The Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition, with the help of USAID | DELIVER, has published an analysis of six public-domain software applications currently in use to manage supply chain functions. The applications include CHANNEL, Country Commodities Manager (CCM), PipeLine, Quantimed, Reproductive Health Interchange (RHI), and Supply Chain Manager.

Commissioned by the Coalition’s Systems Strengthening Working Group, Optimizing the Reproductive Health Supply Chain: A User’s Guide to Software is designed to help reproductive health supply chain managers make better-informed decisions when selecting software.  A single, common framework for categorizing and describing key software functionalities allows supply chain managers to:

• Understand the RH supply chain in terms of the three critical flows of material, information, and funds.
• Identify the points along the global RH supply chain, where the six software applications perform specific functions.
• Understand the functionality and utility of each of the six software applications.
• Understand the collective functionality of the six applications together.
• Recognize the limitations of the applications’ collective functionality relative to that of commercial off-the-shelf software.

Authored by a team of experts affiliated with the Supply Chain Management Center at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, the users-guide can be downloaded by clicking here.