
January 2018
Collaborative
Requirement
Refinement
Dec-Jan 2018
Configuratio
n Starts
May 2018
Negotiations
& Contracting
April 2018
Proposals Due
February 2018
Interviews, Process
Mapping
November 2017
Supply
Planning 1
Oct 2018
Business
Case
Decision on
Pilot March
2019
Load
Master
Data
July 2018
Boot
Camp
June 2018
Inbound
visibility
August 2018
Contract &
Negotiatio
ns
April-May
2018
Supply Planning 2
January 2019
Inventory Visibility
Sept 2018
Business
Case to SC
Feb 2019
Malawi
Kick Off
May 2018
Manufacturers
Oct 2018
Go Live!
Nov 2018
Nigeria
Kick
Off
June
2018
Road Map 2:Current

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Innovation #1: Linkages
Global FP VAN Goal: Better aggregate,
share, and align country demand data
with production, procurement and
funding to avoid stock imbalances and
maximize use of limited resources to
ensure continuous availability and choice
of family planning products in developing
countries.

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Innovation #2: Data Sharing
Global FP VAN Goal: Better aggregate,
share, and align country demand data with
production, procurement and funding to
avoid stock imbalances and maximize use
of limited resources to ensure continuous
availability and choice of family planning
products in developing countries.

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• Lack transparency
• Creates power dynamics
between data “haves” and
“have nots”
• Full transparency
• Access to data based on
role not organization
Shift in mindset: Bilateral agreements to multilateral
approach
Source: Unknown Author; licensed under CC BY-SAOutput: Multilateral Terms of Use developed

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• Confusion around individual
responsibilities
• Unclear who in organization
was accessing confidential
data
• Individual responsibilities
delineated
• Auditable
• Secure
Shift in mindset: Organization to organization + individual
Output: Overarching Principles of data sharing and use This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA

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• Unclear who has access
• Regular job responsibilities
not always considered in
granting access
• Roles-based rights
• Flexibility to share within
organization
Shift in mindset: Individual to role-based
Output: Data use rights table
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND

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Innovation #3: Data Management
Global FP VAN Goal: Better aggregate,
share, and align country demand data
with production, procurement and
funding to avoid stock imbalances and
maximize use of limited resources to
ensure continuous availability and choice
of family planning products in developing
countries.

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15. 15 15

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Adoption of Global Standards (GS1) for Product Identification:
Global Trade Identification Number
Global Trade Identification Number (GTIN)
Global Location Identification Number (GLIN)

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Adoption of Global Standards for Information Exchange:
Global Data Synchronization Network (GDSN)

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Innovation #4: Collaborative System Selection & Design
Global FP VAN Goal: Better aggregate,
share, and align country demand data
with production, procurement and
funding to avoid stock imbalances and
maximize use of limited resources to
ensure continuous availability and choice
of family planning products in developing
countries.

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Procurement
& Orders
Consumption &
Stock
ShipmentsForecasting
RH Interchange
PPMR
CSP work stream and CSP Tool
CARhs work stream
FP Mkt Report
A Long History of Supply Chain Visibility

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Use Cases
1
What If:
We could affordably scale both use of the
GFPVAN system and coordinated supply
planning and logistics management
(CSP/CARhs) to cover more products &
countries while lowering the level of effort
on staff to maintain tools/ systems?
3
What If:
We could see and monitor inbound
shipments from our
Suppliers/Freight Forwarders to
CMS in-country in one location?
5
What If:
We could see and monitor all the
approved requisitions and
purchase orders to our Suppliers
in one location?
7
What If:
Current Central Medical Store stock-
on-hand, average monthly
consumption and country contextual
information (request, notes, etc.)
could be imported in it's existing
format (e.g. excel, LMIS) without
additional intervention?
9
What If:
Current country supply plan data could
be imported in its existing format without
additional intervention and could be
standardized in its presentation based on
"business rules," allowing for tracking of
funded versus funding gaps and exception
management for human intervention?
2
What If:
We had one location where users had their own
log-in and data access governed by security
protocols, where each user could create
dashboards, and where we could create cross-
donor/cross-country dashboards that could also
import/export for analysis elsewhere?

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A Non-traditional Approach to System Selection and Design
• This is not a traditional “build” technology
initiative and so it does not follow traditional
process design steps
• This is a learning initiative. The collaborative,
experimental nature prioritizes “showing/
experiencing” before finalizing changes
• Steering Committee members, working groups,
Endorsers, and the technology partners have all
had critical roles and input along the way to
ensure the technology platform supports the
community’s needs
“Learning is experience.
Everything else is just
information.”
- Albert Einstein

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Data Scope Coverage To-Date

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Julia White
jwhite@rhsupplies.org
RHSC Global FP VAN website:
https://www.rhsupplies.org/gfpv
an
For More Information