Canadian Blood Services, a national, not-for-profit, charitable organization that manages the blood supply in all Canadian provinces and territories except Quebec, has successfully implemented Descartes Systems Group’s cloud-based transportation management system. The system helps manage inventories in transit and the delivery of blood and blood products to hospitals, clinics, labs, and other facilities.
“Our mission is to manage the blood and blood products supply in a manner that gains the trust, commitment, and confidence of all Canadians by providing a safe, secure, cost-effective, and accessible supply of quality blood and related products,” said Jean Landreville, distribution manager at Canadian Blood Services. “Descartes is helping us deliver on this mission with a comprehensive solution that provides robust logistics management and chain of custody tracking capabilities that are critical to our operations.”
Descartes’ transportation management system provides modular, end-to-end multi-modal functionality that spans the entire shipment lifecycle. Orders are taken directly from Canadian Blood Services’ enterprise resource planning (ERP) system and are optimized based on business requirements, service criteria, and cost. The system determines whether the time-sensitive shipment should be transported on Canadian Blood Services’ private fleet or via a third-party carrier.
Shipments transported on Canadian Blood Services’ private fleet are optimized to reduce fuel and operational costs while meeting defined service levels. To help ensure chain of custody compliance, shipments are scanned on and off the vehicles and then shipment location and handling information is tracked, including electronic proof of delivery (POD) signature capture. For shipments transported via a third-party carrier, the shipment management process is enhanced with optimized carrier selection, integrated carrier compliant parcel labeling, and performance management reporting.
Canadian Blood Services operates 43 permanent collection sites and more than 20,000 donor clinics annually. To book an appointment or for more information, visit www.blood.ca or call 1-888-2-DONATE.
Descartes (TSX:DSG) (Nasdaq:DSGX) provides on-demand, software-as-a-service systems focused on improving productivity, performance, and security of logistics-intensive businesses. Its B2B network, the Global Logistics Network, integrates more than 35,000 trading partners to its cloud-based Logistics Technology Platform to unite businesses in commerce. Learn more at www.descartes.com.
